Lands of Asia layouts (Eng) 26.11.21

2 .3
spread of the Aramaic alphabet and language, which became the official language and
writing system for the administration of the state and for record keeping (as it did in
Achaemenid Iran). At any rate, according to V.A. Livshits, a leading scholar in Iranian
studies, the first examples of texts in ancient Khorezmian script, which is related to
Aramaic, (or perhaps it is still Aramaic?) that have been found so far date back to the
4th–3rd centuries BC.
The creation of titles in southern Transoxiana followed a different process and
was strongly connected to the emergence and development of the Kushan state.
Titles of the rulers of this state were of Saka-Khotanese, Yuezhi, Greek, Bactrian and
Chinese origin. According to Chinese records, the rulers of five Yuezhi possessions,
which included Guishuang (Kuei-shuang, i.e. Kushan), used the title hsi-hou (xihou)
or hi-heu, which, some scholars believe, is equivalent to the title shanyu, used by Hun
(Xiongnu) and other rulers of nomadic tribes in Inner Asia. However, many scholars
consider it equivalent to the title yabghu – a leader of nomadic tribes.
Coins of Kushan (or Heraeus, as some scholars believe to be the issuer’s name) have
the Greek title tyrannos (tyrant), comparable to the Etruscan ‘turan’ – ‘mistress, lady’,
and therefore equivalent to the Aramaic MR’Y, which had the same meaning – ‘master’,
‘lord’. At the same time, the title MR’Y, as we have demonstrated above, was used by the
rulers of Bukhara and Southern Sogdia (and much later by Khorezmian rulers as well).
Thus, the rulers of the different dominions that emerged in the 2nd–1st
centuries BC in Transoxiana bore almost the same titles in terms of political
significance, but the titles had different ethnic origins – Aramaic and Greek (MR’Y,
MLK’ and tyrannos, basileus).
According to J. Kennedy, the title tyrant found on the so-called Heraeus coinage
reflects the vassal condition of its bearer, but in the Greek tradition, a tyrant was
someone who forcibly seized power in a polis to establish sole rule and the fundamental
characteristic of tyranny is one-person rule. In Greek history, alongside tyrants of
small, insignificant territories, are examples of tyrants who ruled large territories and
possessed unlimited power. Examples are Peisistratus in Athens, Dionysius I and II,
Hieron I and II of Syracuse, and the tyrants of Samos and Corinth.
If this title was used for Kushan (Heraeus), then we can assume that the first
Kushan ruler known to historians came to power by force and by subjugating other
Yuezhi rulers. It would also suggest that the process of Yuezhi unification under
Kushan rule began earlier than is recorded in Chinese texts, and also that it was not
Kujula Kadphises who tried to create the first state of Kushan, but Kushan himself.
The area of distribution of the Heraeus coins does not contradict this assumption;
they were widespread throughout most of Bactria, especially in the east, and also in
Gandhara. Kushan’s successor in the rise of the Kushan state, Kujula Kadphises, bore
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