Mercenary Saka Horse Archers
Missile Cavalry(0.6.7)Side / Back
Short description
Deadly Horses Archers from steppe tribes.
Description
Sakae were the name given to many tribes, the vast majority of which were located in what is now Kazakstan, Tajikistan and Siberia and, with amazing finds from areas as diverse as Pazyryk and the territories in what is now Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Eastern Siberia of Russia. Though their name is a synonym to that of the Skythai, and they did belong to the wide-ranging Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-Europeans, there were actual and varied differences between them and the Skythai. Even so, looking at the Pazyryk man riding off and his lady watching him go, one can't help but notice the varied similarities between them and the Ossetians of today, the 'Sarmatians' and Western Iranians, their only known living descendants. The "ballerina style" way of riding, which is depicted in the way they ride their horses, and their dress are so alike that the man of Pazyryk could be living and dancing now among his Ossetian cousins.
Sakae did manage to create a vast realm of loose clans who would be subjected to a tribal leader whose name would be Shahanshah or "King of kings" not Khan, as they were Indo-Iranians not Turkic in origin. It is more probable that it was Sakae or Proto-Sakae who invaded India, and most assuredly those who put an end to Bactrian and Indo-Greek Kingdoms (along with the Yuehzi). They even drove hard into the state of the Parthians, killing off a Sassanid king before being driven back into the Steppes. They did find their way into the Western India, joining their brethren who had earlier become the Western Ksatrappas. It took the Guptas' emergence to destroy the last vestige of the NorthWestern invaders of India, whose reign had begun nearly 600 years earlier with the invasion of the Bactrians under king Demetrios.