The Pāratarājas were a dynasty of Indo-Scythian kings who ruled in the Baluchistan

Balochistan (region)

Balochistan or Baluchistan is an arid, mountainous region in the Iranian plateau in Southwest Asia; it includes part of southeastern Iran, western Pakistan, and southwestern Afghanistan. The area is named after the numerous Baloch tribes, Iranian peoples who moved into the area from the west...

 region of Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

 and Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

, from the 1st century to the 3rd century CE.

The dynasty of the Pāratas is thought to be identical with the Pāradas, an Iranian tribe described in the Mahabharata

Mahabharata

The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India and Nepal, the other being the Ramayana. The epic is part of itihasa....

 as well as the Puranas

Puranas

The Puranas are a genre of important Hindu, Jain and Buddhist religious texts, notably consisting of narratives of the history of the universe from creation to destruction, genealogies of kings, heroes, sages, and demigods, and descriptions of Hindu cosmology, philosophy, and geography.Puranas...

 as being the enemies of indians.

Numismatics

They are essentially known through their coins, which typically exhibit the bust of the ruler on the obverse, with long hair within a headband), and a Zoroastrian

Zoroastrianism

Zoroastrianism is a religion and philosophy based on the teachings of prophet Zoroaster and was formerly among the world's largest religions. It was probably founded some time before the 6th century BCE in Greater Iran.In Zoroastrianism, the Creator Ahura Mazda is all good, and no evil...

 fire alter on the reverse of the usually silver or copper coins written upon in Kharoshthi. The coins can mainly be found in the Loralai

Loralai

Loralai is the principal city of Loralai District in the northeast of the Balochistan Province of Pakistan. It was formerly known as Bori. It is four thousand seven hundred feet above the sea level....

 area of Western Pakistan.

Paratas in Classical sources

Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...

 in 650 BCE describes the Paraitakenoi as a tribe ruled by Deiokes, a Persian king, in northwestern Persia (History I.101).

Arrian

Arrian

Lucius Flavius Arrianus 'Xenophon , known in English as Arrian , and Arrian of Nicomedia, was a Roman historian, public servant, a military commander and a philosopher of the 2nd-century Roman period...

 describes how Alexander the Great encountered the Pareitakai in Bactria

Bactria

Bactria and also appears in the Zend Avesta as Bukhdi. It is the ancient name of a historical region located between south of the Amu Darya and west of the Indus River...

 and Sogdiana

Sogdiana

Sogdiana or Sogdia was the ancient civilization of an Iranian people and a province of the Achaemenid Empire, eighteenth in the list on the Behistun Inscription of Darius the Great . Sogdiana is "listed" as the second of the "good lands and countries" that Ahura Mazda created...

, and had them conquered by Craterus

Craterus

Craterus was a Macedonian general under Alexander the Great and one of the Diadochi.He was the son of a Macedonian nobleman named Alexander from Orestis and brother of admiral Amphoterus. Craterus commanded the phalanx and all infantry on the left wing in Battle of Issus...

 (Anabasis Alexandrou IV).

The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea

The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea or Periplus of the Red Sea is a Greco-Roman periplus, written in Greek, describing navigation and trading opportunities from Roman Egyptian ports like Berenice along the coast of the Red Sea, and others along Northeast Africa and India...

(1st century CE) describes the territory of the Paradon beyond the Ommanitic region, on the coast of modern Baluchistan.

Known kings in order of rule

• Yolamira, son of Bagareva (c. 125–150 CE)
• Bagamira, son of Yolamira (c. 150)
• Arjuna, a second son of Yolamira (c. 150–160)
• Hvaramira, a third son of Yolamira (c. 160–175)
• Mirahvara, son of Hvaramira (c. 175–185)
• Miratakhma, another son of Hvaramira (c. 185–200)
• Kozana, son of Bagavharna (and perhaps grandson of Bagamira?) (c. 200–220)
• Bhimarjuna, son of Yolatakhma (and perhaps grandson of Arjuna?) (c. 220–235)
• Koziya, son of Kozana (c. 235–265)
• Datarvharna, son of Datayola I (and perhaps grandson of Bhimarjuna?) (c. 265–280)
• Datayola II, son of Datarvharna (c. 280–300)