page_title: Indo-Scythians
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Indo-Scythians / Origins
caption_attribution_description: English: Bust of a man, a defeated Saka warrior, found at Khalchayan, a major site of the Yuezhi (later Kushan) people, in Bactria (modern Surxondaryo Province, Uzbekistan). Painted clay. First century BCE, Termez Achaeological Museum. This is a Saka warrior, appearing as a defeated enemy in the victory sculptural scenes of the Yuezhi/Kushans at Kalchayan, according to: &#32;(2007).&#32;"Nomad Migration in Central Asia (in After Alexander: Central Asia before Islam)". Proceedings of the British Academy&#32;133: 87–98. Encyclopedia Iranica "Head of a Saka, from Khalchayan" http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/greece-viii#prettyPhoto[content]/7/ Also a Saka warrior according to this source
context_page_description: Indo-Scythians were a group of nomadic Iranian peoples of Saka and Scythian origin who migrated southward into western and northern South Asia from the middle of the 2nd century BC to the 4th century AD.
  The first Saka king in South Asia was Maues/Moga who established Saka power in Gandhara, and Indus Valley. The Indo-Scythians extended their supremacy over north-western India, conquering the Indo-Greeks and other local kingdoms. The Indo-Scythians were apparently subjugated by the Kushan Empire, by either Kujula Kadphises or Kanishka. Yet the Saka continued to govern as satrapies, forming the Northern Satraps and Western Satraps. The power of the Saka rulers started to decline in the 2nd century CE after the Indo-Scythians were defeated by the Satavahana emperor Gautamiputra Satakarni. Indo-Scythian rule in the northwestern Indian subcontinent ceased when the last Western Satrap Rudrasimha III was defeated by the Gupta emperor Chandragupta II in 395 CE.
context_section_description: The ancestors of the Indo-Scythians are thought to be Sakas (Scythian) tribes. 
  "One group of Indo-European speakers that makes an early appearance on the Xinjiang stage is the Saka (Ch. Sai). Saka is more a generic term than a name for a specific state or ethnic group; Saka tribes were part of a cultural continuum of early nomads across Siberia and the Central Eurasian steppe lands from Xinjiang to the Black Sea. Like the Scythians whom Herodotus describes in book four of his History (Saka is an Iranian word equivalent to the Greek Scythes, and many scholars refer to them together as Saka-Scythian), Sakas were Iranian-speaking horse nomads who deployed chariots in battle, sacrificed horses, and buried their dead in barrows or mound tombs called kurgans."
caption: Head of a Saka warrior, as a defeated enemy of the Yuezhi, from Khalchayan, northern Bactria, 1st century BCE.[12][13][14]
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