The Kushanas: India and Beyond (60 CE - 230 CE)

Just under 2,000 years ago, Kushana Emperor Huvishka (r. 155-190 CE) and his ministers faced an unprecedented problem that will perhaps resonate with most heads of government today. It was a global pandemic of smallpox and measles that had originated in the Han Empire of China and was spreading around the known world. Eerily, like today, the worst affected were the Han Empire (China), the Roman Empire (Italy) and the Parthian Empire (Iran), as a result of international travellers and businessmen contracting and carrying it along the Silk Route. And then the pandemic arrived in the great Kushana Empire that lay right in the middle of the three. Unlike today, closing international borders and enforcing a strict lockdown was not an option available to Emperor Huvishka and his ministers. All they could do was pray to a divine power whom they believed would save them - Hariti, the Goddess of Smallpox. The sheer number of Kushana-style Hariti sculptures found in the north-western regions of the Indian subcontinent, dating to the reign of Emperor Huvishka, reflects the rising levels of anxiety during this pandemic. Known as the Antonine Plague of 165-180 CE, after a Roman Emperor whose life it claimed, the pandemic was deadly. Over 15 years, it wiped out almost a quarter of the population in the Roman and the Han empires. International trade collapsed and all the great powers of the time – the Romans, Han, Parthians, Kushanas and Satavahanas – were weakened. While these empires lingered on for another century or two, the world would never be the same. While multiculturalism and globalisation are buzzwords today, the Kushanas practically embodied these terms, 2,000 years ago. What else would you call a dynasty whose kingdom stretched from the frontiers of China to Mathura and beyond in the Indo-Gangetic plains, who lived in Greek-style cities, patronised Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and Vedic deities, and called themselves Kaisara (Caesar) and Devaputra (Son of God)? The empire of the Kushanas also marked a ‘golden age’ in cultural and economic prosperity in Central Asia and North-West India that would remain unparalleled for a long time to come. The noted historian Craig Benjamin, in his book Empires of Ancient Eurasia, called the Kushana Empire “the Golden Age of ancient Central Asia”. Surprisingly, and quite unfortunately, the Kushanas did not leave behind any official histories or great texts and, as a result, the history of the dynasty has had to be painstakingly put together by scholars, based on Indian, Roman, Greek, Persian and Chinese sources as well as hoards and finds discovered in the most unlikely places. Mummies of the Tarim Basin The Kushanas have their roots in a series of migrations of the Yuezhi people, who in turn can be traced to an ancient tribe that settled in the modern-day Xinjiang region of China, about 5,000 years ago. The earliest evidence of this migration was uncovered during the Cultural Revolution in China. In the mid-1960s and early-’70s, Chinese archaeologists unearthed a large number of mummies in the Tarim Basin of the Xinjiang province, dating from 1800 BCE to 1st century BCE. News of their discovery created a sensation around the world because the mummies looked ‘European’ – these were the remains of people who had been tall and markedly Caucasian, with blond hair and sharp features. Mitochondrial DNA analysis and further excavation revealed them to be early Indo-Europeans who had spoken the now-extinct Tokharian languages. Chinese texts from the first millennium BCE speak of ‘white people with long hair’ who lived on the north-eastern frontier of China, and from whom the Chinese bought jade. The noted historian Victor H Mair, in his research paper AncientMummies of the Tarim Basin (1995), stated, “The new finds are also forcing a reexamination of old Chinese books that describe historical or legendary figures of great height, with deep-set blue or green eyes, long noses, full beards, and red or blond hair. Scholars have traditionally scoffed at these accounts, but it now seems that they may be accurate.” By 645 BCE, Chinese accounts referred to these tribes as the Yuezhi because they supplied jade from the Yuzhi Mountains in North-Central China. Around 175 BCE, the great tribal confederation of nomads called Xingnou defeated the Yuezhi and forced them to migrate out of the Ganshu region and head towards Central Asia. As the Yuezhi moved east, they defeated the Indo-Scythians or Sakas, forcing them to move towards Bactria. By 100 BCE, the Yuezhi had pushed east once again, defeated the Sakas and taken over the region of Bactria. The Sakas were forced south, towards Mathura, thereby ending the rule of the Indo-Greek kings. And the Yuezhi became masters of the Silk Route that passed through Bactria. Rise of an Empire According to the 5th-century chronicle of the Han dynasty, Hou Han Shu, the Yuezhi divided Bactria into five chiefdoms, one of which was called Kuei-shang or Guishang. The Hou Han Shu further states, “More than a hundred years after this [i.e., the Yuezhi migration], the hi-hou (tribal chief) of Kuei-shang, called K’iu-tsiu-k’io, attacked the four other hi-hou; he styled himself king; the name of his kingdom was Kuei-shang. He invaded An-si [Parthia] and seized the territory of Kao-fu [Kabul]; moreover he triumphed over Pu-ta [Gandhara] and Ki-pin [Kashmir] and entirely possessed those kingdoms.” K’iu-tsiu-k’io was none other than Kujula Kadphises (r. 60-80 CE), the founder of the dynasty that would be known as Kuei-Shang to the Chinese and Kushana to the Western world. Kujula Kadphises ruled in the 1st century CE and was a contemporary of the Indo-Parthian King Gondophares. Over time, he conquered the tiny Indo-Greek and Saka principalities that had survived in North-Western India and laid the foundations of the Kushana Empire. Kujula Kadphises conquered the bowl-shaped basin on the north-western frontier of India known as Gandhara and established his capital in the city of Taxila-Sirkap, in the modern-day Rawalpindi district of Pakistan. The ancient city had served as the capital to the Indo-Greek as well as Saka rulers. During archaeological excavations in the Taxila region carried out by Sir John Marshall from 1913 to 1934, 2,633 coins of the Kushana emperors were recovered from the. Most of them, 2,518, belonged to Kujula Kadphises. Interestingly, many of these coins have the Greek god Zeus on one face and the Buddha on the other, perhaps an indication of how readily the Kushanas adapted to the territories they conquered. With the conquest of the Indo-Greek cities of Bactria and Gandhara, the Kushanas were no longer mere tribal chiefs. They were now emperors and masters of the Silk Route - the commercial and cultural superhighway that connected Han China and India with Parthia and Rome. Kujula Kadphises was Kanshika’s great-grandfather and was succeeded by Vima Taktu (r. 81-100 CE), Kanishka’s grandfather, and then by Vima Kadphises (r. 101-127), Kanishka’s father. It was Vima Kadphises who wrested Mathura from the Scythian satraps and expanded the empire into the heartland of India. He was the first Kushana emperor to introduce gold coinage, thanks to the immense ...