described Dayuan around 128 BCE, he mentioned, besides the flourishing urbanized civilization, there were warriors "shooting arrows on horseback", a probable description of nomadic horse archers that were typical of the steppe civilizations at the time, of which Saka was one. Dayuan had probably by then become a kingdom of militaristic Saka ruling class exacting taxes and tributes from the local Hellenistic population. Also in 106–101 BCE, during their conflict with China, the country of Dayuan is said to have been an ally with the neighbouring tribes of Kangju (probably Sodgia). The Chinese also record the name of the king of Dayuan as "Mu-Kua", a Saka name rendered in Greek as Mauakes or Maues. Another Scythian ruler by the name of Maues was later a ruler of the Indo-Scythian kingdom in northern India, during the 1st century BCE. Yuezhi migration According to the Han Chronicles In 132BCE the Yuezhi were driven out of the Ili River valley by the Wusun. They fled south from the Ili river area, by-passed the urban civilization of the Dayuan in Ferghana, and re-settled north of the Oxus in Bactria, definitively cutting Dayuan from contact with the Greco-Bactrian kingdom. The Yuezhi would further expand southward into Bactria proper around 125 BCE, and then going on to form the Kushan Empire in the 1st century CE. Han Chinese rule and interaction The Dayuan remained a healthy and powerful civilization which had numerous contacts and exchanges with China from 130 BCE. Zhang Qian's Report Around 130 BCE, at the time of Zhang Qian's embassy to Central Asia, the Dayuan were described as inhabitants of a region corresponding to the Ferghana, far to the west of the Chinese empire. To their south-west were the territories of the Yuezhi, with the Greco-Bactrians further south still, beyond the Oxus. The Shiji then explains that the Yuezhi originally inhabited the Hexi Corridor, before they were defeated by the Xiongnu under Mao-tun and later his son in 176 BCE, forcing them to go beyond the territory of the Dayuan and resettle in the West by the banks of the Oxus, between the territory of the Dayuan and Bactria to the south. Urbanized city-dwellers The customs of the Dayuan are said by Zhang Qian to be identical to those of the Bactrians in the south, who actually formed the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom at that time. They are described as town-dwellers, as opposed to other