In 126 BCE, the Chinese chronicler Zhang Qian visited Bactria (known as Daxia in Chinese) and described a Kingdom that had essentially collapsed, but its large population and urban infrastructure remained:
Its people cultivate the land and have cities and houses.
It has no great ruler but only a number of petty chiefs
ruling the various cities. The people are poor ,
but they are clever at commerce. After the Great Yuezhi moved west and
attacked Daxia, the entire country came under their
sway. The population of the country is large, numbering
some 1,000,000 or more persons. The capital is called
the city of Lanshi (Bactra) and has a market where
all sorts of goods are bought and sold."
By this time, the last Graeco-Bactrian king, Heliocles (ruled 150-125 BCE), had moved his capital to the Kabul Valley. His successors would ally themselves with Greek kings in the East and become the western edge of the Indo-Greek kingdom until the last "western" Indo-Greek kings, Hermaeus, was routed by the Yuezhi around 70 BCE.
Gradually, the Yuezhi settled in villages and small cities, and adopted the Graeco-Bactrian lifestyle by imitating their coins, adopting their dieties and trading practices. Their coins were minted in the style of the Greco-Bactrian kings, with the text in Greek. The Yuezhi also utilised the Greek alphabet in order to write in a language that was a blend of Iranian and Scythian. They remained in Bactria for more than a century.
Around 12 BCE, the Yuezhi to moved further towards northern India, where they established the Kushan Empire.
Good stuff. Will study deeper about Kushan and the Yuezhi.
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