Note 63 — Chapter V · THE KSHATRAPAS (b.c. 70–a.d. 398.)

The style of the Yaudheya coins being an adaptation of the Kanishka type and their being found from Mathurá to Saháranpur where Kanishka ruled is a proof that the Yaudheyas wrested from the successors of Kanishka the greater part of the North-West Provinces. This is not to be understood to be the Yaudheyas’ first conquest in India. They are known to be a very old tribe who after a temporary suppression by Kanishka must have again risen to power with the decline of Kushán rule under Kanishka’s successors Huvishka (a.d. 100–123) or Vasudeva (a.d. 123–150 ?) the latter of whom was a contemporary of Rudradáman.63 It is probably to this increase of Yaudheya power that Rudradáman’s inscription refers as making them arrogant and intractable. Their forcible extermination is not to be understood literally but in the Indian hyperbolic fashion.