A History of India, Third Edition

(Nandana) #1
THE GREAT ANCIENT EMPIRES

found in the eastern parts of the Kushana empire in the Ganga-Yamuna
Doab, which was probably under the control of rather autonomous
viceroys. In two inscriptions of the second and third year of his reign which
have been found at Kausambi and Sarnath in the east, he merely calls
himself Maharaja Kanishka. Yet in an inscription of the seventh year of his
reign at Mathura he gives his title as Maharaja Rajatiraja Devaputra
Shahi, a designation which is repeated in an inscription of the eleventh year
of his reign in the central Indus valley. All this would indicate that
Kanishka first came to power in the east and, after he had seized the centre
of the empire which was probably at Mathura, he adopted the full titles of
his predecessors.
The vast extension of Kanishka’s empire cannot be adequately outlined.
It probably reached from the Oxus in the west to Varanasi in the east and
from Kashmir in the north via Malwa right down to the coast of Gujarat
in the south. Not much is known about his hold on Central Asia, but there
is a reference to the defeat of a Kushana army by the Chinese general, Pan-
Chao, at Khotan in the year AD 90. A special aim of both Kadphises II and
Kanishka seems to have been to control the trade routes connecting India
with Rome, i.e. those land and sea routes which would enable this trade to
bypass the Parthians’ routes. This trade must have been very profitable to
the Kushanas. Pliny (VI, 10) laments in those days: ‘There is no year in
which India does not attract at least 50 million sesterces [Roman coins].’
Yet though fifty-seven out of the sixty-eight finds of Roman coins in the
whole of Southern Asia were found in south India, none at all were found
in the area of the Kushana empire. This must be due to the fact that the
Kushanas as a matter of policy melted down and reissued them. After the
debasement of Roman silver coins in AD 63 in the reign of Nero, gold
became the most important medium of exchange for the Roman trade with
India, and this must have greatly contributed to the rise of the Kushanas to
prosperity and power.
Kanishka’s fame is not only based on his military and political success
but also on his spiritual merit. The Buddhists rank him together with
Ashoka, Menander and Harsha as one of the great Buddhist rulers of
India. The great stupa at Peshawar is rated as his greatest contribution to
Buddhist monumental architecture. Several Chinese pilgrims have left us
descriptions of this stupa and have stated that it was about 600 to 700 feet
high. When archaeologists excavated the foundations of this stupa at the
beginning of the twentieth century they found that it was 286 feet in
diameter. Therefore it must have been one of the great miracles of the
ancient world. Kanishka is also supposed to have convened a Buddhist
council in Kashmir which stimulated the growth of Mahayana Buddhism.
For the development of Indian art it was of great importance that
Kanishka not only favoured the Gandhara school of Buddhist art which
had grown out of Greek influences but also provided his patronage to the

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