[20] 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. [↑]
[21] Wilson’s Works, IX. 207. [↑]
[22] Compare Priaulx’s Embassies, 222. [↑]
[23] The White Húṇas overran Bakhtria and the country of the Yuechi between a.d. 450 and 460. About a hundred years later they were crushed between the advancing Turks and the Sassanian Chosroes I. or Naushirván (a.d. 537–590). Rawlinson’s Sassanian Monarchy, 420; Specht in Journal Asiatique (1883) Tom II. 349–350. The Húṇas supremacy in North India did not last beyond a.d. 530 or 540. The overthrow of their supremacy perhaps dates from a.d. 540 the battle of Karur about sixty miles east of Multán, their conqueror being Yasodharmman of Málwa the second of the three great Vikramádityas of Málwa. Of the Húṇas’ position among Hindu castes Colonel Tod says: The Húṇas are one of the Skyths who have got a place among the thirty-six races of India. They probably came along with the Káthi, Bála, and Makvána of Sauráshṭra. Tod’s Annals of Rajasthán, I. 110. [↑]
[24] Specht in Journal Asiatique (1883), II. 348. [↑]
[25] Specht in Journal Asiatique (1883), II. 349. [↑]
[26] Compare above Chapter VII. page 73 note 3. [↑]
[27] Dr. Bhagvánlál (Text, 33) traces one set of Medhs to the Mevas the tribe of Ysamotika the father of the Kshatrapa Chashṭana (a.d. 130). He holds these Mevas entered India (21) with the Malayas, Palhavas, and Ábhíras about b.c. 150(?) At the same time he seems to have considered those early Mevas different from the fifth and sixth century Mihiras and from the seventh and eighth century Medhs. [↑]
[28] Arch. Report for 1863–64, II. 52. In support of this Cunningham cites Ptolemy’s (a.d. 150) Euthymedia that is Sagala, sixty miles north-west of Lahor, and the Media of Peutinger’s Tables (a.d. 400). This Euthymedia is a corruption of the original Euthydemia the name given to Sagala by Demetrios (b.c. 190) the great Græco-Baktrian in honour of his father Euthydemos (Compare Text page 16 and McCrindle’s Ptolemy, 124). Of the cause of this change of name, which may be only a clerical error, two different explanations have been offered. Tod (An. of Rajn. I. 233) would make the new form Yuthi-media the Middle Yuchi. Cunningham (Arch. Surv. Rep. II. 53) would attribute it to the southward migration towards Sindh about b.c. 50 of the Kushán-pressed horde which under Moas or Mogha came from Little Tibet and entered the Panjáb either by way of Kashmír or down the Swát valley. According to General Cunningham (Ditto, 53) the followers of this Moas were Mandrueni called after the Mandrus river south of the Oxus. The two forms Medh and Mand are due to the cerebral which explains the Minnagaras of Ptolemy and the Periplus; Masudi’s (a.d. 915) Mind and Ibn Khurdádbha’s (died a.d. 912) and Idrísi’s (perhaps from Aljauhari) Mand (Elliot, I. 14 and 79, Reinaud’s Abulfeda, lxiii.); the present associated Mers and Mins in Rájputána (Ditto, 53); and perhaps the Musalmán Meos and Minas of the Panjáb (Ibbetson’s Census, 261). [↑]
[29] The Jethvás are closely allied to the Medhs (Káth. Gaz. 138); they entered Káthiáváḍa along with the Medhs (Ditto, 278). [↑]