Western Satraps

The Western Satraps were the Saka kings of western India from 35 to 405 AD, Scythians turned Indian maharajas. Driven from Central Asia by the Yuezhi, the Sakas poured through the Bolan into Gujarat and Malwa; Chashtana, about 78 AD, founded the line whose accession year Indians still use as the Saka era on their calendars. His grandson Rudradaman, the great satrap, ruled from Ujjain, repaired the Sudarshana lake, patronised Sanskrit when kings still wrote in Prakrit, his Junagadh rock inscription the first royal Sanskrit prose in history, and held the Satavahanas at bay. The Satraps taxed the ports of Bharuch and Sopara, where Roman ships paid gold for pepper, and struck the finest portrait coins in India, profile heads with Greek letters behind. But the southern wars never ended, the successions grew messier, and about 400 the Gupta Chandragupta II, who had married into the house to learn its weakness, marched west and extinguished the last satrap Rudrasimha, folding four centuries of Saka rule into classical India and leaving their calendar as the everyday reckoning of the subcontinent.