THE GREAT ANCIENT EMPIRESMathura school of art which set the style of Indian art. This school
produced the famous statue of Kanishka of which, unfortunately, only the
headless trunk has survived. His dress here shows the typical Central Asian
style.
Kanishka’s religious policy is reflected in the legends and images of his
coins. His far-flung empire contained so many cultures and religious
traditions that only a religious syncretism could do justice to this rich
heritage. Accordingly Kanishka’s coins show Hindu, Buddhist, Greek,
Persian and even Sumerian-Elamite images of gods. Personally Kanishka
seems to have shown an inclination towards Buddhism but also towards
the Persian cult of Mithras. An inscription at Surkh-Kotal in Bactria which
was discovered in 1958 maintains that after Kanishka’s death in the thirty-
first year of the era which he had started with his accession to the throne,
he himself became identified with Mithras. This was probably an attempt
by the adherents of Mithras to claim the religious heritage of the great
emperor for their cult. Kanishka’s syncretism reminds us of that of Ashoka
in an earlier and of Akbar in a later age. Great emperors of India who had
a vision beyond the immediate control of the levers of power were bound
to try to reconcile the manifold religious ideas represented in their vast
realm in the interest of internal peace and consolidation.
Another important element of Kanishka’s heritage was the introduction
of a new era which influenced the chronology of the history of India,
Central Asia and Southeast Asia. The inscriptions of Kanishka and of his
successors are dated according to this new era for the ninety-eight years
which followed his accession to the throne. But dating this new era is a
knotty problem and historians have yet to reach agreement. Three
international Kushana conferences, in London in 1913 and 1960 and at
Dushanbe in Soviet Central Asia in 1968, have not settled the debate on
this date. In 1913 there was a tendency to equate the beginning of this era
with the Vikrama era. Kanishka thus would have acceded the throne in 58
BC. Then there was a new trend to equate it with the Shaka era which
begins in AD 78. But in recent decades there has emerged still another
school of thought which maintains that the Kanishka era must have begun
sometime around AD 120 to 144. This view is supported by the
painstaking research of the Austrian numismatist R.Göbl, who noticed a
striking similarity between coins of specific Kushana rulers and those of
their Roman contemporaries. Göbl established the following parallels:
Vima Kadphises/Trajan (AD 98–117), Kanishka/Hadrian (AD 117–138),
Huvishka/Antoninus Pius (AD 138–161). This means that the respective
Kushana coins could only have been issued after the Roman coins of the
emperors mentioned here.^3
When and how Huvishka succeeded Kanishka is not yet quite clear.
There are two inscriptions dated in the years 24 and 28 of the Kanishka
era and found at Mathura and Sanchi respectively which mention a ruler