Page:India—what can it teach us?.djvu/300

 NOTE E, p. 86.

THE YUEH-CHI

The conquests of Alexander, though they seem to have left a very slight impression in India, so much so that the very name of Alexander is never mentioned in Sanskrit literature, supplied the first impulse to great commotions in Asia, which at last reacted most powerfully and fatally on India. The kingdoms of Bactria, Syria, and Egypt were essentially the outcome of Alexander's Oriental policy. Egypt and Syria, we know, fell after a time a prey to Roman conquest. But the Greek kingdom of Bactria came in contact with a different class of enemies, and was de- stroyed by the Tochari (the Ta-hia in Chinese 1 ), a Turanian race, who, after having made themselves masters of that position, advanced westward against the kingdom of Parthia, founded 250 B.C. by Arsaces I. Artabanus, the king of Parthia, fell fighting against the Tochari, but his son Mithradates II (124 B. c.) repelled their inroads, and thereby drove an enormous wave of half-nomad warriors towards Kabul, and thence to India.

Chang Kien, who was sent by the Emperor "Wu-ti as am- bassador to the Yueh-chi, tells us that these Yueh-chi (also called Yueh-ti, the 'E0daXtrcu of Greeks) had been driven at that time out of their old seats by the Hiung-nu, and had

1 The Aacu are supposed to appear again as Dacians, and Grimm would have wished to connect them with Danavas, evil spirits, and in the end with the Danes. All this is as yet mere vapour, though there may be some light behind it. Most of these identifica- tions rest on little more than similarity of sound.