Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/281

SASANIAN INFLUENCE ON INDIA 243 obeyed the usual law governing Oriental monarchies, and broke up into fragments, after a brief period of splendid unity. Coins bearing the name of Vasudeva continued to be struck long after he had passed away, and ultimately present the royal figure clad in the garb of Persia, and manifestly imitated from the effigy of Sapor (Shahpur) I, the Sasanian monarch who ruled Persia from 238 to 269 A. D. Absolutely nothing is known positively concerning the means by which this renewed Persian influence made itself felt in the interior of India. Bahrain (Va- rahran) II is known to have conducted a campaign in Sistan at some time between 277 and 294, but there is no record of any Sasanian invasion of India in the third century, during which period all the ordinary sources of historical information dry up. No inscrip- tions certainly referable to that time have been dis- covered, and the coinage, issued by merely local rulers, gives little help. Certain it is that two great paramount dynasties, the Kushan in Northern India, and the Andhra in the table-land of the Deccan, disappear to- gether almost at the moment when the Arsakidan dynasty of Persia was superseded by the Sasanian. It is impossible to avoid hazarding the conjecture that the three events were in some way connected, and that the Persianizing of the Kushan coinage of Northern India should be explained by the occurrence of an un- recorded Persian invasion. But the conjecture is unsup- ported by direct evidence, and the invasion, if it really took place, would seem to have been the work of preda-