Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/261

 RELATIONS WITH CHINA 223 The Yueh-chi advance necessarily involved the sup- pression of the Indo-Greek and Indo-Parthian chiefs of principalities to the west of the Indus, and in the preceding chapter proof has been given of the manner in which the coinage legibly records the outline of the story of the gradual supersession of Hermaios, the last Greek prince of Kabul, by the barbarian invaders. The final extinction of the Indo-Parthian power in the Pan jab and the Indus valley was reserved, however, for the reign of the successor of Kadphises I, who is most conveniently designated as Kadphises H. At the age of eighty Kadphises I closed his victori- ous reign, and was succeeded, in or about 85 A. D., by his son Kadphises H. This prince, no less ambitious and enterprising than his father, devoted himself to the further extension of the Yueh-chi dominion, and even ventured to measure swords with the Chinese emperor. The embassy of Chang-kien in 125 - 115 B. c. to the Yueh-chi, while they still resided in Sogdiana to the north of the Oxus, had brought the western barbarians into touch with the Middle Kingdom, and for a century and a quarter the Emperors of China kept up inter- course with the Scythian powers. In the year 8 A. D. official relations ceased, and when the first Han dynasty came to an end in 23 or 24 A. D., Chinese influence in the western countries had been reduced to nothing. Fifty years later Chinese ambition re-asserted itself, and for a period of thirty years, from 73 to 102 A. D., General Pan-chao led an army from victory to victory