The Kingdom of Kushan in India

BY

W. H. MORELAND, C.S.I., C.I.E. 

AND

ATUL CHANDRA CHATTERJEE

G.C.I.E., K. C.S.I.

مملكة كوشان في الهند

THE KUSHAN POWER

For the first three centuries of the Christian era our present knowledge of what was happening in India relates mainly to the western side of the country, but the story of the kingdoms further east is being gradually put together as new material comes to light, and may eventually be recon- structed as a coherent whole. For the peninsula we possess a nucleus of fact owing to the practice which was growing up of recording inscriptions on sheets of metal, usually copper.1 Many of these documents have survived, and the gradual process of their recovery and decipherment has made it possible to draw up tentative lists of the rulers of various dynasties, and to form a general idea of their mutual relations. The three Tamil kingdoms, Chola, Pandya and Kerala, continued to exist, and fought frequently among themselves; the boundaries of each may have expanded or contracted, but their substantial identity was preserved. To the north of these kingdoms lay the Andhras, who, as we have seen in Chapter XI, were ruling from the east coast right across the country to Ujjain, and were in conflict with the Sakas of Gujarat: the remainder of their story is involved with the rise of the Kushan power, which forms the main subject of this chapter.

It will be recalled that, shortly before 100 B.C., the Yueh-chi horde of nomads had driven the Sakas out of Bactria. According to the account usually accepted, this horde comprised five tribes, one of which, the Kushan, eventually became supreme over the others, so that the name Yueh-chi disappeared, and Bactria became the centre of the Kushan kingdom. An alternative account states that the Kushans were really Sakas, who successfully reasserted themselves against their Yueh-chi conquerors. Whoever they were, the Kushans, like their predecessors, quickly came south; one of their kings was in the Kabul valley by about A.D. 50, and a few years later the dynasty was supreme in the Punjab, and was extending thence towards Sind and Gujarat, and also in the Gangetic plain.

While the earliest rulers of this dynasty were powerful and successful conquerors, the one name that has survived in tradition is that of Kanishka, who is now generally accepted as the third of the line, and who ranks with Asoka in popular fame, not merely in India itself, but throughout Central Asia and as far as China. Our knowledge of him is, however, vague. As a patron of Buddhism he has a high place in the hagiography of that faith, but many of the stories told of him are obviously mere echoes of the life of Asoka, and very little of historical value can be extracted from the traditions; in particular, it is quite safe to dis- regard the statements that before his conversion, if he was converted, he was a monster of wickedness, for that is part of the hagiographer's stock-in-trade; and our knowledge is practically confined to what can be inferred from coins and inscriptions.

The chronology of the dynasty is still uncertain; the more usual view is that Kanishka ascended the throne in A.D. 78, but some scholars place that event about half century later; and while it is agreed that his reign was glorious, its precise length has not yet been determined. His capital was the city of Peshawar, where the main route from Afghanistan enters the Indus plain, and we are thus entitled to regard him as an Indian ruler; but the Kushans had spread, not been driven, southward, and his empire comprised Bactria and country still further to the north and east. Its extent in India is hard to define with precision, but it certainly included the Punjab and Sind, Kashmir, and

KANISHK: The King of Kushan Dynasty

كانيشك: ملك أسرة كوشان

the parts of Malwa and Gujarāt which had been held by the Sakas and Pahlavas, as well as the kingdom of Muttra, on the west side of the Gangetic plain. According to tradition, it extended in this direction at least as far as Patna, and numerous finds of Kushan coins in different parts of Bihār, Bengal and Orissa lend some support to the theory that either Kanishka himself or his immediate successors ruled on this side of India, but to what point is uncertain: Scarcely anything is known of the way in which this great empire was administered; we get glimpses of high officers, who may be styled viceroys, at Muttra and Ujjain, but we can say nothing of the methods which they followed, or their relations with the people whom they ruled.

Of the Emperor himself, we know only that he was successful in war, and that he was a patron of Buddhism. His principal military achievements were in Central Asia, where he extended his dominions, and freed his empire from the tribute to China which had been paid by his predecessor; and we do not hear of extensive conquests in India beyond the area which had been subdued by his predecessors. His position in regard to Buddhism is not entirely clear. He undoubtedly patronised the faith, as is testified by his buildings and endowments; it is probable that he convened the Council, which was certainly held during his reign, to formulate an authoritative canon of the doctrine; and in the legendary accounts to be gathered in China and Tibet he appears as a Buddhist of great eminence. His extant coins, on the other hand, do not suggest exclusive devotion to a single faith, for, while the image of the Buddha occurs, the great majority present a variety of Indian, Greek and Persian deities; we can infer from these that he was no bigot, and while he may have adopted Buddhism as his personal creed, there is no reason to think that he imposed it on his empire.

THE KUSHAN POWER

A few words may be said regarding the Buddhist Council convoked in this reign, the fourth of the series, and the last of which there is any record. The traditional account, which is all that we possess, is that the initiative came from Kanishka himself, who in his study of the faith found so much conflict of doctrine that he decided to obtain an authoritative exposition. An assemblage, said to number 500 theologians, was accordingly convoked, and a series of elaborate commentaries is said to have been compiled; but it is impossible to be certain as to either the doctrine estab- lished or the individuals who formulated it.

Whatever the Council may have done, the Buddhism which Kanishka patronised differed substantially in creed and worship from the discipline preached by the Buddha. The original idea of a path by which an individual could escape from the evil of successive rebirths and attain the goal of nirvana still persisted, but alongside of it had emerged the larger conception that an individual might rise to the position of a saviour of the world, bringing nirvāna within the reach of the whole human race. This conception appears to have grown up by degrees, and was eventually systema- tised under the name of Mahāyāna, or 'the Great Vehicle,' as contrasted with Hinayana, or 'the Lesser Vehicle,' the term applied to the original doctrine; its precise formulation is usually assigned to a somewhat later date, and possibly was assisted by the deliberations of Kanishka's Council; but from about A.D. 200 onwards the two schools subsisted in India side by side.

The change which had taken place in worship is at first sight startling, for the Buddha, whose original teaching was essentially atheistic, had by this time been elevated to a position indistinguishable in the popular eye from that of a personal god-a god seated in heaven, surrounded by an obedient hierarchy, and worshipped in costly temples with an elaborate ritual, his words spoken on earth accepted as carrying divine authority, his relics preserved in magnificent shrines and exposed periodically to the veneration of the faithful. This developed form of popular Buddhism is now scarcely to be traced in India, but it remains the creed of those parts of Central Asia which have not accepted Islam ; and in the neighbourhood of Kanishka's capital it found expression in a distinctive school of sculpture.

GANDHARAN SCULPTURE

The country round Peshawar has yielded in very great numbers specimens of the work of this school, which has been described variously as Graeco-Buddhist, Indo-Hellenic, and otherwise, but the most convenient label is Gandharan, since the specimens which have been found are practically confined to the region known in old days as Gandhāra, of which Peshawar was the centre. These sculptures are characterised by Greek methods of composition and tech- nique, but the subjects are purely Indian, and are drawn almost entirely from the newer form of Buddhism. The earlier Buddhist sculptures, which we know from the sur- vivals at Bharhut, Sanchi and elsewhere, depicted scenes from the traditions which had accumulated round the teacher, but, so far as is yet known, never showed the teacher himself in the Gandharan school the Buddha is the most conspicuous figure, and his worship is everywhere the inspiring motive. At first the artists depicted their subject in various ways according to their individual conceptions, but a conventional type gradually emerged, the type which now prevails throughout the Buddhist countries to the north and east. In this way the school made a permanent contribution to the religious conceptions of a large part of the world, but, in India it was confined to a small locality, where it persisted for a time, with a gradual disappearance of the foreign elements, and in this region it left no successor. Its influence on the art of other parts of India is estimated differently by different critics, some of whom detect it right across the country, while others hold that it was limited in area and unimportant in its results.

The development of strictly Indian sculpture during this period must be studied, not in Gandhāra but mainly in the remnants which have been preserved of the great Buddhist shrine at Amaravatī, a name familiar to all who have used the main staircase of the British Museum. Amaravati is situated on the river Kistna, about 80 miles from the east coast, and at this time lay in the Andhra dominions. Be- tween A.D. 150 and 250 the shrine, already of old standing, was enriched with an elaborately carved railing and other embellishments, all of white marble; but in the course of time much of the material was used by the neighbours for lime-burning, and we possess only the fragments which survived, and which have been placed in the museums in London and Madras. The style of the sculpture is readily recognisable as a development of that which characterises the monuments found at Bharhut or Sanchi, and there is nothing extant to prove that the artists had any direct knowledge of the work which had been done in Gandhāra ; but the appearance of the figure of the Buddha in the seat of honour and worship shows that the ideas of the newer Buddhism had become established on the east coast as well as in the far north.

As has already been said, the length of Kanishka's reign has not yet been accurately determined. He was succeeded by Huvishka, who was probably his son, and who retained, and possibly extended, the empire; but decay soon set in, and the Kushan power appears to have shrunk by the third century to portions of the Punjab, and to some of its terri- tories in Afghanistan and beyond. The causes of the col- lapse are unknown, and all that can be said is that the later coins of the dynasty show marked signs of Persian influence, and thus lend some support to the Moslem tradition, recorded many centuries later, that early in the third century one of the first Sassanian rulers of Persia invaded the Punjab and received the homage of its rulers.

In western India also the political situation is not entirely clear. This region continued under Saka rule till nearly the end of the fourth century, the rulers being designated Satraps (in Sanskrit, Kshatrapa) or 'viceroys.' For a time they were subject to the Kushän power, and the designation was thus appropriate, but apparently they resumed their independence at some uncertain period during the decline of the suzerain power. We have seen in Chapter XI that contention had arisen between the Sakas and the Andhras of the South, possibly even before the Christian era. In the first century of that era a Saka satrap was ruling in Mahā- rashtra, the country to the south of the Narbada, but about the year A.D. 120 this satrapy was destroyed by the Andhras. Very soon after, Rudradāman I, the Satrap of Ujjain, revenged this defeat, and re-established Saka rule for some distance beyond the river; thenceforward Ujjain remained

THE SAKA SATRAPS

the Saka capital of Western India, from Sind to the borders of Mahārāshtra, until, just before A.D. 400, the territory was conquered by the Guptas.

An interesting memorial of this Satrap Rudradāman has survived in what is known as the Junagarh inscription, discovered in the Kathiawar peninsula in the course of the last century. The inscription was cut on a rock which already bore the edicts of Asoka, and it recorded the history of an artificial lake which had been constructed to provide for irrigation. The work was taken in hand under the Maurya Emperor Chandragupta, and was completed under Asoka; in the year A.D. 150 the embankment gave way, and Rudradāman caused it to be rebuilt three times stronger than before. Later records show that his work lasted for three centuries, but had to be reconstructed in the Gupta period; and in the end the jungle swallowed up the lake and the cultivated arca dependent on it. Inscriptions such as this are rare, but the facts which it records are typical of what has happened all over the hilly parts of India from time immemorial. Almost wherever a stream or drainage- line exists, embankments have been thrown across it, given way before exceptional floods, been reconstructed only to be wrecked again, and at last perhaps abandoned because there was nobody on the spot able or willing to undertake the needful work. There is no doubt that in the past collapse was often due to neglect of timely repairs, but it is only in quite recent times that the progress of engineering science has rendered possible the construction of dams which can justly be described as permanent in the conditions which exist in India. It is easy to be critical of the failures of the past, and expatiate on the enormous waste evidenced by the surviving ruins of such works: it is perhaps more profitable to recall that, long before the days of scientific engineering, such a dam might remain serviceable for as mány as four centuries, a period sufficient at least to justify the original expenditure.

While the Sakas persisted, the Andhra power was declin- ing. The details of the process are almost unknown, but by about the end of the second century A.C. it had withdrawn  from western India, and shrunk to practically its original dimensions, the Telugu-speaking area near the east coast. Then the original dynasty was crushed by a rebel governor, who established his own family as kings in this region; thenceforward the name Andhra disappears, and we hear only of the Pallavas, the name borne by the new dynasty, which was to persist for six centuries, and play an important part in the history of the South.2

It cannot be affirmed that either Sakas or Kushāns left any important mark on the culture of the regions which they ruled. Speaking generally, the nomads of Central Asia appear to have been highly adaptable, and, when they settled down, they conformed to their new environment, assimilating, or rather being assimilated by, the culture prevailing in the locality. From the nature of the case, such a development could not leave many conspicuous records, and all that we possess are a few hints that the pro- cess was at work. The names of the foreign rulers became Indianised as time went on among the Saka satraps we find such purely Hindu names as Rudradāman or Satya- sinha; and while the earlier Kushans bore foreign names, we come in due course to a Vasudeva. Kanishka and Huvishka, again, patronised the Buddhism which they found in their dominions; but the coins of Vasudeva, the next ruler, are characterised by the figure of the great Hindu god Siva, accompanied by the appropriate emblems, and it is hard to resist the inference that he was in substance a Hindu.

This fact may serve as a timely reminder that Hinduism continued on its way during the centuries for which we have so few records of its existence. Our precise knowledge of

THE SPREAD OF HINDUISM

Buddhism or Jainism at this period is derived mainly from architecture and sculpture: the fact that we have no similar evidence for Hinduism is best explained on the view that the practice of building in durable materials had not as yet spread to India as a whole, but was confined to the adherents of particular creeds. As usual, the uncertainty of all literary dates makes it impossible to say what Hindus in the mass were doing, and thinking, during this period; but we must infer that in many centres learned men were pursuing the studies which bore fruit in the extant Sanskrit literature, and that the way was being prepared for the culmination of that literature which was to take place in the next period.

There are also grounds for inferring that Hinduism was increasing its hold on the peninsula, though its final supre- macy was to be delayed for some centuries. The early religion of the Dravidians in this part of the country centred in spirits localised in trees, or other objects, and in some cases regarded as malevolent; but both Jainism and Buddhism had gained a footing in the country by the third century B.C., while Hinduism was gradually absorbing the indigenous deities. We possess no knowledge of the details, but we may reasonably regard the period as one of religious ferment in the South, and of intimate contact between the preachers of competing doctrines.

To these doctrines it is almost certain that Christianity must be added 4 . The very old tradition that the Apostle Thomas preached the gospel in India has found new defenders in recent years, and cannot be summarily rejected on the lines followed by critics of the Victorian age; but, whatever view may be taken of the evidence on this point, there is little doubt that before the end of the third century Christian congregations existed in the south-west of India, in com- munion with what was then the flourishing church of Mesopotamia; and these congregations persisted with many vicissitudes until their 'heresies' shocked the orthodox Portuguese ecclesiastics who came to Goa in the sixteenth century. It would, however, be a mistake to picture the preachers of these new doctrines as missionaries to savage peoples. The Tamil language, which is spoken in the south of the Peninsula, possesses a valuable body of literature, which is now generally regarded as dating from the périod we are considering; and this literature shows incidentally that, as may indeed be inferred from the facts of commerce sum- marised in the last chapter, the South had already developed a civilisation of its own. Its exportable products, mainly pepper, pearls, and precious stones, enabled it to indulge in foreign luxuries; the royal courts were ornate, and patro- nised literature, music and the drama; and there are traces of what some scholars have regarded as an approximation to constitutional government. The King was supreme, but his action was influenced to an important, though uncertain, extent by what are known as 'the five great assemblies,' bodies of which the composition and functions are still obscure; while there are hints of local assemblies also, composed of representatives of the villages, which exercised considerable power in matters concerning their own affairs.

Some little caution is required in drawing facts from the old Tamil literature, which cannot be checked from other sources, and occasionally seems to strike a note of conven- tional idealism; but it suggests that under these institutions the peasants of the Tamil country were on the whole reason- ably well governed, and led a quiet and laborious life. Extreme poverty certainly existed, but in ordinary seasons there was enough to satisfy the simple wants of most of the people. Probably they were not as yet much influenced by the newer religious ideas, but adhered to the traditional worship of the country, and were concerned mainly with the routine of peasant life, ploughing and sowing, watering and reaping, the occupations described so vividly in some of the poems, along with hunting game in the hill country and fishing on the coast.

EARLY TAMIL CULTURE

In the towns the position was more complex. The poems give us pictures of a pleasant family life, and also of the dangers to which it was exposed from the seductions of the numerous and attractive courtesans, the chief exponents of the arts of music and dancing. There were crowded streets and well-stocked shops, foreign merchants with their wares, the king's court and his troops; there were the representatives of the newer creeds; and there were the literary men to whom we owe our knowledge of these facts. Madura, then the Pandya capital, and still one of the prin- cipal cities of the South, appears to have been the chief, though doubtless not the only, centre of Tamil literary activity; and according to tradition it was the seat of what has been described as a literary academy, to which poems were formally submitted for approval, but the validity of this tradition has been questioned 4.  This Tamil culture was not, however, isolated, for the presence of Sanskrit words in the poems indicates that intercourse with northern India must have proceeded for a long time before the later ones at least were composed.

Another centre of culture was Kanchipuram, a town which is situated a short distance south-west of Madras, and is now usually known as Conjeeveram; in the old days it lay near the northern limit of the Tamil country, and in the third century became the capital of the Pallava dynasty, which, as we have seen, then ruled over the Andhra country to the north. The culture of Kanchipuram appears to have been Sanskritic rather than Tamil, and there are some grounds for the view that it formed, so to speak, an outpost of Hinduism in its gradual advance towards the south.

Taking into consideration, then, the facts depicted in the literature, it is perhaps reasonable to infer that by this time the urban, though not the rural, population of the Tamil country had progressed to a point where the primitive indigenous religion no longer afforded satisfaction, and thus offered a favourable field for missionary effort to the repre- sentatives of the newer creeds,

Reference

1. The first copperplate recorded in The Historical Inscriptions of Southern India, by R. Sewell, ed. S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar (Madras, 1932), is dated about A.D. 234.

2. The origin of the name Pallava is uncertain. Some writers, e.g. P. T. Srinivas Iyangar (History of the Tamils (Madras, 1929), p. 329) and J. Allan (Cambridge Shorter History of India (Cambridge, 1934), PP. 195-6), make the new rulers Pahlavas, or adventurers from the north-west; others, such as V. A. Smith (Early History of India (Oxford, 1924), PP. 490 f.), find their origin in the Tamil country or in Ceylon; while K. P. Jayaswal has recently connected them with a dynasty ruling in the Vindhyan region (Journal of the Bihar and Orissa, Research Society, 1933). It is generally agreed that the name represents a dynasty, not a people.

3. In addition to the authorities discussed in V. A. Smith's Early History of India (4th edition), pp. 260-2, reference may be made to the papers by Dr. J. F. Farquhar and Dr. A. Mingana in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 1926, 1927.

4. Mr. P. T. Srinivas Iyangar (op. cit., ch. xvi) argues strongly against the validity of the traditional account. This work contains English renderings of many passages from the Tamil poetry of the period. Another account of this period will be found in the early pages of Professor Nilakanta Sastri's The Colas, Vol. I (Madras, 1935).