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Indian History Part 14: The Kushan Empire and Kanishka

How Yuezhi nomads became the Kushans, what the Rabatak inscription says about Kanishka, why his date is debated, and how Kushan coins and Gandhara and Mathura art changed India.

Raj ·Founder & Editor
Published in History · 9 min read ·
Weathered grey stone ruins of a Buddhist stupa dome and crumbling masonry walls on a rocky hillside, with a stone block carved with a floral-vine scroll in the foreground and arid mountains and a wind
Weathered grey stone ruins of a Buddhist stupa dome and crumbling masonry walls on a rocky hillside, with a stone block carved with a floral-vine scroll in the foreground and arid mountains and a wind
In this article

    This is Part 14 of HorizonDesk's chronological series on Indian history, from the Stone Age to Independence in 1947. It follows Part 13: After the Mauryas: Shungas, Kanvas and Indo-Greeks.

    Part 13 ended with a crowded map: Shungas and Kanvas in the Ganga valley, Indo-Greek kings in Gandhara and the Punjab, Shakas and Parthians pushing into the north-west. In the first two centuries CE much of that map was redrawn by people whose homeland lay thousands of kilometres away, on the grasslands of north-western China.

    At its height the empire of the Kushans ran from the Oxus (Amu Darya) to the middle Ganga. Its best-known king, Kanishka, is remembered in Buddhist tradition as a second Ashoka. Kushan coins mixed Greek, Iranian and Indian gods, and Kushan-era workshops gave the Buddha a human face. The Kushans wrote almost no history of their own; we rely on coins, inscriptions, sculpture and Chinese chronicles, so many dates below are approximate or disputed.

    From Gansu to Bactria: the Yuezhi

    Chinese annals describe the Yuezhi as a powerful nomadic people of Gansu and eastern Xinjiang, possibly speakers of an Indo-European language (a debated point). In 176 BCE they were crushed by the Xiongnu, the steppe confederacy that also troubled Han China; a few years later the Xiongnu killed their chief and, the Chinese records say, made his skull into a drinking cup.

    The Yuezhi moved west, reaching the plains of present-day Kazakhstan around 140 BCE and pushing Shaka (Scythian) tribes ahead of them. They then moved south into Bactria (northern Afghanistan and its neighbours), helping to end the Greek kingdom whose heirs, the Indo-Greeks, we met in Part 13. According to the Book of Han, they divided the land into five chiefdoms; one was the Guishuang, the origin of the name "Kushan".

    Kujula Kadphises: the founder

    The Book of the Later Han, drawing on a report by the general Ban Yong around 125 CE, says that about a century later the prince of the Guishuang, Qiujiuque, subdued the other four chiefdoms and made himself king, invaded Parthian territory, took the Kabul region and conquered Jibin (probably Gandhara or Kashmir), dying at over eighty. Coins identify him as Kujula Kadphises, who probably ruled in the middle decades of the first century CE. His coins copied Indo-Greek and even Roman models, and already use the title maharaja rajatiraja, "great king, king of kings".

    Vima Takto and Vima Kadphises

    Historians long thought Kujula was followed directly by Vima Kadphises. In 1993 the Rabatak inscription (below) revealed a king between them, Vima Takto. Many numismatists link him to a large anonymous coinage of a ruler calling himself only Soter Megas, "Great Saviour". The Kushan capture of Mathura may belong to his reign, though the evidence partly rests on damaged coins.

    Vima Kadphises, Kanishka's father, probably ruled in the early second century CE and issued the subcontinent's first large series of gold coins. Indian sources later called such coins dinara, from the Roman denarius. It was long assumed the Kushans melted Roman coins to make them, but a trace-element study found platinum-group metals that do not match Roman gold, so the source of the metal is an open question. Vima's coins show a god with a bull, labelled Oesho, usually identified with Shiva. His seated portrait statue was found at Mat near Mathura, in a royal image shrine that inscriptions call a devakula.

    The Rabatak inscription

    The key Kushan document was found by accident. In 1993 Afghan fighters digging a trench at Rabatak, near the Kushan temple site of Surkh Kotal in Baghlan province, uncovered a slab with 23 lines of text. A deminer's photograph reached Joe Cribb at the British Museum and Nicholas Sims-Williams of SOAS, one of the few scholars who can read Bactrian. Their first translation appeared in 1996.

    Written in Bactrian, an Iranian language, in Greek letters, it calls Kanishka "the righteous, the just, the autocrat, the god worthy of worship, who has obtained the kingship from Nana and from all the gods" and who "inaugurated the year one". It seems to say he replaced Greek with "Aryan" (Bactrian) for royal decrees; his coins do switch to Bactrian. It names Indian cities where his rule was proclaimed, including Saketa, Kausambi and Pataliputra, "as far as Sri-Champa" (whether Champa lay inside the empire is unclear). And it lists four kings: Kujula Kadphises, great-grandfather; Vima Takto, grandfather; Vima Kadphises, father; and Kanishka.

    When did Kanishka rule?

    Kanishka's "year one" began an era used in Kushan inscriptions for about a century, so dating it dates the whole dynasty. Many twentieth-century historians identified it with the Shaka era of 78 CE, still used in India's national calendar; Britannica still gives a range of 78 to 144 CE for his accession.

    In 2001 the Indologist Harry Falk used a passage in an ancient astronomical text, the Yavanajataka of Sphujiddhvaja, to place year one in 127/128 CE. Sims-Williams called the argument convincing, and the British Museum now dates Kanishka to about 127–150 CE. It is the best-supported view, not a certainty. The 78 CE era is now more often linked to the Western Kshatrapas of Ujjain.

    Kanishka's empire

    Kanishka ruled from Purushapura (Peshawar) and Mathura, with a summer seat at Kapisa near Bagram. Dated Kushan inscriptions reach Sarnath and Kausambi, and Chinese sources record Kushan forays across the Pamirs into the Tarim Basin.

    Two objects bring him close. At Mat, a red sandstone statue of a king in a long Central Asian coat and heavy boots, now headless, carries the label "the great king, king of kings, son of god, Kanishka"; it is in the Government Museum, Mathura. Near Peshawar, at Shah-ji-ki-Dheri, excavators in 1908–09 found the base of a huge stupa that Chinese pilgrims credited to Kanishka. Its gilded bronze relic casket shows a seated Buddha between Brahma and Indra and mentions Kanishka's monastery at "Kanishkapura". A figure in Kushan dress on its side is often taken for Kanishka, but British Museum curators note the inscription carries no date and the identification is uncertain.

    Coins of many gods

    More than thirty deities appear on Kushan coins. Kanishka's gold alone shows the Greek Helios and Selene, the Iranian Mithra (Miiro), the moon god Mao, the fire god Athsho, the goddess Nana, Oesho, and on a few rare issues the Buddha, labelled BODDO in Greek letters. One such coin in the British Museum, found at Ahin Posh near Jalalabad, shows the king at a fire altar on one side and a standing, haloed Buddha on the other: one of the earliest dated images of the Buddha in human form. The mix reflected rule over many peoples rather than one royal faith.

    Gandhara, Mathura and the first Buddha images

    Earlier Buddhist art at Bharhut and Sanchi showed the Buddha only through symbols: a throne, a tree, footprints. Under the Kushans two great schools showed him as a man. In Gandhara, around Peshawar and Taxila, sculptors carved grey schist (later stucco) in a Greco-Roman manner, with wavy hair, Roman-style robes and reliefs framed by vine scrolls and garland-bearing cherubs. At Mathura, in today's Uttar Pradesh, sculptors used mottled red sandstone and built on the older Indian yaksha figures, broad-shouldered and energetic. Mathura exported statues widely: a colossal Bodhisattva set up by the monk Bala at Sarnath is dated to year 3 of Kanishka.

    Which school came first was argued for decades. Alfred Foucher credited Greek-influenced Gandhara; Ananda Coomaraswamy, and later Indian scholars such as R. C. Sharma, argued for Mathura. Britannica's summary of current opinion is that each school developed its own Buddha image independently around the first century CE, and the two then influenced each other.

    The Fourth Buddhist Council and Mahayana

    Northern Buddhist tradition says Kanishka called a council of 500 monks in Kashmir, led by Vasumitra with the poet Ashvaghosha as deputy. The fullest account, though, is by the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, writing some five centuries later. The council is tied to the Sarvastivada school and its great commentary, the Mahavibhasha, yet that text never mentions Kanishka, and the Theravada tradition counts a different Fourth Council in Sri Lanka. Many historians suspect the story grew to make Kanishka a second Ashoka.

    Nor did a council "found" Mahayana, the bodhisattva-centred "Great Vehicle" that grew out of the tradition traced in Part 8 on the Buddha; it developed gradually over centuries. But the Kushan age mattered: a Mathura pedestal from Huvishka's reign carries the earliest inscription naming the Buddha Amitabha, and in the 170s and 180s CE Lokakshema, a monk from the Kushan lands, translated early Mahayana sutras into Chinese at Luoyang.

    A Silk Road crossroads

    Kushan territory sat where the land routes from China met the roads to Iran, the Indus ports and the Ganga. As our guide to the Silk Road explains, goods moved in relays, and the Kushans controlled several key stages. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a Greek merchants' guide of the first century CE, says Chinese silk was "brought on foot through Bactria to Barygaza" (Bharuch). The Begram hoard from Kapisa mixed Roman glass and bronzes, Chinese lacquer and Indian ivories; the Book of the Later Han notes "precious things from Da Qin" (Rome) in north-western India; and Roman writers record envoys from "the kings of the Bactrians", probably Kushans, at Hadrian's court.

    Huvishka and Vasudeva

    Huvishka (c. 150–190 CE on Falk's dating) is named in many Mathura inscriptions, and his gold is the most varied of all, adding Indian war gods such as Skanda, Kumara, Mahasena and Vishakha, and even the goddess Roma. Vasudeva I, whose name is fully Indian, is dated by inscriptions of years 64 to 98, roughly 191 to 225 CE, and his coins show almost only Oesho with his bull. A Yuezhi king called Bodiao, usually identified with him, sent an embassy to the Chinese kingdom of Wei in 229. He is counted the last of the "Great Kushans".

    Decline: Sasanians and Kushanshahs

    In the 220s Persia's new Sasanian dynasty overthrew the Parthians and turned east. At Naqsh-e Rostam, Shapur I (r. 240–270) claims "the Kushanshahr up to Peshawar". Bactria and much of Gandhara passed to Sasanian princes styled Kushanshah, "king of the Kushans", who struck coins on Kushan models; historians call them the Kushano-Sasanians, and their chronology is still debated. Later Kushan kings held parts of the Punjab and Mathura for a time, while local powers such as the Yaudheyas and Nagas rose. The last "Little Kushans" around Taxila were squeezed in the fourth century between the Guptas and the Kidarites; Samudragupta's Allahabad pillar lists the Daivaputra-shahi-shahanushahi, an echo of Kushan titles, among rulers who paid him homage.

    Key takeaways

    • The Kushans were one branch of the Yuezhi, nomads driven from Gansu by the Xiongnu in the 170s–160s BCE who settled in Bactria.
    • Kujula Kadphises united the Yuezhi and took Kabul and Gandhara; Vima Takto and Vima Kadphises pushed into north India, and Vima issued India's first large gold coinage.
    • The Rabatak inscription (found 1993) gives Kanishka's genealogy, his "year one", his switch from Greek to Bactrian and the Indian cities under his rule.
    • Kanishka's accession is now usually placed around 127 CE, following Harry Falk, rather than 78 CE, but the debate is not fully closed.
    • Kushan coins show Greek, Iranian and Indian gods, including some of the earliest images of the Buddha.
    • The Kashmir "Fourth Council" is known only from later sources; Mahayana grew gradually.
    • From the 230s the Sasanians took the western Kushan lands; the last Kushans faded under the Guptas and Kidarites in the fourth century.

    Next part

    In Part 15, we turn to the Satavahanas and the Deccan: the dynasty that is said to have ended the Kanvas, fought the Western Kshatrapas and patronised Buddhist caves and stupas from Nashik to Amaravati.

    Sources

    Indian HistorySilk RoadAncient IndiaKushan EmpireKanishkaRabatak inscriptionGandhara artMathura art
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    Written by Raj

    Founder & Editor

    I write HorizonDesk: practical, no-hype articles on technology, money, business and the vehicles we drive. Everything here is something I’ve researched, tested or wanted explained clearly myself.

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