Kanishka

Kushān ruler (r. c. 127-c. 152 c.e.) and patron of the arts

• Born: First or second century
• Birthplace: Probably west-central Asia
• Died: c. 152
• Place of death: Probably northern India

Kanishka, the greatest ruler of the Kushān Empire, administered an extensive realm that embraced much of modern India and Pakistan and parts of Central Asia and China. Kanishka’s patronage was responsible for the introduction of Mahāyāna Buddhism into China and for a remarkable flowering of Buddhist iconography.

Early Life

Considering the fame of Kanishka (kuh-NIHSH-kuh), remarkably little is known of his life, certainly not enough to construct a proper biography. Symbolic of this gap in history is the fact that the 6-foot (1.8-meter) statue of him in the archaeological museum in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, India, is headless. The scarcity of data is further compounded by the tangled, obscure complexities of the wider history of Inner Asia and northern India during the first centuries c.e. What is known regarding Kanishka and his achievements has been gleaned principally from folklore and archaeological artifacts dating from this period. Inscriptions, coins, sculpture, architecture, legend, and Chinese and Iranian literary sources are the raw materials from which scholars have attempted to reconstruct an understanding of Kanishka’s life and times.

Even the time frame of Kanishka’s reign has been the subject of much discussion; indeed, two scholarly conferences (in 1913 and 1960) were convened in London to explore the issue. One long-accepted reckoning places it roughly between 78 and 103 c.e., but more recent scholarship (agreeing with an earlier line of thought) places it between 127 and 151 c.e. Kanishka’s reign has been associated, probably mistakenly, with the Saka Era dating system, which was initiated in 78 c.e. and which ultimately became the basis of the modern Indian governmental calendar.

The precise origin of the Kushāns is also an open question, as they arose out of a welter of Central Asiatic races and languages in a region of complex migrations. They could have been Turkic or Iranian or, more probably, a mixture of the two. They can be traced to the Yuezhi (Yüeh-chih, or Indo-Scythians) in Chinese Turkistan on the frontier of Han China. Displaced by the Xiongnu (Hsiung-nu, or Huns), the Yuezhi crossed the Jaxartes River (modern Syr Darya) and occupied Sogdiana (Transoxiana) at the expense of the Saka (Iranian nomads) by 150 b.c.e. Then, having crossed the Oxus River (modern Amu Darya) by 130 b.c.e., they conquered the Indo-Greek Bactrian kingdom. The Bactrians’ development of a trading economy and their advanced culture had a deep influence on their nomadic conquerors. One of the five tribes among these conquerors, the Kushāns, rose up to assert dominance and establish political unity under Kujūla Kadphises (r. c. 30-80 c.e.). For unknown reasons, the Kushāns eventually gravitated to the east to the Hindu Kush region and ultimately to northwest India, a world of petty states floundering in a political vacuum after the end of the Maurya Empire in 185 b.c.e.

Life’s Work

Details of how, when, and how deeply the Kushāns penetrated northwest India are not entirely clear, nor are the roles of Kujūla, his successors Vima Takhto, Vima Kadphises I, and Kanishka. Until the coming of the Muslims in the twelfth century, however, no foreign power after the prehistoric Indo-Aryans gained control over as much of India—and held it for as long—as did the Kushāns. There is some suggestion that Kanishka was not in the line of the Kadphises. It is thought that Kanishka may have begun a new line of succession. He may have invaded India from the north (Khotan in Xinjiang according to one authority), or he may have been one of several chiefs in India engaged in a struggle for the succession. When Kanishka came to power, he apparently used co-optation, for he shared rule with a junior, Vashishka (either his brother or his son), who ultimately succeeded him; he may have had other corulers as well.

A statue of Kanishka at Mathura shows him in Turkic warrior garb. Images of him on gold coins of the time render him as a bearded man with large, thoughtful eyes and thin, determined lips. He seems to have had a forceful personality, yet in cultural and religious matters he was more tolerant and accommodating than rigid and austere.

The Kushān Empire reached its zenith under Kanishka. An inland realm with its capital at Puruśapura (modern Peshawar, Pakistan) at the foot of the Khyber Pass leading to Kabul and the Hindu Kush region, it centered on the upper Indus and the upper Ganges valleys (in modern Iran and India). It seems in India to have embraced Pataliputra (Patna) to the east, Sānchi to the south, and Bahāwalpur on the Sutlej River, but its key southern city was Mathura on the Yamuna River. To the north, beyond the Pamirs, the Kushāns dominated the caravan city-states of eastern Turkistan, especially Khotan, and held Bactria; to the west, in what is now Afghanistan, they held sway over Begram and Balkh. This location enabled the Kushāns to connect India with China, Persia, and the Roman Empire via the Old Silk Road opened in 106 b.c.e. across Central Asia, combined with the old Mauryan royal highway between Taxila and Pataliputra and then through the Ganges Delta (where a Roman ship is known to have arrived about 100 c.e.). Other roads led to the Arabian Sea ports of Barbaricum and Barygaza (modern Broach). The Kushāns, with their command of animal power and soldiery, held the routes together and exacted great revenues through transit dues. In this way, the Kushāns maintained a network of international trade that also allowed for a wide-ranging exchange of art and ideas. Within the empire, though agriculture remained important, trade profits gave rise to an urban society of guilds and merchants.

Not surprisingly, the Kushān Empire, comprising as it did many peoples, religions, and belief systems—such as Hellenism, Mithrism, Hinduism, and Buddhism—was marked by attitudes of coexistence and syncretism. The Kushāns, who had spoken Bactrian (an Iranian tongue) and then Greek, in India began to adopt Sanskrit. Kujūla Kadphises had been a Buddhist, Vima Kadphises a Hindu; Kanishka was a Buddhist. Such cosmopolitanism was a product not only of their history and economy but also of their role as foreigners faced with the inflexibilities of karma (destiny) and jati (caste) within the Hindu system, within which the Kushāns could be treated as “fallen Kśatriya” (warriors). Their low position within the stratified social classes of Hinduism helps to explain the Kushān tendency to embrace Buddhism (though later rulers such as Huvishka and Vasudeva were Hindu).

Such a huge and complex empire could only be governed by a feudal system allowing for significant regional autonomy. The emperor did, however, appoint satraps (provincial governors), meridareks (district officers), and strategoi (military governors). The ruler ascribed to himself a divine origin and borrowed such appellations as “King of Kings” (from Bactria), “Great King” (from India), “Son of Heaven” (from China), and “Emperor” (probably from Rome). After death, emperors were deified and temples were dedicated to them.

Religiously eclectic, to judge by his coins bearing images of a variety of gods, Kanishka came to favor the emerging Mahāyāna form of Buddhism over Hinduism, probably because he found the former to be more cosmopolitan and more amenable to mercantilism. It is not clear whether he underwent a genuine conversion or simply found embracing Buddhism to be politically expedient. In any case, Kanishka gave official support to Buddhist proselytization by means of education and iconography, stimulating the spread of Buddhism through Central Asia into China. Under his auspices, the Sarvāstivādins, a sect of monks who favored the nascent Mahāyānist Buddhism, organized the fourth Buddhist council (a gathering that cannot be called ecumenical, for the Hīnayānists in the south called a separate fourth council in Sri Lanka). Rejecting Pāli (the Hīnayāna or Theravāda language) in favor of Sanskrit, the monks spent twelve years in Kashmir (or in Punjab) writing commentaries on the Buddhist canon, in the process probably launching Mahāyāna Buddhism. The records of this gathering, inscribed on copper plates in stone boxes, are found today only in Chinese translation.

In old age, Kanishka may have sent an army of seventy thousand over the Pamirs to oppose Chinese military thrusts into Central Asia, a venture that failed miserably. The date and circumstances of Kanishka’s death are unknown.

Significance

Kanishka’s policies were responsible for generating a new style in Oriental sculpture, a style that combined Greco-Roman and Iranian elements with Indian ideology to lay the basis for a Buddhist representational art with a popular appeal. The Gandhara school (in Puruśapura, Taxila, and Bāmiān) produced more naturalistic Buddhas mostly in schist, while the Mathura school turned out more stylized images in sandstone, suggesting a Western versus an Indian inspiration in the respective schools.

Throughout the historic Punjab and modern north-central Afghanistan east of Balkh and Kandahār, more than in the Hindustan, can be found the monumental ruins of Kanishka’s building projects. He erected a 638-foot (194-meter) stupa to Buddha at Peshawar, a monument celebrated throughout Asia: a five-stage, 286-foot (82-meter) diameter base, surmounted by a thirteen-story carved wood structure topped by an iron column adorned with gilded copper umbrellas (chhatras). In decay by the seventh century, the relic casket bearing an effigy and inscription of Kanishka was found in situ in 1908 and now may be seen in the Peshawar Museum.

The most important Kanishka inscriptions are those found on a monolith before a temple-acropolis in Greco-Iranian style at Surkh Kotal (Baghlan) in the Kunduz River Valley of northeast Afghanistan. The structure, excavated between 1952 and 1964, suggests a dynastic Zoroastrian fire-temple. In Begram (now Kāpīsā), north of Kabul, Kanishka built a monastery (vihara) to house Chinese royal hostages. At Bāmiān, in the high passes at the Hindu Kush west of Kabul, two colossal rock Buddhas, though carved well after his time, may have been modeled on Kanishka. These statues were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. Further records of Kanishka’s reign are numerous coins minted during his time, many of gold, bearing images of a variety of Greek, Iranian, and Indian gods. The first Buddha coin also dates from this period.

Not only was Kanishka another Aśoka the Great in his championship of Buddhism, but he also seems to have been a patron of scholarship and the arts. It is thought that such distinguished men as the Sanskrit poet-dramatist and Buddhist popularizer Aśvaghosa (who wrote the conciliar commentaries) and the physician and medical writer Caraka may have been at his court. Imperious in nature, Kanishka could launch an army against China and carry off Aśvaghosa from Vārānasi. Yet, when demanding huge booty at Vārānasi, he could accept instead a begging bowl of Buddha. Kanishka stood at a crossroads of world civilization, keeping the way open for the cross-fertilization of Eastern and Western economics and culture. His patronage of Mahāyāna Buddhism, however, though it brought about the introduction of Buddhism to Central Asia and China, may have weakened that religion in India, for Kanishka was regarded as a foreigner, and his religion was therefore alien as well. Hinduism correspondingly came to be accorded status as India’s indigenous religious system.

Rulers of the Kushān Dynasty

c. 30-c. 80

• Kujūla Kadphises

c. 80-c. 100

• Vima Takhto

c. 100-c. 127

• Vima Kadphises I

c. 127-c. 152

• Kanishka

c. 152-c. 192

• Huvishka

c. 192-c. 223

• Vasudeva I

Bibliography

Davids, T. W. Rhys. Buddhist India. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1903. Reprint. Delhi, India: Motilal Banarsidass, 1997. Chapter 26 constitutes a full discussion of Kanishka’s historic role. Based on the ancient sources, it examines socioeconomic, political, and religious aspects of the Buddhist ascendancy from a non-Brahman point of view.

Geoffroy-Schneiter, Berenice. Gandhara: The Memory of Afghanistan. New York: Assouline, 2001. Nearly all of the monumental Gandharan Buddhas were destroyed during the Taliban’s rule of Afghanistan. This well-illustrated book describes the importance of Gandharan art in world history and provides images of works now destroyed.

Raychaudhuri, Hemchandra. Political History of Ancient India: From the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. This political history covers the Kushān period and also includes an appendix on the dating of Kanishka’s reign.

Yarshater, Ehsan, ed. The Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian Periods. Vol. 3 in The Cambridge History of Iran. 1983. Reprint. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. See especially chapter 5, “The History of Eastern Iran,” by A. D. H. Bivar, and chapter 26, “Buddhism Among the Iranian Peoples,” by R. E. Emmerick, for fully updated scholarship and comprehensive examinations of the historical regions of Iran.

Zwalf, Wladimir. Catalogue of the Gandhara Sculpture in the British Museum. Chicago: Art Media Resources, 1997. A massive work documenting the British Museum’s entire Gandharan collection. In addition to photographs of the objects, the catalog includes a useful historical introduction, bibliography, and indexes.