They were successors to the Indo-Scythians, and were contemporaneous with the Kushans who ruled the northern part of the subcontinent from the area of Mathura and were possibly their overlords, and with the Satavahana ( Andhra ) who ruled in central India.

* 196-In Assuristan ( Parthian ruled Assyria ) Bar Daisan writes of Christians among the Assyrians, Parthians, Bactrians ( Kushans ), and other peoples in the Persian Empire

It was successively ruled by Bactria, Parthia and Kushans after demise of Seleucids.

They were successors to the Indo-Scythians, and were contemporaneous with the Kushans who ruled the northern part of the Indian subcontinent and were possibly their overlords, and the Satavahana ( Andhra ) who ruled in Central India.

They are called " Western " in contrast to the " Northern " Indo-Scythian satraps who ruled in the area of Mathura, such as Rajuvula, and his successors under the Kushans, the " Great Satrap " Kharapallana and the " Satrap " Vanaspara.

The Indo-Greeks ruled various parts of northwestern India until the end of the 1st century BCE, when they were conquered by the Scythians and Kushans.

It has also been suggested that the coins of Azes II were posthumous issues, which is highly unlikely as different ethnicity ( Indo-Parthians and Kushans ) ruled after the reign of Azes II.

It was a cultural consequence of a long chain of interactions begun by Greek forays into India from the time of Alexander the Great, carried further by the establishment of Indo-Greek rule in the area for some centuries, and extended during flourishing of the Hellenized empire of the Kushans.

As early as 645 BCE, the Yuezhi ( known later as the Kushans ) was mentioned as supplier of the famous nephrite jade from the region to China, and the excavations of Shang dynasty ( 1600 – 1046 BCE ) tomb of Fu Hao, showed that all the jade originated from the oases area of Khotan.

The powerful Kushans expanded back into the Tarim Basin in the 1st – 2nd centuries CE, where they established a kingdom in Kashgar and competed for control of the area with nomads and Chinese forces.

Under the Indo-Greeks and then the Kushans, the interaction of Greek and Buddhist culture flourished in the area of Gandhara, in today ’ s northern Pakistan, before spreading further into India, influencing the art of Mathura, and then the Hindu art of the Gupta empire, which was to extend to the rest of South-East Asia.

But the Indo-Parthians never regained the position of Gondophares I, and from the middle of the 1st century AD the Kushans under Kujula Kadphises began absorbing the northern Indian part of the kingdom.

Many powerful kingdoms have established their capitals inside the modern state of Afghanistan, including the Greco-Bactrians, Mauryas, Kushans, Kabul Shahi, Saffarids, Samanids, Ghaznavids, Ghurids, Timurids, Mughals, Hotakis, Durranis and others.

This was perhaps in response to the harassing, nomadic combat style used by the Sassanids ' northern neighbours who frequently raided their borders, such as the Huns, Hephthalites, Xiongnu, Scythians and Kushans, all of which favoured hit and run tactics and relied almost solely upon horse archers for combat.

The kingdom last only briefly until its conquest by the Kushans in the late 1st century CE, and was a loose framework where many smaller dynasts maintained their independence.

The rise of a new Persian dynasty, the Sassanids saw them re-exert their influence into the Indus region and conquer lands from the Kushans setting up the Kushanshahs around 240 AD.

In recognition for their support to the Chinese, the Kushans requested a Han princess, but were denied, even after they had sent presents to the Chinese court.

They are believed to have been built by the Kushans, with the guidance of local Buddhist monks, at the heyday of their empire.

The Bentusi thus are indirectly responsible for the Hiigaran exile and felt compelled to help the Kushans return to their Homeworld.

The Kushans were nomadic people who started migrating from the Tarim Basin in Central Asia from around 170 BCE and ended up founding an empire in northwestern India from the 2nd century BCE, after having been rather Hellenized through their contacts with the Greco-Bactrians, and later the Indo-Greeks ( they adopted the Greek script for writing ).

The Kushans, at the center of the Silk Road enthusiastically gathered works of art from all the quarters of the ancient world, as suggested by the hoards found in their northern capital in the archeological site of Begram, Afghanistan.

Heraios ( often read as Heraus, Heraos, Miaos ) was a clan chief of the Kushans ( reign: 1-30 CE ), one of the five constituent tribes of the Yuezhi confederacy in Bactria in the early 1st century CE, roughly at the time when the Kushans were starting their invasion of India.

Since the Kushans and their predecessors the Yuezhi were conversant with the Greek language and Greek coinage, the adoption of Hermaeus cannot have been accidental: it either expressed a filiation of Kujula Kadphises to Hermaeus by alliance ( possibly through Sapadbizes or Heraios ), or simply a wish to show himself as heir to the Indo-Greek tradition and prestige, possibly to accommodate Greek populations.

In 90 CE the Yuezhi or Kushans invaded the region with an army of reportedly 70, 000 men, under their Viceroy, Xian, but they were forced to withdraw without a battle after Ban Chao instigated a " burnt earth " policy.

There were few direct trade contacts between Romans and Han Chinese, as the rivalling Parthians and Kushans were each jealously protecting their lucrative role as trade intermediaries.

The Xionites ( Chionitae ) are first mentioned with Kushans ( Cuseni ) by Ammianus Marcellinus who spent the winter of 356-57 CE in their Balkh territory.

They imitated the earlier style of their Hephthalite predecessors, the Kidarite Hun successors to the Kushans.

According to A. S. Altekar, the Yaudheys made a second bid for independence towards the end of the 2nd century AD, came out successful in their venture and succeeded in freeing their homeland and ousting Kushans.

The weakness of the Greco-Bactrian empire was shown by its sudden and complete overthrow, first by the Sakas, and then by the Yuezhi ( who later became known as Kushans ), who had conquered Bactria by the time of the visit of the Chinese envoy Zhang Qian ( circa 127 BC ), who had been sent by the Han emperor to investigate lands to the west of China.

The weakness of the Greco-Bactrian empire was shown by its sudden and complete overthrow, first by the Sakas, and then by the Yuezhi ( who later became known as Kushans ), who had conquered Bactria by the time of the visit of the Chinese envoy Zhang Qian ( circa 127 BCE ), who had been sent by the Han emperor to investigate lands to the west of China.

With the help of these frontier martial tribes from Central Asia, Chandragupta was able to defeat the Greek successors of Alexander the Great and the Nanda / Nandin rulers of Magadha so as to found the powerful Maurya empire in northern India, at least for a short time till the Kushans and other ruler conquered north-west India.

Kushans invaded again in the 1st century, but the Indo-Scythian rule persisted in some areas of Central India until the 5th century.

As a result, for a period ( until the Chinese regained control c. 127 CE ) the territory of the Kushans extended for a short period as far as Kashgar, Khotan and Yarkand, which were Chinese dependencies in the Tarim Basin, modern Xinjiang.

Their leader Gondophares temporarily displaced the Kushans and founded the Indo-Parthian Kingdom that was to last until the middle of the 1st century CE.

The boundary of the region began changing until the Kushans and Sassanids merged to form the Kushano-Sassanian civilization.

From the 1st century AD to the 3rd century AD, Tokharistan was under the rule of the Kushans.

Though Ban Chao claimed to be victorious, forcing the Kushans to retreat by use of a scorched-earth policy, the region fell to Kushan forces in the early 2nd century.

In the 1st century, the region was under the control of Kushans and several rulers of this dynasty strengthened the Buddhist tradition.

Several Roman sources describe the visit of ambassadors from the Kings of Bactria and India during the 2nd century, probably referring to the Kushans.

The Kushans, known as Yuezhi in China ( although ethnically Asii ) moved from Central Asia to Bactria, where they stayed for a century.

After the death of Azes II, the rule of the Indo-Scythians in northwestern India and Pakistan finally crumbled with the conquest of the Kushans, one of the five tribes of the Yuezhi who had lived in Bactria for more than a century, and who were then expanding into India to create a Kushan Empire.

The Kushans, who were a Central Asian Tribe ( Other view, they were Turks, or Mongolian Tribe or a Chinese Tribe ), overran the entire north of India in the first century.

The first representations of the Buddha are generally assumed to be around the 1st century CE, about fifty to a hundred years later than the reign of Azes II, under the rule of the Kushans.