Western Kshatrapas
From the 1st century CE, the Greek communities of central Asia and northwestern India lived under the control of the Kushan branch of the Yuezhi, apart from a short-lived invasion of the Indo-Parthian Kingdom. The Kushans founded the Kushan Empire, which was to prosper for several centuries. In the south, the Greeks were under the rule of the (Sakas) Western Kshatrapas. Altogether, there were 27 independent Kshatrapa rulers during a period of about 350 years. The first Kshatrapas ruled parts of northwestern India as far as Mathura and may have been viceroys of the Kushans. Eventually they became independent as they vanquished the Satavahana empire, but retained the name of Kshatrapas.
The Western Kshatrapas, or Western Satraps, (35-405 CE) were Saka rulers of the western and central part of India (Saurashtra and Malwa: modern Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh states). They were contemporaneous with the Kushans who ruled the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, and the Satavahana (Andhra) who ruled in Central India.
The Kshatrapas established their own calendar, which starts in 78 CE and defines the beginning of the Saka era, and which today the starting yeare for the official calendar of the Indian Republic, is used with Hindu calendars, the Indian national calendar, and the Cambodian Buddhist calendar. The Kshatrapas established their own calendar, which starts in 78 CE and defines the beginning of the (Shalivahana era) Saka era.
After the death of Azes II, the rule of the Indo-Scythians in northwestern India finally crumbled with the conquest of the Kushans, one of the five tribes of the Yuezhi who had lived in Bactria for more than a century, and were now expanding into India to create a Kushan Empire. Soon after, the Parthians invaded from the west. Their leader Gondophares temporarily displaced the Kushans and founded the Indo-Parthian Kingdom that was to last towards the middle of the 1st century CE. The Kushans ultimately regained northwestern India from around 75 CE, and the area of Mathura from around 100 CE, where they were to prosper for several centuries. The Western king Philoxenus briefly occupied the whole remaining Greek territory from the Paropamisadae to Western Punjab between 100 to 95 BCE, after what the territories fragmented again. The eastern kings regained their territory as far west as Arachosia.
The founder of house of Suren-Pahlav was Kofasat Suren-Pahlav, one of the Vispuhrs (Sons of the Clans) and the companion of Mithradates the Great, who lived 111 BC.
In an episode of Sistan origin he inserted into the Shahnameh and still localised today at the ruins of mount Ushidar also known as “Kuh-e Kwajeh” in the “Hamun lake” and the ruins on the southern slope, is still known as Kuk-u Kohzadh. The two centuries following his time were the period in which the older Iranian myth became transformed into a chivalresque epic (similar to the relation of the Edda to the Nibelungen) and in which many historical figures were introduced into the older form of the legend, among them the historical Kofasat as Kohzad. Another member of Surens, which later his name inserted into Shahnameh was Eran Spahbodh (Iran’s Commander of forces) Rustaham Suren-Pahlav (84BC to 31BC), who defeated Crassus at the battle of Carrhae. His name is preserved amongst the throng, of epic heroes whose deeds are recalled in the Kayanian section of the Shahnameh. The ancient dynasty of hero-kings of Persia (Iran) recorded in the Avesta and the Shahnama are the Kayanian, Kayani, Gakhars.
Around 80 BCE, an Indo-Scythian king named Maues, possibly a general in the service of the Indo-Greeks, ruled for a few years in northwestern India before the Indo-Greeks again took control. King Hippostratos (65-55 BCE) seems to have been one of the most successful subsequent Indo-Greek kings until he lost to the Indo-Scythian Azes I, who established an Indo-Scythian dynasty. Throughout the 1st century BCE, the Indo-Greeks progressively lost ground against the invasion of the Indo-Scythians. Although the Indo-Scythians clearly ruled militarily and politically, they remained surprisingly respectful of Greek and Indian cultures, continued to rule a territory in the eastern Punjab, until the kingdom of the last Indo-Greek king Strato II was taken over by the Indo-Scythian ruler Rajuvula around 10 CE.
The first of the Parnis Ashk or Arakhsh (Arsaces) had himself crowned in the city of Asaak, and the tribe took the name of the Parthians, their close relatives, a name that meant "exiled."
The Parni were originally a nomad tribe of the Central Asian steppes, which was the home of Iranian nomadic tribes for centuries, such as the Scythians, Saka, and Sarmatians.
Being nomads, they roamed across the plains, incidentally attacking the urbanized countries to the south, east and west. Their language was from Sacian (Indo-Iranian) family, closely related to Scythian and Median. In Akkadian, the Saka were called the Ashkuza and were closely associated with the Gimirri, who were the Cimmerians known to the ancient Greeks. The Parni were unknown before the 3rd century BC. The country where they lived, along the river Syr Darya (Jaxartes), was occupied by the tribe that the Persians knew as the Dahae or Dahâ. It is likely that this tribe disintegrated after the fall of the Persian Empire; the new rulers, the kings of the Seleucid dynasty, were never able to control the country of what is now Mazandaran, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. first Parthian king, Arsaces, is said to have been of Parnian origin. Armenian chronicles identify this nation as White Huns. Arsaces was king of Armenia c. 34–35.
Suren in some ways in the historical tradition is parallel to that of Rustam of Shahnameh. Eran-Spahbodh Rustaham’s youngest son, Rustaham-Gondofarr Suren-Pahlav, the ruler of the eastern-greater Iran, who ruled between 10BC to AD17, the vast empire of the Saka at the time of Ashkanian dynasty, seems that he was the king of India, who in the Acts of St. Thomas appears as Gaspar or Kaspar/Casper, Persian Jasper among Three Magi, which was inserted in a Biblical story of their visit to Bethlehem. By AD15, the majority of Suren-Pahlavs were Mithraist, but Goudarz son of Verazdad, the head of Suren-Pahlavs at that time, introduced them to Zoroastrian religion, and built the fire temple at Kuh-e Khwajeh in Sistan.