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MAUES AT TAXILA:

PROBLEMS OF HIS ARRIVAL – ROUTE AND POLITICAL ALLEGIANCE

BY

A.D.H. Bivar*

Among leaders who have ruled over the countryside round Islamabad, and whose seat of government lay nearby at Taxila, one of the least known yet perhaps also most remarkable was the Saca Maues. In the crisis of history that saw the destruction of the Graeco-Bactrian principalities of Alexander’s legacy, and the advent of that vast wave of Central Asian peoples whose progeny constitutes a major element in Pakistan to-day, the role of Maues was certainly a decisive one. Yet just what that role was, and how outstanding was his achievement, is a story only gradually taking shape.

Let me sketch for a moment the well-known historical scene that led up to the appearance of Maues just before 98 B.C. In China’s Kan-su Province, the ferocious and turbulent Hsiung-nu, ancestors of the subsequent Huns of Europe, and of the Hunas of sub-continent, by repeated attacks upon their neighbours known to the Chinese the Yueh-chih, had driven them from the Chinese borders and across the passes into Ferghana, now a part of Soviet Uzbekistan. Here the powerful Yueh-chih horde, identical no doubt with that known to Classical historians as the Tocharian, whose dominant tribe later founded the Kushan Empire, impinged upon the Iranian Saca nomads, pasturing along the Jaxartes since Achaemenid times. The Sacae had limited possibilities for adopting the usual nomad response to political pressure – that of moving elsewhere. To their southwards, in the decades immediately following 160 B.C. lay the powerful defensive systems of the Graeco-Bactrian kingdoms. Assailed now by the Tocharians from the north, they were, as an Englishman would say, between the devil and the deep sea. Either they risked annihilation by their recently-arrived, and more numerous, rivals on the steppe; or they had to break through the Bactrian defences and to cross the Oxus. The evidence of the Classical historians is clear. By 130 B.C. the Sacae had broken through; not only were they across the Oxus, but they had captured the fortress city of Balkh, metropolis of Hellenism in the East and the repository of fabulous riches.

For a decade or so, therefore, the Sacae – at this time usually designated by historians the Sacaraucae "nomadic Sacae" – could pasture in peace on the south bank of the Oxus. It must be to this period that the astonishing finds made by Soviet archaeologists during 1979 at Shibarghan in Afghanistan belong. In the graves of tribal chiefs, large quantities of gold ornaments and equipment were unearthed, armlets, scabbards and belt-buckles, besides a mass of beads and minor jewellery. From the preliminary publications that have so far appeared, more concerned up to now with detailed description that with historical interpretation, three separate stylistic groups of objects can be distinguished. The first represents the so-called Scytho-Siberian style, hitherto best known from the treasures of Peter the Great at Leningrad, recovered during the 18^th century from scores of unrecorded burials in Siberia. Such objects at Shibarghan must represent heirlooms, brought by the Sacae from their former Central Asian homes, and in 130 B.C. a century old or even more. A second group, typified by a simple golden bowl, are simply Greek artifacts of the Hellenistic period. These must represent the booty acquired by the Sacae in the plunder of Balkh, and no doubt of other Graeco-Bactrian settlements in the area. Yet it is perhaps the third stylistic group that is the most remarkable. This consists of jewellery depicting a variety of Greek mythological or historical subjects: the god Dionysus riding a griffon and accompanied by his sweetheart Ariadne, or a fanciful portrait of Alexander the Great in battle. At the same time, these Classical subjects have been re-interpreted according to the conventions of Scythian art. The well-known Classical scenes are contorted and stylized, and encrusted with coloured gemstones such as garnet, turquois and lapis-lazuli, in conformity with nomad taste. This last category of objects appears to be the output of partly-hellenized craftsmen, working to some extent from Graeco-Bactrian patterns, but modifying their treatment to suit the requirements of new patrons. I have dwelt for a moment on the splendour of the Shibarghan find, because they show something of the wealth and grandeur of the Sacrauca chiefs, no mere kuchis drifting from one habitat to another. They tell a very clear historical story which we should keep in mind as the narrative proceeds, and which has not so far been emphasized. No doubt a final publication will examine in detail the smaller components of the find and enable their historical context, already perceptible, to be defined with greater precision.

Meanwhile, for the next few decades these western Sacrauca tribes, linguistic ancestors of the present-day speakers of Pushtu, as many scholars aver, pass beyond the spotlight of recorded history. We can guess that they traveled southwards through Heart, since there are indications that from time to time they impinged upon the eastern borders of Parthia. This border will have run roughly in line with to-day’s Iran-Afghanistan frontier. Some are even reported as having taken service with the Parthian armies. Moreover, since about this time the province of Drangiana, the region of Zaranj around the Sistan Lake, received its later name of Sakastan, one may suppose that a substantial contingent of Sacae actually settled there. Now, however, we must transfer our attention to the remnants of the Graeco-Bactrian state, which, deprived of the plains of Balkh, still sheltered behind the mighty rampart of the Hindu-Kush mountains, bracing itself for the final defence of what remained of Alexander’s eastern empire in Afghanistan and the Punjab.

If the indications of numismatics are to be trusted, the last of the Graeco-Bactrian rulers to hold extensive power was the militant Archebius. His coin portrait, helmeted and thrusting with the spear, doubtless recalls an early portrait of Alexander, and is designed to convey an image of military prowess. The monograms of his coinage tend to suggest that he still controlled three of the remaining centers of Graeco-Bactrian power: Capisa, now Begram, to the north of Kabul; Arachosia, the province with urban centers at present Kandahar and Gardez, and finally Taxila. Yet it seems likely that Archebius did not control the Kabul River valley, where Nagarahara near Jalalabad, and Pushkalavati, were being held by Hermaeus and minor rulers. Thus the territory of Archebius curved to the south and east in the outline of a crescent, swinging back to the north again at Taxila. It is an outline that corresponds in a credible manner with the routes and contours, so this picture can be regarded as realistic. And if that is correct, it must have been on Archebius that fell the main burden of the Graeco-Bactrian defence.

By this time, around 120 B.C., the modern city of Kandahar, of which the ancient name remains something of a mystery, was being powerfully threatened by the advance of the Sacae from Heart and Drangiana. A major fortress, the exact moment and manner of its loss remain uncertain. For the moment all we know of an epic event is the impression conveyed by the finds of displaced masonry, and the re-used base with its Greek inscription revealed by the excavation in 1978 at that site.

To date, therefore, for the disappearance of Archebius, and the advent on the Punjab scene of Maues, exact evidence is lacking. Yet a hint is provided by the inscription from Maira in the Salt Range. Unhappily it is far from certain that the name of Maues (in the genitive spelling Moasa) actually figures in this record, as Cunningham seems to have believed. Not only are the surviving fragments of the stone in poor condition, but the section in which the royal name was supposed to appear is now unaccountably lost, known only from Cunningham’s approximative drawing. Sten Konow, however, the editor of the Corpus, believed that Cunningham had been right to read in this inscription the date 58. If we refer this, as Konow believed, to the same era as the Patika Copper-plate (below), and follow Tarn’s view of the latter, the start of the era would have been c. 155 B.C., and that of the Maira Inscription 98 B.C., a terminus ante quem for the arrival of Maues.

Unreliable though the damaged Maira Inscription may be, there is no doubt about the second attestation of Maues, provided by the Copper-Plate Inscription of Patika. This object, found at Taxila in 1862 in unexplained circumstances, presents at least a clearly legible text. Maues is mentioned, in the variant form Moga, as Great King of Kings in year 78 of an unspecified ear. If Tarn’s explanation is correct, as in fact I believe, the commencement of this era was c. 155 B.C., and the date equivalent to 78 B.C. Also mentioned are subordinate officers of Maues: Liaka Kusulaka, Satrap of Chukhsha – the plainland on the Indus eastbank, upstream of Attock – and his son Patika, prominent also in later records, and apparently the founder of a monastery. Therefore, by this date, and for an undetermined number of years previously, Maues had been ruling at Taxila with full imperial titles. I shall glance briefly at the conclusion of his reign before examining the historical circumstances of his arrival at the Indo-Greek capital.

The famous Lion-Capital Inscription of Mathura, now at the British Museum, appears to record the end of Maues career. Found in 1869, the text records donations to a Buddhist monastery by the chief queen of Rajuvula, Satrap of Mathura, who was daughter of Kharahostes. Both these personalities are, of course, well known from coins. The occasion of the endowment appears to have been the funeral of "the illustrious king Muki and his horse" – Muki no doubt being a variant form of the name of Maues. As one may expect in the case of Saca chief, Maues was buried with his horse. Similar ritual is ascribed to Rustam in the Shahnama, and is of course typical of Scythian burials in South Russia and Siberia. Among leading personalities mentioned in the Lion-Capital Inscription we hear again of Patika (with no further reference to his father Liaka, possibly deceased, of Rajuvula and his son Sodasa, both known from inscriptions and coins of Mathura, and of several more personalities not otherwise known. On the Lion-Capital Inscription the date of these transactions is not explicity stated, and has to be deduced indirectly. We have seen that the Patika Copper-Plate belonged to 78 B.C. The next clear chronological event of the 1^st century B.C. is the accession of Azes I, now known to be the originator of the Vikrama Era of 57 B.C. The Lion-Capital inscription must fall within these 21 years, perhaps indeed nearer to the upper limit than to the Lower. For the time being it cannot be fixed more precisely. Professor Dani, in an earlier article, has shown that the letter-forms of the Lion-Capital Inscription are extraordinarily mixed. Some still resemble the characters of the Asokan inscriptions, while the outlines of others are as developed as in the Kusana records attributable to the late 1^st century, or even the second century A.D. Such later forms certainly suggest that the inscription was carved long after the events which it commemorated. Yet in view of the very specific information this text, one cannot doubt that those who engraved it in later years had an authentic foundation-document in their possession. This too would explain the frequent archaic letter-forms, copied exactly from the hypothetical archetype, even though the transcriber otherwise adopted the later writing of his own day. These characteristics, however, impair the Mathura Lion-Capital as a means of palaeographic dating for Maues.

Thus we have seen that Maues may have reached the Taxila area even before 98 B.C., that he was firmly established there in 78 B.C., and that his death, possibly at an advanced age, took place at Mathura before 57 B.C. The Lion-Capital inscription too presents an interesting feature in referring to a kingdom of Sakastan which at that time appears to have extended beyond Drangiana to encompass the greater part of the Punjab and of Pakistan. Let us turn now to the question of how Maues got to Taxila, and what he was doing there.

It is, as we have seen, well known, that some at least of the Sacae found their way to the Punjab via Sistan, Kandahar and the Indus Valley. Earlier scholars have therefore tended to infer that Maues, the first generally acknowledged Saca emperor, belonged to this western group. Thus Rapson, having dismissed the theory that the Saca could have reached the Punjab through the Kabul Valley, which we see was held by other rulers, then continues:

The alternative suggestion that the Sakas may have come into India from their northern home in the country of the Jaxartes through Kashmir involves a physical impossibility. The geographical difficulties of this region are such that an invasion from this direction of tribal hordes or armies sufficiently powerful to overwhelm the Yavana kingdoms and to conquer the whole of the N.-W. Frontier Province and the Punjab is inconceivable.

He goes on to conclude that the Saca conquerors (here especially Maues) must have come through Sistan and Kandahar to the Lower Indus. Similarly Tarn used the evidence of Maues’ Poseidon type on copper coins, symbolic of a naval victory, to infer that Maues forces an eastward crossing of the Indus in the face of Bactrian naval opposition. Thus Tarn’s view necessarily implies that Maues traveled east from Arachosia across the Indus. On the other hand Narain, in his study of the Indo-Greeks, emphasizes the account of the Chinese Ch‘ien Han Shu, recording that a Saca group crossed southwards from the Kashgar area, to reach, via the legendary "Hanging Pass’ of Indus Kohistan the neighbourhood of Kashmir. Narain does not specifically claim that Maues was the leader of this remarkable expedition, but maintains that it formed an important part of the Saca invasion of the Punjab. In a brief account written in 1969, I was influenced by previous writers to express doubts of this hypothesis, because of the practical difficulties of bringing a cavalry force over such formidable terrain. Yet evidence discovered more recently may now outweigh my skepticism. Before considering these theories further we must turn for the moment to the numismatic evidence.

The well-known analysis of Indo-Scythic coinage published by Jenkins in 1955 attributes the coinage of the Sacae to three main mints. One, ascribed to the province of Arachosia, may have been situated at Kandahar or even at Gardez. Here the successor of Archebius is apparently Vonones, associated with Spalahora; then Spalyris and Spalagadama, and subsequently Spalirises, who is finally associated with Azes I. Eventually Azes mints in his own sole name as Great King of Kings, to be succeeded by Azilises. In passing one should note that the strange names Spalahora, Spalyris, Spalagadama and Spalirises, where Old Iranian Spada – "army" appears to replace by –1—the original dental, seem to constitute the chief claim of the Sacae of Arachosia to be among the linguistic ancestors of present-day Pushtu speakers. It remains, perhaps, something of an open question how much their heritage owes to the ancient Iranian dialect of Arachosia, and how much to a language similar to the Saka of Khotan. Yet we do not, amongst these rulers of Archaosia, encounter the name of emperor Maues. Is it some mere quirk of the numismatic evidence that his name is missing from the Arachosian series, or did Maues demonstrably travel by a different route?

Turning next to the series of Taxila, clearly defined from the long excavations of Sir John Marshall, we find further surprises. That is to say, they were surprises when Jenkins wrote in 1955, and perhaps their full implications are still unrealized to-day. Here the successor of Archebius, with whom he is linked by a monogram, is Maues, whose series starts, understandably enough, with a Victory type. The next issue repeats the type with a different monogram, and is followed by the remarkable coin in Paris, with the same monogram and the standing Zeus now transferred to the reverse, who holds a miniature Victory and is surrounded by the normal Kharoshthi inscription of Maues. The obverse has the new type of an enthroned goddess, with a Greek inscription naming a queen with the Iranian name Mahen. It can now be seen that drachma in Lahore with a similar goddess, and the name of Maues on both faces, should represent the preceding, and closely related issue. From this one might deduce that the emperor Maues was now defunct, and that his Iranian queen had assumed the regency in an attempt to hold together the Saca kingdom, the empire of Sakastan. Yet whatever the circumstances, this phase was extremely brief, only two coins of this category being known. The next ruler, whose coins occur copiously around Rawalpindi was once more an Indo-Greek, Apollodotus II, linked again with Maues by the monogram. The kingdom had thus reverted to the Greeks! He was followed in turn by another Greek, Hippostratus, the meaning whose name, "The cavalry army" was surely topical in a period of massive cavalry movements. Finally the Saca cause was restored by the arrival of Azes I, who evidently descended from Arachosia to Taxila, and in due course set up the era of 57 B.C.

The third mint with which we may be here concerned is that located by Jenkins at Pushkalavati. In this sequence it is uncertain whether Maues appears, and some indications that the Arachosian rulers, Vonones and his associates, were in control for a time. This is implied because the reverse type most prominent on their coinage, a standing Zeus with the thunderbolt characteristic of the Bactrian king Heliocles, appears later in the Pushkalavati series on an issue of Azes I, while in the earlier generation such types were typical of Vonones. If, however, Maues did at one time hold Pushkalavati, his naval victory on the Indus may relate to a crossing from east to west near Attock, rather than from west to east near Dera Ismail Khan.

Jenkins’s survey of these three coinages therefore shows that there is no numismatic evidence to connect Maues with Arachosia, and his link with Pushkalavati is very uncertain. Thus it seems to be at Taxila, deep within Graeco-Bactrian territory, that he rose to power, and was, it appears, the first of the Saca to use suzerain titles. This would, I think, exclude the theory that he was a mere general of the Arachosian rulers, and only after conquering Taxila claimed the right to coin. A general could hardly claim the empire before the princes who commissioned him. The question here is rather one of how Maues got to Taxila, and what was his historical role. In view of the evidence adduced it is by no means inconceivable that he traveled southwards across the Karakorum, and the Indus mountain-lands we have lately traversed. Thus the recent discovery, of which I learn from Professor Dani, of three Kharosthi inscriptions of Maues in this mountain region, brings the theory by Narain once more to the fore.

With that hypothesis in mind, let us consider for a moment Maues’ broader historical role. It has first to be noted that Maues was not the first of his name to mentioned in history. At the time of Alexander the Great’s victory Gaugamela, a detachment of Saca cavalry fought on the side of Darius III, and played a distinguished part in the engagement. Their leader was named Mauakes, a name indeed phonetically identical with that of our Taxila ruler. It is perhaps worth reading Arrian’s brief description of the Saca contingent (III, 8,3):

There had come in support of Darius those of the Indians who adjoined the Bactrians, together with the Bactrians and Sogdians themselves. All these were under the command of Bessus, satrap of the province of Bactria. They were accompanied also by the Sacae. The latter is a Scythian nation, among the Scythians who inhabit Asia. They were not subject to Bessus, but came in fulfillment of their alliance with Darius. Their leader was Mauakes. They themselves were horse-archers.

That is all we are told concerning the first Mauakes. Since, however, he commanded a national contingent sent to support the Achaemenid empire in the greatest war of the century, when the Persian king was himself actually in the field, it is to be expected that he was a king or prince. His participation in the mightiest battle of his generation must have been celebrated in his homeland, and was an event that could have been remembered in story for centuries. We cannot categorically conclude that the Maues of Taxila belonged to the same lineage, or even to the same tribe as Arrian’s Mauakes. Yet famous names are often repeated in a family line, and when Maues appears in the historical record using full imperial titles it suggests a status higher than that of a successful general. It is therefore possible that Maues came from the same centralized and integrated nomad state, and that he could have been a member of its ruling house.

We have therefore to reconstruct, so far as present evidence permits, the circumstances of Maues’ march to Taxila. Could his expedition from the Kasghar region have been part of a grand strategic plan, a dramatic pincer-movement against the Graeco-Bactrian kingdoms? To cross the Karakorum with a cavalry force was a feat of arms dwarfing Hannibal’s transit of the Alps with a force of elephants. It is an obvious interpretation that the victory attested by his coins was a defeat of the Greeks at Taxila, and that he entered the city by force, in co-ordination, perhaps, with the western Sacae advancing on Kandahar. How later the Greeks turned the tables, re-establishing their rule at Taxila for perhaps another decade, is on this theory less easy to understand.

There is a different explanation that would provide a rather different perspective. The movement of Maues may have been wholly independent of the Sacae in Drangiana. His men may have belonged to a different tribal group, and entered Greek territory peacefully, perhaps even welcomed as allies, like the Roman foederati, who could offer some assistance against the invasion threatening from the west. Then at some moment of crisis that left the Graeco-Bactrian throne vacant, one may easily surmise the defeat and death of Archebius in Arachosia, and the catastrophe of Kandahar, Maues, as the commander of an intact and friendly Scythian force would have provided the only hope of succour for the Taxilans, and may have been hastily elevated to the throne. His victory, then, would not have been against the Greeks, but may have been an action warding off the pending western invasion. On the evidence currently available to me, both hypotheses have their attractions, and both at the same time have their difficulties. However, the new evidence of which I learn from Professor Dani not only brings once more into prominence the theory of Maues Karakorum expedition, but may supply a clue as to which of these interpretations is the more convincing.

At the same time there are associate with this historical picture two problems of linguistic history which I refer to my specialist colleagues present to-day. If the Sacae of Vonones and of Maues represented different, albeit related tribes, should we assume they spoke different dialects or languages? On the one hand, what was the connection between the Sacae of Maues, thus arriving from the north, and the Khotanese Sacae whose language is known from later manuscripts? Then again, if the Sacae are rightly regarded as the linguistic ancestors of present-day Pushtu, can the migration of Maues be related to the well-known present-day differences between northern and southern Pusthu? I have never found satisfying traditional explanations of the location of the Yusufzais as due to mass migrations from Arachosia in the 15^th and 16^th century A.D. This period stands in the full light of history, and it would be strange if such migrations were not reported. There were Yusufzais in the Buner region in the time of Babur, while the so-called "hard" pronunciation of the name of Peshawar is already indicated by Pahlavi inscription of Shapur I of Iran around A.D. 261. Could "hard" Pushtu have existed without the Pathans? May it not have been precisely the ancestor of the Yusufzais who traversed the Karakorum with Maues before 100 B.C., while the southern tribes, Durannis and so on, arrived with the migration of Vonones and his fellows? If these are matters which begin to pass beyond my competence, they are certainly worth investigation in the light of the historical discoveries foreshadowed by the Karakorum inscriptions.