THE GREAT ANCIENT EMPIREScalled Vashishka. There is another inscription at Ara in the northwestern
Panjab of the year 41 by a king called Kanishka. From the year 28 to the
year 60 there exist a considerable number of inscriptions of Huvishka.
Since Vashishka did not issue any coins of his own it is assumed that he
ruled together with (his brother?) Huvishka. The Kanishka who was the
author of the Ara inscription must have been a second Kanishka. This is
also confirmed by the fact that he mentions that his father’s name was
Vashishka. For some years he may have shared a condominium with (his
uncle?) Huvishka. Under these rulers the Kushana empire seems to have
maintained the boundaries established by the first Kanishka. This is
confirmed by the inscription at Surkh-Kotal in Bactria in the year 31 and
another one at the Wardak monastery near Kabul in the year 51 which
mentions Maharaja Rajatiraja Huvishka.
The Ara inscription of Kanishka II is unique in Indian history because of
another feature: he added to the usual titles of Maharaja Rajatiraja
Devaputra the Roman title Kaisara. He probably did this following the
Roman victory over their common enemy, the Parthians. This victory was
achieved by Trajan in the years 114 to 117 BC and Mesopotamia and
Assyria became Roman provinces for some time. Trajan himself crossed
the river Tigris and reached the Persian gulf. It is said that when he saw a
ship there which was leaving for India he remembered Alexander’s
campaign and exclaimed: ‘Oh, if I were young what would I have better
liked to do but to march towards India.’ As Dion Cassius reports in his
history of Rome, Trajan had heard much about India because he had
received many ambassadors of the ‘barbarians’ and ‘especially of the
Indians’. Those who advocate the year AD 78 as the beginning of the
Kanishka era would find support in this coincidence of Trajan’s campaign
and the assumption of the title Kaisara by Kanishka II. The date of the Ara
inscription (41 Kanishka era) would then correspond to AD 119 when the
Roman emperor’s success must have been of recent memory in India.
When the Kushanas were at the height of their power in northern India,
a branch of the Shakas ruling the area between Saurashtra in Gujarat and
Malwa, including Ujjain, in western central India rose to prominence once
more. They retained their old Shaka title Kshatrapa and perhaps initially
recognised the suzerainty of the Kushanas until they attained a position of
regional hegemony under King Rudradaman in the second century AD.
Together with the Kushanas in the North and the Shatavahanas in the
South, they emerged as the third great power of Indian history at that time.
Rudradaman is known for his famous Junagadh inscription which is the
first Sanskrit rock inscription (Ashoka’s were written in Magadhi and later
ones in Prakrit). In this inscription Rudradaman tells about a great tank
whose wall was broken by a storm in the year 72 (AD 150). This tank, so
he says, had originally been built by a provincial governor (rashtriya),
Pushyagupta, under Chandragupta Maurya, and a canal (pranali) had been