Shakas Vs Scythians

Next, I examined some of the polities that existed after the fall of the Mauryan Empire. Two of these polities were created by tribes that came from Central Asia. These were the Shakas and the Kushans. The Shakas, also called Scythians, were divided into five groups that controlled various areas of Afghanistan and India. The Shakas first began moving into India and Afghanistan in the 2nd century BCE. According to Upinder Singh, “the Shakas and Scytho-Parthians ruled through governors or subordinate rulers (…) who played an important role in the expansion of the empire.” The Kushans, on the other hand, were also a nomadic tribe from Central Asia. Sharma explains that the Kushan empire is often referred to as a central Asian empire, rather

The Kushanas also used religion for similar practical means, and also claimed divine origin of their kings; “Ashoka called himself ‘dear to the gods’, but the Kushan kings called themselves sons of god.” Both of these Central Asian groups used military conquest to gain new territories in India, but after the conquest was complete, there was the problem of having to govern the conquered peoples. The Shakas and the Kushanas needed the support of the new peoples they began to rule; to achieve this, they began patronizing local religions in order to bond with their new Indian and Iranian subjects. According to Trautmann, “the coinage of the Kushanas shows that they patronized rival Indian cults, including that of the Hindu god Shiva and the Buddha, but because their territory fell in both India and Iran, numerous Iranian deities (not to mention Mesopotamian and Roman) also appear.” Sharma adds to this idea by writing “several Kushan rulers were worshippers of Vishnu, as was certainly the case with the Kushan ruler Vasudeva, whose very name is a synonym for Krishna, an incarnation of Vishnu.” Kanishka, a famous Kushan king, “provided the framework of a firm and fair rule of law based on Buddhist precepts. (…) In his empire many religious traditions flourished; Persian Zoroastrian, Greek and Roman paganism, Buddhism, Chinese Confucianism, Jainism, and,

They are believed to have been a Deccan tribe and had a matriarchal society, except for the ruling family, which was patriarchal. There are many examples of politics and religion being deeply connected with regards to the Satavahanas. The Satavahana kings mainly followed Brahmanism. According to Sharma, “from the very outset, kings and queens performed such Vedic sacrifices as ashvamedha, and vajapeya paying liberal sacrificial fees to the brahmanas. They also worshipped a large number of Vaishnava gods such as Krishna and Vasudeva.” However, though these rulers were brahmanas, they also patronized Buddhism, with Sharma writing that “in their kingdom, the Mahayana form of Buddhism commanded a considerable following, especially among the artisan class.” The Satavahanas made land grants to both brahmanas and Buddhists; they were the first to give these grants to the brahmanas, but they gave a larger number of grants to Buddhist monks. Sharma states that “the Satavahanas started the practice of granting tax-free villages to brahmanas and Buddhist monks. The cultivated fields and villages granted to them were declared free from intrusion by royal policemen, soldiers, and other royal officers.” The land grants that these rulers gave to these religions served two main purposes. The first was that these grants were often given for land in less populated or developed areas, such as