Note 20 — INDEX (continued 2)

The name Mehiraga is explained in the Bhavishya Purána as derived from their ancestress a daughter of the sage Rigu or Rijvahva of the race named Mihira (Reinaud’s Mémoire Sur l’Inde, 393; Wilson’s Works, X. 382). The name Mihiraga suggests that the spread of sun-worship in the Panjáb and Sindh, of which the sun-worship in Multán Sindh Káthiáváḍa and Mewáḍ and the fire-worshipping Rájput and Sindh coins of the fifth and sixth centuries are evidence, was helped by the spread of Sassanian influence into Baluchistán Kacch-Gandevi and other parts of western Sindh, through Sakastene the modern western Seistan near the lake Helmund. This Sakastene or land of the Śakas received its name from the settlement in it of one of the earlier waves of the Yuechi in the second or first century before Christ. The name explains the statement in the Bhavishya Purána that sun-worship was introduced by Magas into Multán from Sakadvipa the land of the Śakas. In this connection it is interesting to note that Darmsteter (Zend Avesta, xxxiv.) holds that the Zend Avesta was probably completed during the reign of Sháhpur II. (a.d. 309–379): that (lxxxix.) Zend was a language of eastern Persia an earlier form of Pashtu; and that (lxxxiv.) western Seistan and the Helmund river was the holy land of the Avesta the birth-place of Zoroaster and the scene of king Vishtasp’s triumphs. A memory of the spread of this western or Sassanian influence remains in the reference in the Mujmalu-T-Tawárikh in Elliot, I. 107–109, to the fire temples established in Kandabil (Gandevi) and Buddha (Mansura) by Mahra a general of Bahman that is of Varahran V. (a.d. 420–440). It seems probable that Mahra is Mehr the family name or the title (Rawlinson’s Sassanian Monarchy, 224 note 4 and 312) of the great Mihran family of Persian nobles. The general in question may be the Mehr-Narses the minister of Varahran’s son and successor Izdigerd II. (a.d. 440–457), who enforced Zoroastrianism in Armenia (Rawlinson, Ditto 305–308). Mehr’s success may be the origin of the Indian stories of Varahran’s visit to Málwa. It may further be the explanation of the traces of fire temples and towers of silence noted by Pottinger (1810) in Baluchistán (Travels, 126–127) about sixty miles west of Khelat. ↑