Note 38 — Chapter V · THE KSHATRAPAS (b.c. 70–a.d. 398.)

The Taxila plate shows that Patika was governor of Taxila during his father’s lifetime. After his father’s death when he became Mahákshatrapa, Patika’s capital was Nagaraka in the Jallálábád or Kábul valley. The conquest of those parts by the great Kushán or Indo-Skythian king Kanishka (a.d. 78) seems to have driven Patika’s immediate successors southwards to Sindh where they may have established a kingdom. The Skythian kingdom mentioned by the author of the Periplus as stretching in his time as far south as the mouths of the Indus may be a relic of this kingdom. Some time after their establishment in Sindh Patika’s successors may have sent Chashṭana, either a younger member of the reigning house or a military officer, with an army of Mevas through Umarkot and the Great Ran to Central Rájputána, an expedition which ended in the settlement of the Mevas and the change of the country’s name to Meváḍa. Probably it was on account of their previous ancestral connection that Nahapána sent Ushavadáta to help Chashṭana in Meváḍa when besieged by his Málava neighbours. That Ushavadáta went to bathe and make gifts38 at Pushkara proves that the scene of the Uttamabhadras’ siege by the Málayas was in Meváḍa not far from Pushkara.