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INDO – SKYTHIAN KINGDOM
Azes – King circa 58-12 B.C.
Bronze 28mm (13.77 grams) Struck circa 58-12 B.C.
Reference: HGC 12, 671
BAΣIΛEΩΣ BAΣIΛEΩN MEΓAΛOY / AZOY Bull standing right; monogram above; Shi to lower right. Rev. Lion standing right; above, monogram.
Maharajasa rajadhirajasa mahatasa / Ayasa (of Great King, King of Kings, Azes the Great) Lion standing to right. .
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Azes I was an Indo-Scythian ruler who ruled around c. 48/47 BCE – 25 BCE and completed the domination of the Scythians in northwestern India.
Maues and his successors had conquered the areas of Gandhara, as well as the area of Mathura from 85 BCE forming the Northern Satraps.
Azes’s most lasting legacy was the foundation of the Azes era. It was widely believed that the era was begun by Azes’s successors by simply continuing the counting of his regnal years. However, Prof. Harry Falk has recently presented an inscription at several conferences which dates to Azes’s reign, and suggests that the era may have been begun by Azes himself. Most popular historians date the start of the Azes era to 58 BC and believe it is the same as the later era known as the Malwa or Vikrama era.
However, a recently discovered inscription, the Bajaur reliquary inscription, dated in both the Azes and the Greek era suggests that actually this is not the case. The inscription gives the relationship Azes = Greek + 128. It is believed that the Greek era may have begun in 173 BCE, exactly 300 years before the first year of the Era of Kanishka. If that is the case then the Azes era would begin in about 45 BC.
Indo-Scythians (also called Indo-Sakas) were a group of nomadic Iranian peoples of Saka and Scythian origin who migrated from Central Asia southward into northern and western regions of ancient India from the middle of the 2nd century BCE to the 4th century CE.
The first Saka king of India was Maues/Moga (1st century BC) who established Saka power in Gandhara, and Indus Valley. The Indo-Scythians extended their supremacy over north-western India, conquering the Indo-Greeks and other local kingdoms. The Indo-Scythians were apparently subjugated by the Kushan Empire, by either Kujula Kadphises or Kanishka. Yet the Saka continued to govern as satrapies, forming the Northern Satraps and Western Satraps. The power of the Saka rulers started to decline in the 2nd century CE after the Indo-Scythians were defeated by the Satavahana emperor Gautamiputra Satakarni. Indo-Scythian rule in the northwestern Indian subcontinent ceased when the last Western Satrap Rudrasimha III was defeated by the Gupta emperor Chandragupta II in 395 CE.
The invasion of northern regions of the Indian subcontinent by Scythian tribes from Central Asia, often referred to as the Indo-Scythian invasion, played a significant part in the history of the Indian subcontinent as well as nearby countries. In fact, the Indo-Scythian war is just one chapter in the events triggered by the nomadic flight of Central Asians from conflict with tribes such as the Xiongnu in the 2nd century AD, which had lasting effects on Bactria, Kabul, and the Indian subcontinent as well as far-off Rome in the west, and more nearby to the west in Parthia.
Ancient Roman historians including Arrian and Claudius Ptolemy have mentioned that the ancient Sakas (‘Sakai’) were nomadic people. However, Italo Ronca, in his detailed study of Ptolemy’s chapter vi, states: “The land of the Sakai belongs to nomads, they have no towns but dwell in forests and caves” as spurious.
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