ABSTRACT
While in the early first century AD Indo-Parthians, Shakas and the remnants of the Indo-Greeks were still fighting each other in India, new invaders were already on their way. The Yuezhi under the leadership of the Kushanas came down from central Asia and swept away all earlier dynasties of the northwest in a great campaign of conquest. They established an empire which extended from central Asia right down to the eastern Gangetic basin. Their earlier encounter with the Shakas whom they displaced in central Asia has been mentioned above. The Xiongnu, their old enemies, did not leave the Yuezhi in possession of the land they had taken from the Shakas but pushed them further west. Thus they appeared in Bactria only a few decades after the Shakas and took over this territory in the late second century BC. Here in Bactria they seem to have changed their previous nomadic life style and settled down in five large tribal territories with a chieftain (yabgu) at the head of each.
