The Huns take Gandhara

01What the evidence shows

No chronicle describes a battle. The change is read from coins: the Alchon issues, stamped with a distinctive tamgha and the names of kings such as Khingila, take over the mints of Gandhara from the Kidarite ones in the third quarter of the fifth century. The Chinese pilgrim Song Yun, who reached Gandhara around 520, wrote that the land had been conquered by the Hephthalites two generations before and that its ruler was harsh and given to war, then fighting Kashmir.

02The road into India

Skandagupta had already turned back a Huna attack around 455, as his Bhitari pillar records. Holding Gandhara gave the Alchons a secure base below the passes. Within a generation Toramana was issuing grants in Malwa and his son Mihirakula ruled from Sakala in Punjab. The monasteries of Gandhara, which Faxian had found flourishing around 400, were in ruins when Xuanzang passed in the 630s, and he laid the blame on Mihirakula.

Person · Reigned c. 455–467 CESkandaguptaSkandagupta came to the throne in the middle of a crisis, beat back the Pushyamitras and then the Hunas, and held the Gupta empire together for another generation. His Bhitari pillar and his Junagadh inscription are the two voices of his reign.Read →