Soper - Recent Studies Involving The Date of Kani Ka

Recent Studies Involving the Date of Kanika: A Review Article
Papers on the Date of Kanika. Vol. IV by A. L. Basham

Review by: Alexander Coburn Soper
Artibus Asiae, Vol. 33, No. 4 (1971), pp. 339-350
Published by: Artibus Asiae Publishers
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STUDIES
RECENT
INVOLVING
THE DATE
OF KANISKA
A Review article
BY ALEXANDER C. SOPER
on any aspect of the Kaniska/Kushan problem, my

reactions will be held to a minimum, except for comments at the end.
The papers are summarized below, after the chairman's preamble, in the alphabetical order of their
authors' names.
A.L.Basham's introduction to the book explains the
reasonsfor holding the conference,its procedure,and
the equivocalresults.Paperscirculatedin advancewere
discussed in eight topical sessions over three days.
The book includes contributions from several who
were unable to attend (notably John Rosenfield,
whose study of the Mathura school of sculpture was
received too late to be properly evaluated). Several
published papers have been revised in the light of the
discussions; one by Helmut Humbach of Munich is a
complete substitution. Choices for the beginning of
the Kaniska era were on the whole still divided between AD 78 and "a date some 50 yearsor more later"
with strong bids for a year very early in the second
century being made by A.K. Narain of Benares, and
by Rosenfield.
The late R. B. Whiteheadof
Cambridgesummarizedthe
results of the earlierKaniska conference held at London in 1913, when an important group still preferred
an initial yearidenticalwith that of the "Vikramaera"
of 58 BC; and so was led to place Kaniska and his
dynastyprior to Kujula and Vima.
F. R. Allchin of Cambridge reexamined the chief
results of the late Sir John Marshall'sexcavations in
the Taxila area, with special attention to the very
numerous coin finds. He drew a general correlation
between the coin sequenceand building periods in the
Bhir Mound, Sirkap, and Sirsukh, and around the
Dharmardjikastipa; concluding that the majorityof
the deposits in specially dedicatedbuildings were put
in place at the time of construction. In undisturbed
deposits the latest coins should be those of the monarch ruling at the time, to recordin effigy his sharein
the good work. Deposits uncovered in a later period
of reconstruction,and then reinstalled,might receive
additions; or the later work might be given its own
contemporary deposit. Unmistakable ties to Roman
imperial coinage, both borrowed iconographical de-
A. L. Basham,ed.: Paperson the Date of

Kani.ska(submittedto the Conference
on the Date of Kaniska,London,
20o-22 April, i96o); Australian National University
Centreof OrientalStudies, OrientalMonographSeries,
vol.IV. Brill, Leyden,iR68. xiv plus 478pp., indexed.
If promptnesswere one of the firstessentialsof a proper review, this effort-composed three years after the
appearanceof the book and thirteen after the London
meeting, for publication a yearlater still-might seem
largely wasted. On the other hand the book has received very little notice anywhere else (within the
normal reading range of persons interested in Asian
art). It records a truly remarkableattempt to bring
together all facets of expertopinion on a crucialhistorical problem, long debated but never satisfactorily
solved. Most of its contents are interesting (at least to
specialists) in a wide variety of ways, some for their
admirable usefulness, some as engaging demonstrations of impracticality,a few as signs of a sturdy national pride. Though the meeting resulted in nothing
like a consensus, it presentedand mulled over so much
material,from so manypoints of view, as to discourage
further exploration on the same scale, without some
markedexpansion of availableevidence.
Since 1960 a few postscripts have been proposed by
conference members or other interested parties; and
one of these, by the numismatist Robert G6bl of
Vienna, is a drastic new challenge to the accepted
range of dating. There has been anotherinternational
conference on the Kushan period, held in 1968 under
UNESCO auspices at a meeting-place in Russian
CentralAsia in the heart of the old Yiieh-chih empire,
Dushambe in Tadzhikistan;but there the Kaniskaera
was a minor issue.
I propose, therefore, to pass in review here the various papers submittedby those invited to the London
colloquium, and the discussions held among those
actuallypresent. In a second instalmentI shall add an
account of Gabl's new claim and the partthat it played
with Russian support and further development, at
Dushambe, as well as a very few less revolutionary
suggestions made by others. Since I am not an expert
339

inscriptions judged on paleographic grounds. Like

others before him, he was impressed by the fact that
the gap in the known, non-Kushan series of dated
Kharosthi inscriptions, between references to the
year 200ooand to the year 303, almost exactly fits the
length of the specificallyKushan group, terminating
in the year 98. Presumably,therefore, the Kaniskan
dynasty group was merely part of that longer series,
which was continuous into the 3oo's. For Dani the
latter'sprobablefirst yearwas in 57 BC, the date associated (much later) with the name Vikrama. Since
Kaniska began to reign at or just before the outset of
the third centuryin that longer era,it is naturalto give
him the initialyearAD I44 (associatedwith the theories
of Ghirshman). Dani's more personal contribution
was a claim that the Kushan inscriptionsproper show
a trendtowardmore cursivewriting, firstin Kharosthi
and later in Brdhmi. Since this cursive characteris
prominent in the Kharosthi writings that have been
found in ChineseTurkestan,it presumablyoriginated
there. The fact that it was carriedinto India may be
taken as an argumentfor the CentralAsian origin of
the Kaniska group of rulers. Dani's paper concluded
by pointing out that the inscriptions of the Western
Ksatrapasdifferboth in their choice of an initial yearfor them the AD 78 of the "Saka era"-and in their
complete lack of the cursive innovations seen elsewhere in northern India. Both of these he took as
indices of their political independence.
of Schiedam,Netherlands,contribP. H. L. Eggermont
uted one majorpaper and three postscripts. The first,
"The Purdnasource of Meruturiga'sList of Kings and
the arrivalof the Sakas in India", was an attempt to
make more sophisticated use than hitherto, of the
chronological statements incorporated in Indian
religious literature:in mediaevalJain histories, in the
Purdnas,and in certain scraps of Buddhist tradition.
Constantlycorrecting his datain the attempt to find a
much-modifiedoriginal,by alteringnumbersof years,
substituting a usable name for a perplexing one, or
changing the order of reigns, Eggermont arrivedat an
ingenious conclusion all his own. The Sakas, to his
way of thinking, broke into India not in
BC or at
58
any other previously suggested date, but in AD I5:
0
thatbeing the ooth
yearafterthe death of the Buddha
(accordingto one of severaldifferentcalculations).The
interval of 64 yearsbetween this date and the familiar
onset of the "Saka era" in AD 78 he explainedas the
result of an unfortunate conflict between two me-
tails and coin imports, were cited to justify a dating

of Kaniska's era "by no means earlierthan A.D.xo5
and most probably ca. 130-140." Appendices listed
building sites at Taxila and elsewhere in the Northwest, enumeratingthe coin types found at each.
H. W.Baileyof Cambridge,approachingthe problem
from the side of Central Asian documents, cited a
number of Buddhist references to the Emperor
Kaniska in Khotanese, Tocharian, Sogdian, and
Uigur Turkish. He proposed an explanation of the
name, like those of Huviska and Vajheska,as a laudatory adjective.
M. Bussagliof Rome (not present)submitteda paperon
"Kaniska as seen by the art historian". His opening
sentences disclaimed the possibility of using art "at
the present state of our knowledge" as a means to
more precise dating, since the generally accepted
alternativesare only a few decades apart. Instead he
described the role of Kaniska as patron, chiefly on
behalf of the Buddhist Church.In the case of the one
spectacular exception, the recently discovered dynastic sanctuaryand fire temple at Surkh Khotal, he
suggested that the need to restore the complex in the
Kaniskanyear 31, so soon afterits founding, was one
sign of a period of widespreaddisorderthat followed
on the emperor's death, prior to the reestablishment
of centralizedauthorityby Huviska (I or perhapsII).
Discussing a half dozen other remainsof exceptional
interest, he pointed to what seem to be marks of
Parthianinfluence, and so of a relatively early date,
among the sculptures of the other royal sanctuaryat
Mathurd,and in the running arches of the Bimaran
reliquary. All important evidence surrounding the
latter seemed to Bussagli to match "the Azes coins
fresh from the mint" found buried with it. Its period
of manufacture, however, was certainly the Great
Kushan epoch, and it must have been "semi-contemporary" with its clumsier-looking counterpart, the
Kaniska reliquary,which he chose to attributeto the
monarch's lifetime. As to the marked difference"in
artistic quality" between the two, with the inferior
work bearing the name of the ruler and buried in his
uniquelyfamous stipa, Bussaglihadnothing cogent to
say. He rejectedout of hand the explanationproposed
in I943 by MirellaD'Ancona, that the Kaniskacasket
was the work of a Mathuri craftsman,not to be judged
by the standardsof Gandhara,but his objectionswere
cursory.
A.H. Dani of Peshawar(not present) took up in his
paper the evidence offeredby Kharosthi and Brahmi
diaeval "chronological constructions". 64 is in fact
340

precisely the number of years given the reign of the

first king in the list recorded by Merutuiga, a Jain
I4th century historian. Or rather,
gives 6o
Merutufiga
years; but to this must be added four "sham years"
hidden in the duration he ascribes to the following
dynasty, the Nandas.
In his first postscript Eggermont used his newly discovered date, AD 15, to substantiate the familiar claim
that AD 78 was the beginning both of what later was
called the Saka era, and of Kaniska's reign. A Buddhist
tradition held that Sikyamuni had preached that his
Law would last 500ooyears. This came to be calculated
from the alleged year of the preaching, 40 years prior
to his Nirvana, but had earlier been dated from the
should, in his opinion, remove the text from the realm

of chronological controversy: an identification of
two of the Arab kings who appear under deformed
names. The second of these, called Eleazos, must be
the Il-azz Yalut who is named in an Arab inscription
dated in the I44th year of the local Sava era (which
probably began in I15 BC), i.e. in AD 29. Thus "the
situation described in the Periplus" along the west
Indian coast, with its rival Parthian kinglets and the
very warlike Bactrians behind them inland, "happens
to have occurred ca.AD 30o."That would be "a description of the last years of the reign of Kujula Kadphises before the coronation of Vima and his invasion
of India."
Nirvana itself. The earliest Sinhalese histories, using

the adjusted version, state that troubles fell on the
Samgha in the 46oth post-Nirvana year; and were met
by a decision that the Elders should record the Law in
books. In the Northwest, Eggermont continued, "the
Sarvdstivadins knew this tradition as well", but told
of it with altered circumstances. For them the dis-
In the third postscript Eggermont called attention to

an account of the founding of the latest of three
his judgment, that of the
"Scythian empires"-in
Kushans-which
appeared in the Historia Philippica
by the late first century B.C. Roman military historian
Pompeius Trogus. The date of the reference must tie
it to the conquest by Kujula of the rival fouryabgu of
the old Kushan realm; or as the Latin text puts it,
"The Asiani become kings of the Thocari and the
Saraucae are annihilated."
The numismatist Robert G'bl of Vienna summarized
turbances had occurred in the reign of Kaniska, and

had been countered by his decision to convoke a
Church Council in Kashmir, where the commentaries
were written down by the participating Elders. Since
the Sarvastivadin sect used an "old" era beginning in
383 BC (not further identified by the writer), for them
the critical 46oth year would have fallen in AD 78. The
latter need not have been the actual year of Kaniska's
accession, of course, but presumably was that of his
"anointing". The original tradition, calculating the
5oo-year cycle from the Nirvana, would have been
realized in AD 115. But the Kushan churchmen,
finding themselves then prosperous and secure instead
two areas of argument drawn from his comprehensive

study of Kushan imperial coinage published in 1957.
The first had to do with the attempts made by the early
Kushan rulers to enhance their prestige and fortify
their economic power by borrowing from the already
established authority of Rome. Gbbl assumed that
the process of coin imitation involved both originals
minted in Rome, and the sometimes divergent issues
produced at Alexandria. To aid in establishing an
imperial Kushan chronology, he pointed to the quite
consistent relationships between originals from the
Roman empire and their adaptations for Kushan use,
between the end of the first century AD and the be-
of overwhelmed by calamities, must have attributed

the reversal of the prophecy to Kaniska's piety. In
consequence they marked the great turning-point at
the moment of his anointing, 40 years earlier; and to
accommodate the change, pushed back the date of the
original prophecy by the same interval. As a final
flourish, Eggermont suggested that the Sarvistividin
"old era" of 383 BC may be traced in use even before
Kaniska: specifically on the inscribed stones, chiefly
Gandharan sculptures, which are dated in the 3oo's.
The latest of these, the Hiriti image of Skirah Dheri,
he placed accordingly in AD 17.
In his second postscript Eggermont took up briefly the
problems raised by a Classical text much referred to
during the London conference, the Periplus of the
Erythrean Sea. There he cited a new discovery which
ginning of the third. Thus Vima may be seen as drawing from Trajan; Kaniska from Hadrian; and Huviska
from Antoninus Pius. With a time-lagfor "coin-drift"

this oblique parallelism makes the last great Kushan,
Vasudeva I, a contemporary of the later Marcus
Aurelius, of Commodus, and of the early Severans. The
best accession date for Kaniska consistent with other
evidence, Ghirshman's AD 144, was thus preferred by
Gabl as well.
Gabl's second focal area, the period of transition between the end of the Great Kushan sequence and the
beginning of Sasanian overlordship, brought out two
341

(In a puzzling postscript Humbach refers to two

bilingual dated inscriptions from Waziristanin the
Peshawar Museum which furnish "new evidence on
the linguistic facts and on the history of the Kulin
dynasties." One is in Arabic and Sanskrit, and the
other in Sanskrit and Bactrian. The solid footing
provided by the Arabic use of a Hegira date makes it
possibleto calculatethatthe Bactriantext was reckoned
from AD 232. "This era can in no way be that of
Kani'ka and the Great KuSins." How this is to be
adjusted to his previous point, Humbach's text fails
to explain; but he provides footnotes to treatments
of the theme in 1964 and 1967).
A short contribution by the late D.D.Kosambi of
Poona, clearly written after the London meeting
sinceit incorporatesseveralof the argumentspresented
there by others, subjects the identity and date of
Kaniska to a new twist. The Saka era of AD 78 was
indeed founded by a Kaniska,but that monarchstruck
no coins in his own name, using instead the grandiloquent epithet Soter Megas, the great savior. For
Kosambi, "this is in the Adokanimperial tradition",
seen in all but two minor edicts. It is this rulerwho was
praisedat SurkhKotal with the supernaturalattributes
that the Vedas had given to Indra: "a hero who began
life as a tribal chief in the more primitive tradition of
the Aryan hinterland,but rose to the topmost heights
of imperial power." The ruler who called himself
Kaniska on the Kushan coins was KaniskaII.
J. E. van Lohuizen,rather than attempting to present
any art historical case for the central problem of the
conference, described the salient features of several
recently published sculptures in the Mathuranstyle.
These included: first, a recently discovered, seated
Buddha, dressed in the pseudo-Gandharanfashion,
and dated in the year 83 during the reign of a local
monarch, Bhadramagha.Since the Maghas followed
the Kaniskanreckoning in all likelihood, the yearwas
AD 160 (the author still maintainedher earlierstated
preferencefor AD 78 as the start). Second, a seated
Mahivira, which she datedin the second Kushan century in the year (I)22, with a striated poll imitating
Gandharanwavy locks. Third, a seated Jina of (I) 31,
now showing flat, snail-shell curls. Fourth, an unusuallywellpreservedseatedBuddhain the Gandharan
manner, dated (1)36, also with curls. In this last case
van Lohuizen was contesting a museumattributionto
the early Guptan period, her date of AD 2I 3 contrastingto its AD 355.
All four pieces reveal characteristicphases in the evo-
important claims. After Vasudeva I the empire split

into northern and southern halves, the former ruled
by VasudevaII from ca. AD 242 on. After a long reign

rule passed from his hands into that of the initiator of
the Kushan-Sasanian coin series, a Hormizd identified
by Grbl as the secondof the name, king of kings (and
so on) from AD 303. I shall return to Grbl's proposals
later in this review, since they have been radically
altered since 1964.
P. L. Gupta of Patna (not present) submitted a paper
called "The coinage of the local kings of Northern
India and the date of Kaniska." In this he summarized
the evidence for the existence of four native states that
emerged from the ruins of the Mauryan empire. At
Mathurd zo local rulers preceded the arrival of the
Kushans, maintaining an uninterrupted coinage formula. At Kausimbi 19 or zo20rulers, most with names
ending in -mitra, preceded a Magha regime that
seems to have been under Kushan control. At Ayodhyd 16 independent rulers followed a successful break
dynasty, probably around 130
away from the
Sufiga
BC. At Ahicchatrd there were 21i. The best historical
data there are provided by recent excavations, which
have revealed Kushan coinage in a stratum IV (the
lowest being VIII); while early in III are found the

coins of a prince who was defeated by Samudragupta
around AD 350. Gupta assumed for such local rulers
an average reign of 18 years apiece (intended as a
conservative estimate, since "the average of the generations of various dynasties of India in the historical
period varies from 2 to 31 years." At Mathurd and
l
Kausdmbi, therefore, the local regimes each covered
a period of about 360 years. The Paficdla kingdom at
Ahicchatrd must have lasted some 378 years. In none
of these cases can the arrival of the Kushans be placed
prior to around the middle of the second century AD,
significantly close to Ghirshman's date of 144.
H. Humbach of Munich is represented in the book by
a brief note replacing his original paper, and dealing
with the inscription found at the Surkh Khotal sanctuary. His interpretation of this difficult and much
argued text makes two special points. The ceremony
that took place in the 3 Ist year "put up the king and
the exalted Mithra": possibly two statues, but perhaps
only one, of Kaniska deified as the god Mithra. Later,
Kaniska is praised both as the son of Kozgaika, in the
human sense, and as "son of exalted Mithra". Humbach states that the year reckoning used follows a
"Bactrian Xiono era", which may have coincided
with the era of Kaniska known in India.
342

of optimumdesirabilityfor exportin the periodof

TrajanandHadrian.Stillmorerevealingwasthe find
at Jalalabadin the Ahin Posh stipa, where 20 gold
pieceswerefoundtogether.17 ot thesewereKushan
dinars, Io of Vima, six of Kaniska,and one of
Huviska;the earliestratherworn, the latest fresh.
The aureiwere of Domitian,Trajan,and Hadrian's
consort Sabina,the last strucksome time between
AD I28andher deathin 137.Sinceit waswell worn,
"thissuggeststhatthe depositwas not madebefore
ca.AD I6o... in the earlyyearsof Huviska."
More generally,MacDowallpointed out that the
coppers struckby Kujulahave the same size and
approximatelythe same weight as the worn silver
denariiof AugustusstillcirculatingundertheFlavians
(when they reachedoptimum status). Like other
numismatistsbeforehim, the authorcomparedthe
iconographyof a well-knownKujulacopper with
early Imperialprototypesin Rome: the obverse
portraitbust with a standardhead of Augustusor
Tiberius; the reverse figure seated on a folding
"curulechair"a lessclosecopy,butprobablyderived
froma Claudianoriginal.Addedto the iconographic
argumentspresentedby Gbbl, these considerations
persuadedMac Dowall that Kaniska'sdate should
be setatAD 128-129;thoughthepossibilipreferably
asAD I Io or 144werenot
ty of suchclosealternatives
excluded.
R. C.Majumdar
of Calcutta(notpresent)offereda line
to Kosambi's,attemptingto
of reasoningcomparable
findthe mostplausibleinterval,abouta centurylong,
fortheGreatKushansbetweenothermajorexpansions
of power in the periodbetweenthe Maurya-Suriga
breakupand the Guptanrevival.In additionto the
seriesof 20 kings and satrapsat Mathurdandthe 20
rulersat Kosambi,whoseindependenceshouldhave
occupied 350-4o00years,he cited the rulersof the
Northwestknownfromcoins,at least20 Greeksfollowedby an equalnumberof SakasandParthians,to
whom(atanaverageof 8 yearsperreign)he proposed
to assigntheperiodI20 BCto AD 200. In thewestthe
line of satrapsreacheda height of power with the
reignof Rudradimanof Ujjainin the secondcentury
AD, and only beganto declineca. AD 245. On the
otherhandtheChinesehistorythatnotesthevisit of a
Yiteh-chihembassyto the Weiroyalcourtin AD 230,
speaksof thepowerof theKushankingsasbeingthen
atits height.In addition,Majumdar
calledattentionto
the similaritybetweenKushanandearlyGuptanform
in coin iconographyandin paleography;specifically
lution of the Mathuranpedestal; while the big haloes

of the last two are important transitional works
heraldingthe much richerand betteradjustedsolution
of the High Guptan style. In an interesting aside van
Lohuizen suggested that the sudden change in the
iconography of Amaravati sculptures, where the
Buddha figure appears in quantity ca. AD I80-200,
was the result of a borrowing from late Mathuran
usage in the decades (I)o10to (I)40. If a markedlylater
date than AD 78 were chosen for the beginning of the
Kaniskanera, no such prototype for the phenomenon
at Amardvatiwould have been in existence.
The numismatist D.I. MacDowall of London
brought a new factor into the now generallyaccepted
relationship between Kushan and Roman coinage.
The widely exported Roman silver denarii were accepted outside the frontiersfor their actualsilver content, which was highest in the Julio-Claudianperiod
in unworn examples. In AD 64 Nero reduced both
the weight of the denariusand its silver content, and
under later emperorsthe alloy was furthercheapened.
Within the Romanempire, sincethe silver coinage was
legally valued well above its metalvalue, new and old
issues circulated freely without discrimination. Outside, the cheapened coins seem to have been unwelcome, and so few mintedafterAD 64 have been found
in India. Instead the pre"reform" denarii were accepted in a preferential order based on their silver
content, i.e. in inverse ration to their age and their
degree of wear. When the availablecoins of an "optimum" period, like those of Gaius, Claudius,and Nero
prior to 64, were largely exhausted, those of the period of Augustus and Tiberius would come into favor;
and in the next shift would come the surviving denarii
of the Republic.
MacDowall's paper continued by analysing the contents of severalimportantstipa deposits in the Northwest. The find in TaxilaStapaIV was straightforward,
bringing together as it did two unworn silver coins, a
denarius of Augustus struck ca. AD I1-13 and a
drachm of the Saka ruler Azilises. With a reasonable
time lag the deposit should have been made ca. AD
20-30. "Court'sTope" at Manikyalahad coin deposits
in two layers.The lower and richercenteredon a silver
urn holding seven worn Republicandenariiand a gold
vessel, which in turn held four gold quarterdinarsof
Kaniska,plus jewels. In terms of the Kushan evidence
the deposit should have been made in the middle or
late Kaniskanperiod. In respect to the Roman factor,
the Republican coins would have reached the stage
343

period when the foreign treasures that were to be

imported to his city, were being made.
In a second portion of his paper Maricq discussed the
relationship between the Saka Ksatrapas of Western
India and the "Saka era". His interpretation of the
chronological interlocking between the three great
powers whose inscriptions appear in the Buddhist
caves at Nasik, the Satrap Nahapdna, the Andhra king
Gautamiputra who defeated him, and the Saka Rudradaman who twice worsted the later Andhra ruler
between a pedestal of the Mathuran School dated in

the I4th year [this would be in the second century
series in van Lohuizen's system], and the Allahabad
pillar inscription itemizing Samudragupta's triumphs.
These various considerations led him to postpone the
Great Kushan century to the last possible period before
the Guptan expansion into the north, after the middle
of the fourth century. He called attention to "a wellknown era starting from AD 248-9" named after one
of its later users, the Kalacuri. No one hitherto had
Vlisisthiputra, appears in a convenient chart. With

reference to the theme of the London conference he
been able to explain its origin; for Majumdar it was the

last piece of the puzzle, the era begun by Kaniska.
The untimely death of A. Maricq of Paris cut short the
revision of his conference paper that he had planned.
The published version, appearing both in French and
in English, is the result of a careful comparison of the
various changes he had intended, one section at least
being complete but another covered only in outline.
His collaborator and final editor, J. Pirenne, points out
that Maricq's mind was never conclusively made up on
the central question. His subtitle reads "Two contributions in favor of AD 78 "; but at the end he commen-
suggested that the earliest personage known in

Rudradaman's line, the Satrap Castana, used like his
successors the "Saka era" but owed it, like his viceregal title, to the Kushan emperor, presumably Kaniska.
The era was so called because the Kushans were in
fact Sakas.
B. N. Mukbherjee
of Calcutta (not present) is represented
in the book by a short paper in favor of AD 78, based
largely on his explanation of the Rudradiman puzzle.
The latter's Junagadh inscription, dated Saka 72nd,
shows that at the middle of the second century he was
exercising independent authority over Sindh. The
Great Kushans, whose domain had included Sindh
ted that his arguments "would by no means preclude

144 from being the exact date after all."
Much of his attention was devoted to an attack on the
grounds for the AD 144 date proposed by Ghirshman:
the alleged signs at Begram that violent destruction
had ended the second city, where the latest coins were
ofVasudeva I; the evidence in Sapor I's great trilingual inscription at Naqsh-i-Rustam that the Sasanian
army must have passed through the Begram region
between AD 241 and 250 in its victorious progress
eastward; and finally the 98-year duration for the
Great Kushan century attested by its dated inscriptions.
since the conquests of Vima, must have held sway

there either before him or after. Good evidence that
the region was in Kushan hands during the reign of
Vasudeva I is provided by the find of 1438 of that
monarch's copper coins at the site of a Buddhist
monastery at Mohenjo Daro. At the very least the
Kushan emperors must have been suzerains in Sindh
for 61 years (to include the outset of Vasudeva),
presumably before Rudraddman's triumphant claim
dated AD 149. Mukherjee drew auxiliary evidence
from Kau'dmbi, where archaeological finds, and a
Buddha image of Mathuran type dated in Kaniska's
second, speak for a period of Kushan overlordship.
To Maricq, the Naksh-i-Rustam text should be used

neither to argue that Begram lay along the Persian
invasion route, nor even that the second city was the
For the independent Magha regime there, the earliest

known date is Saka 86, i.e. AD I 58-159.
A. K. Narain of Varanasi, who first conceived the idea
victim of a foreign war. As to its period of occupation,

he cited the most recent and careful studies of the treasure-trove unearthed there, which demonstrated that
century AD., as were the Chinese painted lacquers. The

Kushan coin finds at Begram had been reported with
a distressing vagueness; but at least there seemed to be
so few from Vasudeva's time that the destruction was
of the London meeting and was one of its most diligent

organizers, produced the longest and most ambitious
of the papers. The number of his arguments, suggestions, and decisions almost warrants a separate review.
Since that would be impracticable, his main points
will be transcribed below.
most likely to have taken place early in his long reign.

The choice of AD 78 for Kaniska's accession would
bring Vasudeva's to around AD 141, in the general
Objecting to dates for the Kaniskan era in the AD

I20's to I40's, Narain notes that with so late a start, a
Vasudeva II would still have been ruling ca. AD 275
all the Western objects probably originated in Alexandria and were datable around the middle of the first
344

(perhaps followed by a third of the name). That would

leave too short an interval in which to place the native
regimes in the north that broke away from Kushan
dominance, but were conquered again by Samudragupta ca. AD 3 5o: the Maghas, the Ndgas, the Yaudheyas, the Mdlavas, etc. At the same time these dates
clash with the fact that Rudradiman was great and
independent in the west and center of India ca. AD 15o.
Objecting to AD 78, he argued that the interval after
the last Saka and Pahlava kings would be too short to
accommodate the feats of Kujula and Vima. The "'Saka
era" of AD 78 was certainly used in a region, that
of the satraps of the West, where no Kushan overlordship can be proved; the Kushans were not Sakas.
Ghirshman's popular choice, AD 144 is particularly
untenable in view of the controversial character of the
evidence from Begram. Again, so late a year places an
uncomfortably wide interval between Vima and
Kaniska, for which no better entry is available than the
"Soter Megas" of the coins. The latter's coin iconography is hard to fit in after Vima; he was probably
Kujula.
Narain's stated preference was for an intermediate
starting year. He chose AD 1o3 to utilize a minor
political crisis in Chinese Turkestan recorded in the
Later Han History, the show of Yiieh-chih force that
placed on the throne of Kashgar one Ch'en-p'an, the
favorite candidate of the Kushan ruler, some time after
AD I19. (Han influence was temporarily at an ebb
after AD 103.) The travel record of the T'ang pilgrimmonk Hsitan-tsang, and his biography, speak of his
visiting a monastery at Kdpi'a founded by Kaniska
after his victories to accommodate the hostage(s) from
states that had earlier been tributary to China. In the
biography the story speaks of a single hostage, no
less than the son of the Chinese Son of Heaven. That,
Narain remarked, is of course out of the question.
Instead the prince must have been the one-time
refugee from Kashgar, Ch'en-p'an. Indeed, it was
pointed out as early as
that the name given for
190i
the monastery, Sha-lo-kia, is best explained as a reference to the Chinese name for Kashgar, Sha-le or
Sha-lo.
emperors found in Chinese Turkestan. The extent of

his victories was made possible in part becausehe was
a contemporary of Trajan (r. 89-I7); the two by
attacking Parthia from opposite sides brought the
Iranianrealm to humiliating impotence.
Narain's paper ends with a chart of "relevant Kharosthi and Brahmiinscriptions",calculatedaccording
to four eras: the first a "Yavana era" of 155 BC,
presumably stemming from the time of Menander;
then a Pahlava era of ca. 88 BC reckoned probably
"from the rise of the Pahlava dynasty of Vonones in
Seistan"; then the Saka era of AD 78; and his own
era" of AD 103.
"Kus.na
A
brief
very
paper by L.Petech of Rome, skimming
over "Kashmiriand Tibetan materials",producedone
item of possible historical relevance. The Tibetan
legendaryhistory of Khotan, the "Prophecy of the Li
Country", states that an invasion of India was undertaken by a composite armyunder "King Ka-ni-ka,the
ruler of Gu-zan [Guchen, or Kucha?] and the Li [i. e.
Khotanese] ruler, King Vijayakirti. The city of
So-ked [Saketa]was captured,andVijayakirtiobtained
many relics therefrom." Unfortunatelythe lastnamed
king cannot be placed chronologically (assumingthat
he existed).
of Cambridge(now of the University
E. G. Pulleyblank
of British Columbia)furnished a long series of references to Chinese records having to do directly, indirectly, or possibly, with the history of the Yiiehchih. I shall devote more attention below to this
aspect of the problem, and so shall summarizedrastically here. Pulleyblankfound that "there was indeed
strong circumstantialevidence for Kushanian penetration into the Tarim basin" [i. e. into Chinese
Turkestan] but could find no period in which so
violent a disturbance of Middle Asian power relationships was possible until AD 175,when the Eastern
Han regime in China was in trouble on all sides.
Kaniskabegan to rule in AD I44, or thereabouts,and
might still have managed"an invasion of the Tarim...
during the last years of his life."
J. M. Rosenfield
(then of Los Angeles, now of Harvard)
was neitherpresentnor was his paper receivedin time
for discussion; the contents were merely summarized
to the conferees by Narain. His proposals have since
been much more fully presented in his book The
DynasticArts of the
They center on the
Kushans,I967.
dynastic portrait sculptures found at Mathuri,
particularlyon the pedestal from Mit with fragments
of a large royal image which was probably that of
Thus in Narain's proposal it was Kaniska who intervened to place his favorite on the Kashgar throne. It
was Vima who dispatched his viceroy over the Pamirs
to meet defeat by Pan Ch'ao in AD 90; and it was
Vasudeva II, after the regime was on the downgrade,
who sent the embassy to China in AD 230. Kaniska's
coins are the most numerous of those of the Kushan
345

Huviska. The inscription speaks of the founding of a

dynastic shrine, devakula,which had fallen into dilapidation and was restored on behalf of "the life and
strengthof the MaharajaRajatirajaHuviska."According to the translationused by Rosenfield,roughed out
by Daya Ram Sahni and reworked by Agrawala, the
text opens:
"The grandfatherof MaharajaRijatirIja Devaputra
Huviska, on whom (since he was found to be) the
fiercest hero of all, the kindgom had been bestowed,
in his compassion by Kara who was steadfastin the
True Law. Of him a devakulaand also a tank had
existed)..."
Rosenfield emphasizedthat the Kushan donor of the
restoration "wanted to demonstrate the dynastic
legitimacy of Huviska." His grandfather was preof the
sumablyVima. The "Kara Satyadharmasthita"
Brahmitext was probably Kujula, elsewhere referred
to as "Kujula Karasa Kusana yavugasa dhramathidasa" or a variantthereof.
It is interestingto note the very differentconnotations
of the translationof the samepassageused by Bussagli
(on the basis of Sahni withoutAgrawala).The devakula
built by the grandfather was commissioned by
Huviska "who had restored their kingdom to fierce
heroes when they entreatedmercy."
Like Bussagli, Rosenfield stressed the signs of dynastic disorderbetween Kaniska'slast certaininscription in his 22ndyear andthe revival under Huviska in
the 40's of the era. Since he preferred to begin the
Kaniska era in the period ca. AD I10o-115,this time
of troubles would have fallen between the 13o's and
15o's. It might have lasted long enough and have
been enough of a temporary setback to permit
Rudradamanin the southwest to expand and claim
independencein AD 150o.
Rosenfield'sother concernin the paperwas to support
van Lohuizen's "second series of dated inscriptions
from Mathuri" which recognize Kushan authority
continuing after the reign of Vasudeva I (and his
98th year inscription). These name another Kaniska,
and a Vasaska,and continue at least until
a
Vaskus.Ha,
a
year. He was not preparedto accept van Lo57th
huizen's theory that this group simply omitted the
Ioo's digit in reckoning its years, but admittedthat it
must have begun not long after the final year of the
first series. His very useful last contribution was a
catalogue of all inscriptions "pertainingto the IndoScythian dynasties at Mathuri", from the Mahikgat-
rapa Rajula of the "Lion capital" through a total of

1o5 entries.
D. C. Sircarof Calcutta(not present)presenteda paper
on "paleographicaland epigraphical evidence". As
developed this was much less concernedwith detailed
analyses of writing styles than the paper by Dani
already referred to, and more an evaluation of era
theories. The pre-Guptaninscriptions, as Sircar saw
them, made use of two eras, both undoubtedly nonIndian in origin: one that might be called ScythoParthian, and the other Kaniska's. The interval between their starting years was apparentlysomething
over a century. At Mathuri the earlierwas still being
followed in its 72nd year, under the Mahaksatrapa
Sodasa, when Amohini dedicated her carved stone
tablet to the Jains. In the Panjtarinscription of the
year i22, apparently also Scytho-Parthian,the first
known reference occurs to a Kushan ruler, usually
identified as Kujula. To Sircarit seemed only natural
to link these two chronological systems with the two
eras that survived into much later times, the Vikrama
of 58 BC and the 8aka of AD 78.
B.Staviskiyof Leningrad(not present) offered a very
brief resumeof earlierRussianstudies of CentralAsia,
and generalreferencesto the finds of Kushan cultural
data made by Soviet expeditions beginning in the
1930o'sand resumedafterthe Second World War,in the
mid '40's. He spoke in passing of acceptingAD 78 for
Kaniska, but left the presentationof the most important new argumentsthereforto his colleague Tolstov.
of Moscow, the specialist in the archaeS. P.
Tolstoy
ology of ancient Khorezm (present Uzbekistan),
concentratedhis report on the finds he had made in
in the astonishing palace-fortress of
I-1955
195
Toprak-Kala. There the highest general interest
naturallyattachesto the remainsof the building with
its remarkablewall painting and sculptures. There
are several aids to dating the complex. The town and
its environs yielded I6 coins from Vima through
Vasudeva; the four or five reigns accountingfor 4,3,3,
and 6 respectively. Within the single cultural level
found throughout the palace were turned up one of
Huviska, much worn, and 3 of Vasudeva I or II, plus
a half dozen post-Kushan pieces issued by the first
Khorezmiankings. Among the ioo or so fragmentary
documents, written on wood or leather in a script of
Aramaicorigin, that madeup the palacearchiveswere
and 232 or 222 of an
three dated in the years 207,
23I,
unspecifiedera. Kushan ceramicshave been found in
very largequantitiesin Khorezm,andtheirtypological
346

analysis has been worked out with great precision.

Two carbon 14 dates were secured for the region
around Toprak-Kala, the later being taken from a
kiln where the ceramic evidence pointed to the late
Kushan period; its date was AD 180.
The Middle Asian chronologies collected by the
Moslem historian al-Birfni include three eras for
ancient Khorezm, the first two legendary; the last,
presumably historical, places the beginning of
consecutive dating with the reign of a king named
Afrig, in a year correspondingto AD
30o5.
[The number given by al-Bironi is the year 616 after
the death of Alexander the Great.]
Tolstov has worked out a complex succession of
events that involve the use of the Toprak-Kalapalace
during slightly more than a century,from late Kushan
times through perhapsnine native Khorezmianrulers,
identifiable by their coins. With Afrig's accession a
new site was chosen and Toprak-Kalawas abandoned.
To suit this situation, Tolstov selected the AD 78
alternativefor Kaniska, and for the Great Kushan era
the 98 years attested by inscriptions. This terminates
the reign of Vasudeva I in AD 176, close to the radiocarbon date of 80.o.The three dated documentswould
have been written in a transitionalperiod thereafter,
when Kushan coins were still in circulationbut were
counterstruck with a Khorezmian S-like sign. Still
dated in the Kaniska-Sakaera, they would fall in the
yearsAD 284, 308, and 309 (or 2z99),at the very end of
the palace'soccupancy.
A.K. Warderof Edinburgh offered a study of "the
possible dates of Piriva, Vasumitra(II), Caraka,and
Mitrceta, deduced from Buddhist traditions and the
history of literature and philosophy". The first two
of these are said to have been leading figures at the
Kashmir Buddhist Council convoked by Kaniska.
Carakawas traditionally his physician as well as an
importantphilosopher. Mgtrcetais rememberedas the
writerof an epistle to the MahirajaKaniskaor Kanika.
A complex nexus of names and dates was worked out,
including also the Buddhist patriarchNigarjuna, his
traditionalcontemporarythe Andhra king Pulumlyi
II, and the triad of Saka/Andhra rulers Nahapina,
Gautamiputra, and Rudradiman, associated by
inscriptions at Nasik. Out of this tangle Warder
brought AD 78 as the most workable alternativefor
the Kaniskanera.KaniskaI, the patronof the Kashmir
Council, and Piriva were roughly contemporary, as
were Vasumitra II (as an old man) and Nigirjuna.
Mitrceta, said to have been converted by a pupil of
Nagirjuna,
presumably wrote his letter to a later
Kaniska (II or III), who followed directly after

Vasudeva I.
The paper from F. Wilhelm of Munich was entitled
"Kanika and Kaniska -Asvaghosa and Matrceta".
Here we learn more about the last-named and his
letter, the Kanikalekha; i. e. that it was a reply to King
Kanika's invitation to come and instruct him in
Mahyidna tenets; and that the writer excused himself
on grounds of old age. Wilhelm drew what he could
from all available sources, chiefly Tibetan; but unlike
Warder concluded that their sum was too contradictory for safe historical use.
E.Ziircher of Leyden presented the final paper, "The
Yiieh-chih and Kaniska in the Chinese sources". This
begins by a general evaluation of the two kinds of
textual material available in Chinese, secular and
Buddhist. The former was selected by the Chinese
historian, from an enormous mass of available information, for very special and limited purposes as an
adjunct to imperial Weltpolitik. The results may in
some cases be remarkably precise and of the highest
historical value. In other cases they may fail the modern
historian completely. For the Buddhist material no
such standards existed, and the literature as a whole
is very far from chronological sobriety. On the other
hand Chinese practicality may be present, and very
useful, in the bibliographical notes that accompany
many of the translations into Chinese.
Ziircher pointed out one such piece of information
which if taken with reasonable goodwill might have
a bearing on Kaniska's date. This has to do with a
noted Buddhist doctor named Safigharaksa who
appears as a Church patriarch in one of the varying
lists. According to the preface to the Chinese version
of one of his treatises, written in AD 384 by the noted
scholar-monk Tao-an (who had the information via
a missionary from Kashmir), Safigharaksa had served
as chaplain to Kaniska. Another treatise by him, the
important Yocacarabhimi,was translated by the earliest
Western missionary to do such work in China, the
"Parthian" An Shih-kao, who reached the Han capital
in AD 148 and died around I7o. Whatever time-lag
may be most
decades
claimed that appropriate--several
these facts indicate "AD 140 ?--Ziircher
as a watertight terminus ante quem for Kaniska." "He chose to
place the beginning of the reign-era "around the
beginning of the second century".
On the other hand Ziircher found little plausibility in
the picturesque story derived from Hsiian-tsang's
347

Dani chose the later terminus on which both tests

agreed; and placing this year in the reign of Kaniska,
decided on AD 78 as the initial year of his era. (An
introductorynote by Basham,dated I968, remindsthe
reader that the year chosen would be that when the
timbers were first cut, not when they were burned, so
that "this evidence is not absolutelyconclusive".)
I shall say something more about the ShaikhanDheri
finds below.
travel record, of the hostages' monasteryfounded by

Kaniskato house the sons of Han allies.
Ziircher's secular translations range from the Shih
chi'saccount of Chang Ch'ien's mission to the Yiiehchih, as far as the account of the lesser Yiieh-chih
headed by Kidara in the History of the Northern
Dynasties, Pei shih.The bulk of his Buddhist material
comes from the descriptionsof the Gandharancapital
region and of Kaniska's careeras royal donor, given
by the great pilgrims, Fa-hsien, Sung Yiin and Huisheng, and Hsiian-tsang. Other, miscellaneous excerptsagreein showing him as a greatconquerorand a
devout convert. In the most varied of these, the Fufa
chuan,translatedaround470, he is shown
tsangyinyiian
attacking the king of Pataliputra,and being bought
off by the latter'sraresttreasures:the sage Advaghosa
in person, the Buddha's alms-bowl, and a "luckbringing hen". He meets the king of Parthiain battle
and routs him, slaying 900,000. He plans one last
conquest against the still independent "country
bordering on the northern sea" (all the rest having
submitted), and is murdered by his warweary ministers.
Ziircher'spaperaspublishedterminatesin alist of characters for proper names, followed by their hypothetical pronunciationsin the two stages of B. Karlgren's
reconstruction, the "archaicChinese" of ca. 600ooBC
and the "ancientChinese"of ca. AD 600.
In the book a first appendix gives in English the passages relating to the one-time Kushan domain from
the Arabic history by Tabari: one dealing with
Ardashir'sinitial conquest; the second with the annihilation of an invasion by "Turks" (i. e. Hephthalites)
by BahrSimV Gor; and the third with the alliance
formed between the refugee SasanianprincePeroz and
the Haitrl (Hephthalites). The second appendix is a
ten-page bibliography in English of Soviet works
"in which questions dealing with the history of the
Kushans are discussed", contributedby Stavisky.
An addendum received too late for inclusion in the
Thediscussions:
The sessions at which the papers presented to the
conference were discussed, were summarized by
G. L. Adhya and N.K. Wagle. Further to boil down
this resume - to give for example even a list of the
topics discussed and the differencesof opinion revealed-would extend the present review to a wholly
unreadablelength. I propose instead to make a few
general observations and to call attention to a very
smallnumberof arguments.
To judge by the published summary,the discussions
rangedvery unevenly over the two dozen or so papers.
It should not surprise or sadden professional readers
of ArtibusAsiae to learnthat almost nothing was said
about the purely art historical problems raised.
Rosenfield's persuasivelyargued paper was available
to the conferees only in a r&sumeby Narain, at the
session on archaeology; and apparentlyevoked only
the commentby van Lohuizenthat "it provided useful
materialfor dynastic evidence". His proposal that the
Kaniskaerabegan between AD i i o and i 15 (basedon
the Mathurdmaterial),was reportedto the session on
epigraphy,without anyrecordedcomments.Bussagli's
contribution, again, was referredto only in passing,
as again assigning the "Kaniska casket" to Kaniska's
reign. Van Lohuizen spoke frequently; but only her
long-familiarclaim,thatthe earlyerausedin the Northwest was based on the Yiieh-chih conquest of Bactria
in AD 129 was noted (to be rejected by Narain and
Tolstov).
Eggermont also spoke frequently, and chaired the
session on Classicaland Iraniansource materials;but
out of the bewildering shower of yearsand hypotheses
in his paperonly the smallest,most tangibleitem in the
last postscript was extractedfor mention, his Roman
citation about the third (presumably Kushan) Scy-
main body of the book is a summaryby A. H.Dani of

the radiocarbontest results on the timbers of a large
mansion excavated by him at ShaikhanDheri in the
PeshawarDistrict of West Pakistan. Two periods of
occupationwere indicatedby a differencein strata;the
earlier, datable by Kushan coin finds, was destroyed
by fire "during the time of Kaniska". Two tests of
charredwood samplesfrom this stratum,made at two
differentAmerican university laboratories,gave date
ranges of (I) 147 BC to AD 93; (2) 47 BC to AD 93.
thian empire. Absolute
silence seems to have greeted
Majumdar'sattemptto reintroducea thirdcenturyAD

alternative for the Kaniska era; and likewise Hum348

by a new speaker on Khorezmian archaeology, B.I.

Vainberg.)
The London symposiasts showed a general interest in
the question of eras as a record-keeping device. None
questioned the premise that the idea was originally
non-Indian. None, apparently, wished to discuss
Eggermont's claim that an era of long duration -a
successful era-had always some link to religious
tradition. Statements were made on one side or another
bach's proposed distinction between a first Kaniska

commemorated at Surkh Khotal, and a second who
issued the familiar coins.
On the other hand a non-participant, R.Ghirshman,
was constantly referred to in connection with his
dating of the levels at Begram and his choice of AD
144. Those who accepted part or all of this hypothesis
(G6bl, Gupta, MacDowall, Pulleyblank) did so because it fitted best into their own proposals. Those
who rejected it in part or totally had of course to
produce counter-arguments, as did Tolstov from the
Russian standpoint, Ziircher from the Chinese, Maricq
in relation to the Begram finds, and Narain on a
variety of grounds. An interesting development was
the Russian delegates' rejection of Ghirshman's
attempt to interpret recent Soviet archaeological
finds in support of his Begram dating.
Tolstov's claims, presented with great energy and
conviction and several times reiterated, were challenged at two exposed points, the dates announced as AD
180 and 305. In relation to the first, when the question
of a factor of uncertainty in carbon-14 dating was
raised, he granted "a margin of a few decades only",
asserting that the tests had been carried out with the
utmost care. He rejected the suggestion by Kosambi
that the tests' results might have been affected by
"atom-bomb trials" in the area, ,since "in the opinion
of the Soviet atomic scientists the effect of the radioactive contamination can be eliminated." He made no
of the unarguable question whether it was more reasonable to expect a minimum number of early eras (e. g.
two, the "Vikrama" and the "Saka"), or to view their
creation as a matter of political expediency, easily
repeated. As shown above, Narain's chronological
table was based on four eras, ranging from 155 BC
to AD o103,created in succession by four invaders.
Rosenfield preferred not to follow van Lohuizen's
theory that a second century of dedications in Mathurd
sculpture was dated consecutively with the first, with
the hundreds digit omitted. On the other hand he made
no suggestion as to the reason why or by whom a new
reckoning should have been started, only a few years
different from the Kaniskan. The most exotic intruder
into the era discussion was the "Bactrian Xsono era"
mentioned by Humbach. The least welcomed was
Majumdar's "Kalacuri era" started in 248-249,
proposed as Kaniska's under an Indian disguise.
Several conference members took an active interest in
the reliability of archaeological evidence, particularly
in the association of coin deposits and building periods
outlined by Allchin. The claims for a direct relationship between Roman and Kushan coinage provoked
a lively discussion. G6bl's citation of iconographic
parallels during the Great Kushan century, operating
with a time lag of about 25 years, was received with
respectful attention. Several references were made to
the importance for dating purposes of the nineteenth
complaint when Kosambi spoke of o50years as the

maximum permissible margin of error under normal
conditions.
In relation to his date of AD 30oSfor the commencement of the Afrigid era in Khorezm, the discussion
rtsumb is something less than pellucid. When the
subject was first brought up, he is quoted as speaking
of an era of "320"; one might think this a misprint,
except that he also referred to the possibility that
"Afrig founded his era about 25 years later, which is
not impossible, but there is no reason to assume it."
(The maximum variation in the first case, So years, is
of course just the interval between the two classical alternatives for the Kaniskan era, AD 78 and 128. The
"not impossible" postponement of 20 to 30 years for
the Afrigid era would suit the compromise Kaniskan
dates of Narain and Rosenfield, in the early years of
the second century AD. It may profitably be noted
here that at the next grand conference on Kushan
studies, held under Russian auspices at Dushambe in
1968, Tolstov's claim for AD 78 was explicitly rejected
century coin find in the Ahin Posh stipa, where Kushan

pieces as late as Huviska's and a Roman coin as late
as the Empress Sabina's (ca. AD 128-136) were associated. A comment that coins minted in the same year
may have very different uses and so show a wide
variation in wear, was directed against MacDowall's
optimum metal content theory.
An Orient oder Rom echo, briefly sounded during the
discussion, is worth quoting:
"Professor Sharma asked if it could be ascertained
with absolute certainty whether the
coins were
Kus.na
copied from the Romans or whether the Romans
copied
from Kusina
prototypes.
349

Dr.MacDowall
mate durations to non-Kushan dynasties by the number of their rulers, known through coins or the Purdnas, giving an average number of years to each - I18by
Gupta, 8 by Majumdar-was strongly rejected by
Basham and Narain. It is worth noting that Majumdar's paper allotted a duration of "from three to four
hundred years" to the rules of the 40-odd Greek,
Saka, and Parthian monarchs in the Northwest; Narain
[answered that] no pattern books, on which the coin

designs were based, have survived in the Roman
Empire or in Kusdna territory, but Roman coins have
coins
been found in north-west India, and no
Kus.na
in the west. Professor Kosambi thought that patterns
were borrowed by both the Romans and the Kusinas
from Alexandria. The question of the copying of one
by the other (especially Kusinas copying the Romans)
does not arise. Perhaps the Romans hired the pattern
makers earlier than the Kusinas..."
during the discussion placed the same sequence within

two centuries.
(To be continued)
The modern historians' practise of assigning approxi-
BIBLIOGRAPHIA
historians. With considerable courage and forthrightness, Dr. Barnhart decides emphatically in favor
of the first alternative and, while in this study of Tung
Yiian he is working with but one small part of a
much larger problem, he demonstrates the effectiveness of his approach.
The book is divided into three chapters: I. "The
RichardBarnhart,Marriageof theLordof the River. A

Lost Landscape
byTungYiian[ = Artibus Asiae SuppleArtibus Asiae
mentum XXVII]. Ascona,SwitTerland:
Publishers,z97o. Pp. do + o plS. $
I4.25.
It is some indication of the progress made in the
study of Chinese painting in the decade since the
historic ChineseArt Treasuresexhibition in 196i-62,
that a book can be written about one of the greatest
early landscapemasters in which the author declines
to accept as genuine a single work traditionally
attributed to that master. Dr. Barnhart goes even
further. With refreshing candor, he states that few
works assigned to great masters before the fifteenth
century can be regardedas unquestionablyauthentic.
He correctly pinpoints the major problem now confronting historians of Chinese painting as "simply
one of identification-of the 'hand' of the master, if
authentic works have survived; of the most reliable
copies, if not". He also acknowledges that solution
of this problem in turn necessitatesan understanding
of the context in which a particularartistlived. In the
case of Chinese painting the problem is further complicated by a plethora of later copies, forgeries, and
misleading attributions. Faced with this situation,
Dr. Barnhartbelieves the historian must choose between initially accepting "everything of, pretending
to be of, or thought by someone to be of the period
in question"; or restricting himself to those few
monuments which have been archeologicallyauthenticated. It is on just this point that several clearly
divided factions have emerged among contemporary
Marriageof the Lord of the River"; II. Tung Yiian;

and III. Tung Yiian and Chao Meng-fu. A list of
references (pp.
6) and a glossary of Chinese char55-5
acters (pp. 57-60) occupy the remaining pages. In the
first chapter Dr. Barnhart discusses the subject matter
and the possible relationship between the two handscrolls in the Palace Museum, Peking, and in the
Northeast Museum, Liao-ning. In plate 6, the two
scrolls are joined to form a convincing reconstruction of the original composition. There seems little
doubt that the two handscrolls provide slightly overlapping sections of a longer composition, even though
they are executed in somewhat differing interpretations of the same style.
Dr. Barnhart suggests that the composition may be
identical with that described tersely by Chou Mi as
having been brought back to south China in 1295 by
Chao Meng-fu. Chou Mi identifies the subject of that
handscroll as the story of the Marriage of the Lord of
the River. Later writers have questioned the validity
of Chou Mi's identification, but no more convincing
theory has been forthcoming. Attached to the Peking
fragment are three colophons by Tung Ch'i-ch'ang.
The first colophon, dated 1599, is of particular im-
350

Recent Studies Involving the Date of Kanika: [Continued]

Papers on the Date of Kanika by A. L. Basham
Review by: Alexander C. Soper
Artibus Asiae, Vol. 34, No. 1 (1972), pp. 102-105+107-113
Published by: Artibus Asiae Publishers
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BIBLIOGRAPHIA
RECENT
STUDIES
THE DATE
INVOLVING
OF KANISKA
A Reviewarticle
BY ALEXANDER C. SOPER
II*
Sequelsto London:G'bl, Zeymal,Lukonin:
At London one of the most persuasivesupportersof
a mid secondcenturydatefor Kaniskaproved to be the
numismatist Robert Gbbl. Much of the wide experience and intensive study from which his very brief
paper was condensed, may be examined in the study
of Kushan imperial coinage he had published three
yearsearlier,as partof a book by severalspecialistson
LateAntique financialhistory.IThat too is a summary,
cut down to suit the dimensions of a chapter;but the
remarkablebreadth of its coverage, the precision of
its details, and its factual density make it a monograph of first importance.
For our present purpose the most interesting part of
this statementis its finale. Like almost everyone else,
Gbbl acceptedthe inscriptionalevidence that Kaniska
and his great successors ruled for approximately a
century. The coinage that immediatelyfollows indicates a division of the empire into two halves, with
Gandhira as a frontier region. To the north a ruler
who called himself Vasudeva, presumablythe second
of the name, continuedto mint gold and copper pieces
in the style of his probable father Vasudeva I: showing the king standing in armor before an altaron the
obverse and a frontal Siva standing in front of his
bull on the reverse. In the southern, more purely Indian realmthe first rulerwas anotherKaniska,whom
Gbbl calls KaniskaII. He too used the king-and-altar
design, and occasionallythe Siva-Nandicomplement;
but much more often the obverse of his coins shows
an iconographic novelty, the goddess of plenty called
to
* Part I see Artibus Asiae, vol.-33, 1971, fasc.4, PP.-339
350.
r R. G6bl, "Die Miinzprigung der Kusdn von Vima Kadand R. Stiehl,
phises bis Bahrdm IV", in F. Altheim
der
Frankfurt/Main
1957,
Spatantike,
FinanZgeschichte
chap. 8, pp.-173-2566.
Ardoxsho seated frontally in Western fashion on a

high-backedthrone.
In the south a Kushan sequence is traceablethrough
rulers who may be called Kaniska III and Vasudeva
III, leading to the obliteration of the line at the mid
fourth century by the early Guptas. In the northern
domain the end came somewhat more quickly, under
pressure from Iran. In presenting the series of Kushano-Sasaniancoins that mark the change in sovereignty, Gbbl in 1957 had alreadymoved toward a
position notably different from those taken by his
predecessors,Herzfeld, Bataille, Ghirshman,and Bivar. Like Batailleand Bivar, he pointed out a perfect
transitionpiece in the British Museum's collection, a
gold coin clearlybased on the Vasudeva formula but
new and Sasanianin the ball of curly hair at the base
of the neck, the beard and fringed riding trousers
given Giva,and the addition of flamesabove the little
altar. The legend, as adapted by Bivar to the Latin
alphabets, reads HORMIZD VUZURG KUSHANSHAH.2
Gbbl's second stage is a coin in which the rulerwears
a lion's-head helmet rather than the Kushan Spitqhelm.3In the third stage this is surmountedby a conspicuous finial shaped something like an artichoke,
and completed behind by upward-flutteringribbons.
Both of these have legends that again are read as
HORMIZD, written with minor script variations.*
It was in the identification of this first Persian Kushanshah that Gabl most strikingly showed his independence. The earlierconsensus, assuming that the
2 Ibid., pl. 14, series I, no.-320, p.222. Cf. G.Bataille in
Arithuse, fasc. 18, 1, 1928, pp.-27ff.; also A. D. H. Bivar,
"The Kushano-Sassanian coin series", in jour.Num.
Soc.Ind., 18, 1956, p. 14, coin no.2.
3 G6bl. op.cit., series
Bivar's
2, nos. 321-25, 327, p.222;
coin
no. 34 G6bl, series 3, nos.326, 328, PP- 222-23; Bivar's coin
no.4.
Ioz

Sasanian conquest had taken place under Ardashir or

I, in the first decades of the new dynasty,
Shppfr
concluded that the viceroy with the lion's helm was
the prince who eventually came to full power at
Ctesiphon as Hormizd I (r.AD 272-z73).s For G6bl
in 1957 there was no such early conquest, and the
Kushanshah was instead Hormizd II (r.AD 3oz to
ruler of all Iran as well as of the Kushan
3o9), already
domain. Since there is a story, retailed by the fifteenth
century historian Mirchond or Mirkhond, that Hormizd II married the daughter of the king of Kabul,
G6bl preferred to see the Sasanian takeover as a
peaceable one.6
Two closely related gold coin types, with a more
normal Sasanian crown under the artichoke and the
name BAHRAM, were in the same way shifted by
Gbbl's hypothesis to a later generation. Instead of
indicating one or another of the princes who succeeded Hormizd I as shah of shahs in the last quarter
of the third century, they are to be taken as representing a viceroy at Balkh, otherwise unknown.7 In token
of this lower status the figure, though crowned and
standing in the old royal position, has no nimbus;
HORMIZD's coins show the halo that had been typical of Kushan designs since the reign of Vima.
A coin type related in a different way, with the ruler
shown as a frontal bust, bears the legend SAH or
SHA PIROSA. Here too Gobl provided a surprise:
the name is not that of the Piruz or Peroz, son of
Ardashir, whom Herzfeld had set as Kushanshah at
the middle of the third century.8 It is in fact not a
name at all but an epithet, meaning victor in battles,
we are told by the Roman observer Amwhich
--as
mianus was applied by the Persian troops to Shipar
II a century later.
In his London paper G6bl connected this late evidence with the Kaniska problem in a single crisp
which I have made a little clearer
sentence (p.
io7),
by italicized insertions:
"Placing the beginning of the Kani.skaera in AD 144
we would find Vasudeva I ending in AD 242;&the
series would then continue under T/asudevaII until
One apparently minor change in his statement at

London created a curious dilemma. In his Kushan
monograph Gbbl had assigned to Vasudeva I the traditional Kushan mints at Balkh and Peshawar. In
analysing the sequels produced by Vasudeva II he had
pointed to a B sign, taken to represent the northern
mint at Balkh. His stand in 1960 emphasized another
kind of mint mark, which had earlier been used by
Vima and reappeared under Vasudeva II, the symbol
nicknamed the Triratna or Nandi-pada. This, he had
been persuaded, was apparently the sign for Taxila;
and that city had been used as a mint by the Kushan
ruler because Shipfr I had overrun the territories to
the northwest, including the old capital, Peshawar.9
What became of Vasudeva II's role as a "northern"
emperor under these circumstances was not explained. Neither was any attempt made to reconcile
the fact of an invasion in the AD z40's with a peaceful
joining of the two states and the first appearance of
Kushano-Sasanian coinage, two generations later.
In 1963, during a two-week visit to the British Museum to gather material for a new study, G6bl was
shown an unpublished object that drastically altered
his former hypotheses. "Mistakenly filed" in the
Guptan section, this was a coin-sized gold medallion,
somewhat rudely mounted for use as an ornament.
On the obverse was the unmistakable bust of a late
Roman emperor, facing right, identified by a maltreated legend as CONSTANTINUS
MAX(imus)
AVG(ustus). On the reverse was a standing, nimbed
female deity holding a cornucopia, also facing right,
identified as ARDOXSHO, the favorite late Kushan
goddess of plenty, in a barabarized script. Under the
cornucopia Gbbl identified what he calls a tamga, a
symbol identifying the issuing Kushan ruler (presumably derived from the nomad's horse brand).
rather
G6bl recognized the goddess as related to the
coins.
his
for
series
chosen
first
numerous
by Huviska
of his
He took the tamga also as
Huviska's, typical
late period except for its lack of one horizontal line.1o
The East Roman original of this "r~misch-kusanisches
9 Ibid., pp.
110o-II ; based on A. Simonetta, "A new essay
on the Indo-Greeks, the ?akas, and the Pahlavas",East
and West, Rome, vol.9, 3, 1958, p.-172 and drawing
no.-3o9, Table I.
10After a preliminary disclosure of his discovery in the
AnZeigerof the Vienna Akad. der Wiss., Phil.-hist.
Klasse, 1964, Gbbl presented the full-fledged statement
in his DokumenteZur Gesch. der IranischenHunnenin
and
BaktrienundIndien,Wiesbaden, 1967,
IL, PP-301ff.
pl. 92 in vol.III.
HormizdII for 60 years, agreeablewith the reign of

a single Kushan ruler living a long life, as did his
predecessors."
s Thus Herzfeld in his "Kushano-Sassaniancoins", Arch.
Soc. of India Memoirsno.-38, I930, p.-30, no.9.
6 G6bl,
op.Cit.,p.-225,
7 Ibid., coins nos. 333, Z41.
334, P. 2A5.
2
8 Ibid.,
p.-23.1
1o3

G*bl dated in AD 325-326, the date

Mischmedaillon"
when Constantineadopted a jewelled diadem of the
type shown on his head. He called attention also to a
similarissue of the mint at Nikomedia, dated 330, in
which the reverse is occupied by a figure of the city
goddess of Constantinople,shown as a thronedfemale
holding a cornucopia. This Tyche was to him the
prototype for the throned Ardoxsho, a standard
feature of the coinage of Kaniska II. He assumed,
on which the godtherefore, that the Miscbmedaillon,
dess is still shown standing, was createdby a Kushan
craftsmanlate in the reign of Vasudeva I, between
326 and 330. Since the Great Kushan dynasty lasted
approximately a century it follows that Kaniska
should have begun his era around AD z 30.
0To substantiatethis drasticchronological shift, G-bl1
examined once more the evidence he had amassedfor
the start of the Kushano-Sasaniancoin series (and so
for the end of the dynasty's independence, at least in
the north). Now he reads the legend on his unique
transitional gold-piece, where the ruler wears a
Kushan pointed helmet and armor,but has a Sasanian
ball of curls at the nape of his neck -not as Hormizd
but as PEROZ. As before he took this not as a personal name, but as an epithet given by his troops to
ShdpfirII. To judge by historical evidence, the latter
conqueredthe Kushans in AD 356-357. The defeated
Kushan emperor,VasudevaII, must have had a fairly
long reign prior to this disaster, since his coin types
are varied and show a good deal of change. His predecessors in the Great Kushan century ruled on the
average 33 years apiece, and so may he.12
One furtherdetail suggests the time when he took the
throne after the death of Vasudeva I. The Armenian
church historian Moses of Chorene tells that Constantine the Great invited to the Council of Nicaea
(in AD 3z5) the then Armenian king Tiridates. The
latter declined, on the grounds that he had learnedof
an allianceformer by Shliparwith "the king of India
and the Kakhan of the East" and feared to leave his
land in the face of such a potential threat. These two
arelikely to have been CandraguptaI and some leader
of what G~bl calls the Iranian Huns. Their joining
with Shlpar - then, 6 years old, just ready to act on
his own--must have been directed against the Kushans, and presumably was timed to take advantage
of Kushan confusion after the death of Vasudeva I
Ix
12
and the rivalry between his sons that was to split the
empire. On these grounds G'bl thought it plausible
to date the old emperor'sdeath bewteen AD 325 and
330."
As we have seen, Helmut Humbach in his contribution to the published London conference papers
spoke brieflyof two bilingual inscriptionsfrom Tochi
in Waziristan(West Pakistan)found by G-bl in the
Peshwar Museum. Through the use of the Islamic
Hegira dating system, it was possible to assign one of
these to a previously unnoticed Bactrian "Xsono"
era beginning in AD 23o. Humbach's decision was
that this can have had nothing to do with the Great
Kushans; G6bl naturallytook it as Kaniska's,and so
as a very welcome corroboration. (He explains that
"Xsono" means in theyear, as in the inscription at
Surkh Khotal.)14
Gbbl announced this new date quietly, disclaiming
any unseemly Hubris. He merely added that it now
lies with the other disciplines to reexaminetheir relationships with the central theme (of Kushan chronology)."s
At the Dushambe conference in 1968 a Russian delegate, E.V. Zeymal, returned to the initial Kaniskan
year, AD z87, proposed by D. Bhandarkaras long
ago as 1899. In that system the "Saka era" of AD 78
was identified with the pre-Kushan, unknown or
unnamed era which the London conferences had
linked to various dates before Christ,most frequently
to 58 BC. In that first era the dates may be traced in
inscriptions through two centuries; the Kaniskanera
followed immediatelythereafter,making a third century. Vasudeva's reign thus ended in AD 376, a date
with the
Zeymal's
which--in
proposal--agrees
known late fourth century
conquests of the Kushan
empire by Iran and Guptan India.
(Such is the substance of Zeymal's proposal as summarizedin the book KushanStudiesin U. S. S. R., Calcutta, I970.-6 In addition, according to a report by
RichardFrye, "Zejmal on the basis of a study of the
whole series of gold Kushan coins concluded that the
Roman parallels are found only in the third and
fourth centuriesA.D. According to him, the development of stylistic features of, for example, the
Diana figure, from a short dress to a long dress, and
13
Ibid.,II, pp. 296-99.

14 Humbach in Papers, p. I22; GObl, Dokumente,
I, pp.
164-65.
1s G6bl, ibid., II, p.-3o0.
16 Kusban Studies,
pp.-152-53.
Ibid., II, pp. 307-08.

Ibid., II, pp.-292-94.
Io4

..
.
.
w...li~i!
i4
Plate i
On the left, enlarged obverse and reverse views of gold medallion, British Museum
(re-photographed by courtesy of the Museum). On the right, illustrations reproduced from G6bl, Iranischen Hunnen, pl. 92. 1 shows the same medallion at original
size, and 1-e the same without border. 2, 3, 4 are coins of Constantine I; 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
are coins of Huviska showing the goddess Ardoxsho.

to
from springing with bent bow to a standing figure,

can be tracedon Roman provincial coins especiallyof
Anatolia only in the time period mentioned above
0..")
17
At Dushambe also a paperby V. G. Lukonin explained

the apparentcontradictionbetween this new chronological system and the previously currentbelief, based
on the Naksh-i-Rustam inscription of AD z6z, that
the Kushan domains had alreadyfallen into the hands
of Shipfir I. The lattermerely claimedsuch conquests;
actual Sasanian domination is proved only by the
series of Kushano-Sasaniancoins, celebrating victories at the end of the very long reign of Shipfir II,
which reached until AD
s In the tactful report
379.
on the proceedings at Dushambe prepared by G.
Azarpay, Lukonin's theory is referred to as "not
uncontested".19
OtherSequelsto London:
At Dushambe a report by L.I. Albaum on "the stratigraphy of Kushan settlements in the Angor district
of the Surkhan-Daryaregion" in discussing the remains of the town site at Hairabad (or Khairabad)
Tepe, north of Termez, called attention to the finds
in the main Kushan stratum of coins of Kujula,
Kaniska, and Huviska together with a coin of Nero.
"A period of decline and neglect set in at the threshold of the 3rd century A.D. In the 3rd-4th centuries
repair work was made. This period is characterised
by discoveries of Vasudeva coins and early Sassanian
coins of Hormizd II" [r. AD 30z-309]. A second
period of decline followed by ruder rebuilding in the
fifth was datable by "unearthedcoins of Ephthalite
CentralAsian minting, referringto the second half of
the 5th or the beginning of the 6th centuries, which
were minted in imitation of Peroz's [r. AD
459-484]1
coins".2o2
This reconstruction of the history of the region was

obviously predicated on the assumption that the age
of Kanisqkawas not the third century but the earlier
second.
I
In 970 D.W. MacDowall in collaborationwith N. G.
17
In "The significance of Greek and Kushan archaeology

in the history of Central Asia", Journal of Asian History,
Wiesbaden, vol. I, I, 1967, P.40.

1s Kusban Studies, pp. 163-64.
19 Archaeology, New York, XXIII, 3, June, 1970,
pp.254
to
257. Studies,
2o Kusban
pp.-135-36.
Wilson published an interesting rearrangementof familiar data, based on a new reading of the Periplusof
theErythraeanSea.21The crucialpassagewas the often
cited list of peoples lying inland from the west Indian
port of Barygaza: "... the races of the Aratrii, Arachosii, Gandarii,and those of Proclais ... and above
these the most warlike race of the Bactrians;all these
racesbeingundera
king, Heraios [italics mine].
The Periplusthey Ku.sd.a
now dated around AD ioo, a cutoff date being given by its reference to the Arab
monarch Malichas of Petra, the state conquered by
Rome in AD io6.
Heraios, or Heraeus, or Miaos, a king otherwise
known through silver coinage found chiefly in Bactria, had been only sporadicallymentionedat London.
MacDowall, who had then shown a specialinterestin
the other monarch known only through coins, Soter
Megas, now joined with Wilson in calling the two
one man. Though their issues differ in metal and in
second being represented
proven
distribution--the from the middle
very widely by coppers,
Gangetic
and they alone
region to Russian
Turkestan--they
used a design showing
on one side a head derived
from a BactrianGreek prototype, and on the other a
Saka-style horseman. By a remarkableexception to
the general Chinese practise of the time, the combination of these two motifs is noted in the FormerHan
History in its account of the kingdom of Chi-pin (or
Ki-pin, usually taken to be Gandhira), in the first
centuryB.C.22
Furtherdating aids are cited in: (a) the Periplus'mention of Roman gold and silver coins among the imports at Barygaza; by MacDowall's optimum metal
value criterion, a profitable exchange of these for
native currencieswould have been possible only after
Trajan returned to a reduced weight in AD 98/99.
(b) the Periplusin an obvious referenceto the Gangetic region speaks of gold mines and gold coins,
while the Nasik cave inscription of Saka 4znd [i.e.
AD izo] refers to an expenditure of zooo suvarnas,
gold pieces. The striking of a gold coinage in India
began with Vima.
The linking of Heraios and Soter Megas leaves unsettled their relation to the named Kushan figures.
MacDowall at London had suggested that the second
might be an epithet for Vima. Here he and Wilson
In Numismatic Chronicle, London, 1970, "The references
to the Ku?Ainas in the Periplus and further numismatic
evidence for its date", pp. 221 ff.
22 Han shu, 96a, p. lob (cf. Zircher, Papers,
p.-363).
21
1o7

skirt the issue gingerly. It was the Soter Megas ruler

who conquered "India" in AD 78. Before that date,
after Kujula's initial move to the Indian frontiers had
occurred a major dynastic interruption, the temporary ascendancy in the Northwest of the Pahlavas.
Soter Megas in defeating the latter "liberated" the
Sakas.
With reference to the Kaniska era the authors now
favor the choices made earlier by "Narain, van Wijk,
some
Marshall, Bivar, and Vincent
time in the first third of the secondSmith"--i.e.
AD.
century
In a review of the Papers that appeared late in 1970,
David Pingree (now of Brown University) used his
special knowledge of ancient Indian astrology to
make two valuable points.23 First, the familiar alternative date for the Kaniskan era, AD 128, as calculated by the Dutch scholar van Wijk, is invalidated
by his misunderstanding of the dating practises of the
time; the year has no better claim than any other in its
vicinity. Second, a third century AD text that Pingree
has studied and is about to publish in monograph
form, the Yavanajdtaka,provides a new, though imperfect argument against AD 78. The text gives an
obscurely phrased rule for converting the Gaka era
into the Kushan. Whether the reference was to the
dating system used by the Kushan regime prior to
Kaniska or to his era is not specified; at least it is
now clear that AD 78 was not identical to either.
Also late in 197o, A.D.H. Bivar published a novel
reinterpretation of four pieces of Gandharan sculpture, often discussed earlier because of their dated
Kharosthi inscriptions.24 To the many and very
widely divergent years proposed for the
four--three
of them dated in the 300's of an unspecified
era, and
the fourth usually thought to be in Kaniska's - Bivar
has added yet another set. On the Hastnagar pedestal
of a standing Buddha image the year inscribed has
been wrongly read as 384; the number should instead
be the 284th, and since the era used is one that began
in 1 BC (the "Yavana era" employed in Narain's
55
London paper), the actual date is AD 129. The Mamane Dheri sculpture of the year "89" should not be
reckoned in Kaniska's era, but by the same older
system; presumably the hundreds digits have been
omitted, the year should be the 289th, and the date
is AD 134. The sculptured Hdriti of Skarah Dheri has
a date that has been usually read "399", but by other
experts 179 or 291. Bivar prefers the last, since it
works out as AD 136. The Loriyan Tangai inscribed
Buddha of "318" becomes AD 163. Since Kaniska's
reign is here reckoned from AD 129, all these stones
must have been executed in his period or Huviska's.
To substantiate his proposal, Bivar has elaborated on
the Hdriti cult in the Northwest, attested by many
sculptured figures besides the Skarah Dheri statue.
The goddess in her initial role as an ogress who
devours children was probably the personification of
a fatal disease. The sudden appearance of her cult
suggests a terrible epidemic, which Bivar links to the
"great pestilence" that entered the Roman empire
from the east in AD 165. As the symptoms were
described they seem to indicate smallpox.
(Bivar might also have mentioned the surprisingly
elaborate statue of a throned Hdriti found by Dani in
his excavation of a Kushan period merchant's house
at Shaikhan Dheri in the Peshawar region.2s The
image was taken from a lower stratum datable by
coins to the reign of Kaniska.)
In 196 5 and 1970 J. Brough of the University of London published a running commentary on the history
of the small Central Asian oasis-state of Shan-shan closest to the Chinese froutier along the southern
the basis of the docubranch of the "silk route"
--on
in the area.26 In so
found
ments in Kharosthl script
doing he supported with some modifications and new
arguments, the claim made in the Papers by Pulleyblank that the Kushan empire had not only included
the Tarim Basin for a time, under the invincible
Kani~ska,but had even penetrated as close to the Han
frontier bases as Shan-shan. One new argument was
the wording of the title given the local king on
official documents, obviously based on Kushan practise, with all the familiar superlatives from Basileos
2a School of Oriental and African Studies Bulletin,Univ.

of London, XXXIII, 3, 1970, pp.645-648; to which
add for fuller details Pingree's "The empires of Rudraddman and Yagodharman; evidence from two astrological geographies", jour.Am.Or.Soc., 79, 4, 1959,
pp. z67ff. The author's textual evidence goes back to a
lost astrological treatise in Greek, from which a prose
translation into Sanskrit was made by a certain Yavaneivara, "Lord of the Greeks", in AD 149. The next
stage was a versified version composed by King
Sphujidvaja,probably at Ujjain, in AD 269/270.
2' "H
Hriti and the chronology of the Kursihas",BSOAS,
no. 33,
1,
1970,
pp.
in "Shaikhan Dheri excavation (1963 and

Ancient Pakistan, Univ. of Peshawar, II,
seasons)",
1964
and
pl.XVI.
1965-66, p.41
26 Bull. SOAS, London, no.28, 1965; no.32, 1970; and
2s Reported
no.33. I, 1970.
Ioff.
108

Basileion to Devaputra,but strung out to even greater

length and grandiloquence. To Brough it was difficult to imagine any other explanation for this than
the extension of Kushan authority to Shan-shan
(called in the Kharosthi texts Kroraina). A sign of
another sort of their presence was the embassy to the
Wei kingdom in AD 230 from the Kushan ruler
called in Chinese Po-t'iao. Rather than implying the
contact of two great powers half way across the connent, this may well have been no more than a visit
from "a small local ruler". As to the date of the
Kushan penetration, Brough merely noted that it
could not have taken place before AD
130o.
Two books should be mentioned, which sum up the
evidence available in the earlier 196o's. B.N.Puri's
Indiaunderthe Kusbans(1965) is an ambitious attempt
to describe the whole cultural environment of the
period, from data of every description.2,The book is
densely crowded with facts and opinions taken from
Indian and European sources (omitting German and
Russian). A particularlyuseful feature is a chronological list of commonly accepted Kushan inscriptions,
written in the Kharosthi, Greek, and Brahmi scripts,
giving for each a summaryof the names and circumstances recorded and a short reference bibliography.
In comparison John Rosenfield's DynasticArts of the
Kusbans(largely completed in 1962, but published in
1967) is more restrictedin scope, more selective in its
weighing of evidence, and written with much greater
ease and lucidity.2sIt too offersa chronological list of
inscriptions (almost identical to that appearingin the
Papers), restricted to those "pertaining to the IndoScythiandynastiesat Mathurd",and hence beginning
with those of the pre-Kushan satraps. Where they
overlap in coverage, the two lists agree in the main.
Rosenfield by accepting van Lohuizen's second
Kushan century principle, includes several stones in
that later group that Puri places under the Great
Kushans (i.e. Puri's nos. IT, 18, 19, 20, 23, 24, 26,
32, 67, and ioz). The most important of these is the
last, the undated inscription on the colossal seated
image of the King of Kings (etc.) "Vamataksha"
from Mat in the Mathuri Museum. Like most other
scholars in the field, Rosenfield accepts this as a portrait of the enthroned Vima, of prime importancefor
his royal portraiture theme. Puri prefers to believe
that "he was a scion of the Kushina family, who
usurped the throne at Mathfira after the death of

Vasudeva, and he might be the first ruler of the third
Kushina family [counting the two Kadphises as the
first, and Kaniska's lineage as the second]. Since he
did not issue any coins his reign might be of a short
duration".29 Puri's argument here is brief, and includes no considerations of style or iconography.
Near the end of both versions of his list Rosenfield
places a "Buddhist image" from a private collection
in Benares, dated in the 36th year of the second
Kushan century. Puri omits this entirely. The piece,
a seated Buddha dressed in the Gandhdranmode,
with aureole ornaments developed halfway toward
the Guptan style, is a key item in van Lohuizen's
contribution to the Papers(here pl.IV,
pp. 130-132);
it has been for some years in the National Museum
collection, New Delhi.
The latest turn of the screw on the Kushan dating
problem (or to use another figure of speech, the last
straw) perceptible as this notice is written (in April,
1972) is an event which I must summarize from
fragmentary information. At a UNESCO meeting
held in Kabul in May, 1970, to discuss the more effective organization of Kushan studies on an international scale, a brief report was made by the French
archaeologist G.Fussman on a discovery which
seemed to promise aid of a most unexpected sort.ao
At a site called Dast-i-nawarin the mountains about
60 km west of Kabul he had found a trilingual rock
inscription. One version, written in Greek letters,
was in the "Bactrian"language. A second, written in
Kharosthi script, was composed in "Middle Indian".
In the third both script and language were unidentifiable. What was legible seemed to be datableto the
of an unspecified era, and to name Vima
275th year
as the worshipper of a goddess familiar on Kushan
coinage, Shaonana. Speculation among those who
learned of this find must have been intense. The datenumber, ioo years larger than one would have expected from the series usually thought of as terminating with the early Kushan emperors,worked out to a
quite plausible decade if the dating system used by
29
30
27 Bharati Vidya Bhavan pub., Chowpatty, Bombay.

28 In California Studies in the History of Art: Univ. of Calif.
Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.
Ibid., pp. 144-45, fig.'; Puri, 69-70.

See the review of the Papers by Basham, in Bibliotbeca
Orientalis, Leyden, no.27, 1970, pp.403-405. The results of the Kabul conference were published in detail
in the quarterly
Afghanistan, Kabul, no.23, 1970-71,
pp.6z-83. I owe the news of the final anticlimax to a
personal communication from Prof. Paul Bernard, chief
of the French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan, given in April, 1972.
iog

several authorities, what Narain in the Paperscalled

the "Yavana era of c. 5 BC." was chosen for the
x5
new find:31 i.e. to around AD i zo. Unhappily, Fussman's visit to the site had been too brief and his
equipment too limited to study the writing with full
confidence: both the number and the name Vima
were uncertain. When a better equipped party returned, they found that the stone had been smashed
to pieces by the local villagers, under the impression
that it hid some sort of treasure.
tion that the zo or more local rajahs who preceded the

Kushans in various areas of Northern India "should
be assigned a total reign period of 350 to 400 years".
The more confused situation still further north, under
the control of Greeks, akas, and Parthians, with its
forty-odd named rulers, must have required "from
three to four hundred years." This last estimate was
countered during the discussion by Narain, who estimated that the whole phase of barbarian rule prior to
the Kushan unification could be compressed into two
centuries. 33
The dangers inherent in this method are underscored
by parallels from the much better documented history
of China. An estimate based on the longest continuous
period of relative order and centralization, from the
Sung and Liao dynasties through the Ch'ing (i.e.
from the i oth century to 19 1z) would give an average
regnal period of between i2 years for the Chin (or
Kin) and Yiian, and 26.4 for the Ch'ing. If information were lacking at the outset of this period about
the Khitan state of Liao, its nine known emperors
might be squeezed into a total dynastic life of io8
years, or expanded into2z38. Actually, they ruled for
A Viewfrom the Outside:

The Papersinclude one statement which might well
stand in the forefront of every conscientious reviewer's mind:
"My approach is not that of an advocate but of a
judge, who once having arrived at a decision by the
normalinterpretationsof essentialfacts establishedon
reasonableevidence, does not allow mere quibbles to
interferewith his judgment"
(R.C.Majumdar).32
It would be hard to find a more vivid picture than
this of the scholar's special intoxication; or in the
arguments that surround it, a more calamitous descent. In the light of common day the author's conclusion is not only impossible, but is reached by a
sequence of arguments which for one reason or
another are all faulty or weak. This criticism is of
course based on thepresentwriter's interpretationof
essential facts, and his discrimination between acceptable evidence and mere quibbling. The sophisticated and concerned readerhas naturallythe option
of rejecting the whole kit and kaboodle. This last
term is an Americanism not used, I believe, by the
contributors to the Papers, but corresponding to
numerous familiar Anglo-American terms, some of
them not quite decent.
As we have seen, strong opposition was voiced during
the discussion period to the technique of estimating
the duration of a little-known dynasty or an early
period by the number of its named rulers, assigning
an average number of years to each. Gupta had taken
for his average 18 years, calling his choice a conservative one since in the later, more fully documented
period "the average of the generations of various
dynasties in India ... varies from zi to 31 years".
Majumdar'sargument had begun with the assump-
203 years.
On the other hand the more volatile history of the
Six Dynasties period brought eight rulers to the
throne in the 57 years of Liu Sung, seven in the 32
of Southern Ch'i, and six in the 30 of Ch'en. In the
North each of the two last T'o-pa puppet emperors
was the nominal son of Heaven for a much longer
period, for 16 years in Eastern Wei and z2 in Western
Wei. In a Chinese situation roughly comparable to
that of the pre-Kushan far north, the Five Dynasties,
where the "legitimate" regimes followed each other
in rapid succession while local warlords seized power
wherever they could all over the south, no less than
58 men claimed royal status during a period of only
54 years. Suppose that in place of the precise Chinese
annals one had only groups of names, gathered from
more or less corrupt and half fabulous texts or from
accidental coin finds, and a vague racial memory of
endless turbulence and distress --the materials on
which one constructs a chronology for the preKushan period in north India and Afghanistan - one
might quite plausibly ask for a much longer period,
Narain's two centuries at least or even Majumdar's
three to four.
As we have seen, Ghirshman's starting date of AD
31 Narain, Papers,p.
237.
32 Papers.,p.-154.
33 Ibid., pp. xx1-li6
and n.2I; p. s5I; and p.421.
IIO

144cameunderattackfromseveraldirectionsduring
the London and Dushambeconferences.The Russiansrejectedthe chronologicalparallelswiththe fate
of BegramGhirshmanhad drawnfromthe city sites
in RussianTurkestan.Maricqdeniedthatthe destruction of BegramII hadanydemonstrable
relationto a
Sassanianpusheastward.One of the crucialelements
of Ghirshman'sargument,the allotmentof 98 years
to the Great Kushanera on the basis of its dated
inscriptions,was acceptedby the scholarswhoseown
theorieswere supportedby so shorta term.I wish
here to registeragreementwith the otherswho for
one reasonor anotheracceptedit as no morethana
minimum(Majumdar)or as of merelylocal application.
Almost all the inscriptionshave been taken from
privatelydedicatedBuddhistor Jainsculpturesfound
at Mathurdor belonging to the Mathuranschool.
Even were thereno more than one series,similarly
phrasedandendingwith a 98thyear,its valuefor the
history even of NorthernIndia would be limited.
Mathurdwas one of the southernmost
bastionsof the
Kushanempire,andmayhavebeenabandonedin the
face of native pressurelong before Gandhara,the
heartland.It is surelynot impossiblethat the date
shouldbe takenin an even morelimitedsense.24 out
of the z9 Jainimagesin the groupwerefoundat the
KankallTildsite.In the lasthalfof the 98-yearperiod
the overwhelmingmajorityof the dedicationsare
Jain, only seven coming from scatteredBuddhist
finds.SystematicexcavationaroundMathurd
hasuntil
very recentlybeen almostnon-existent;noonetoday
canbe surethata methodicalsearchmightnot reveal
one or more late Buddhistmonasteriescomparable
to thosearoundTaxila,withdatedinscriptionsfalling
well after98.
Thepointis actuallyanacademicone,sinceaccording
to the studies of van Lohuizenand Rosenfielda
secondseriesof inscriptionsfromMathurddoes exist
already,differingin importantwaysfromthoseof the
GreatKushancenturyandpresumablylateron paleographicandstylisticgrounds.In the 1967versionof
Rosenfield'scataloguethereare 30 of these,terminating in a 57th year.Van Lohuizenwould makethis
the x57th. Rosenfield,as we have seen, is not fully
convincedby the theory of the omitted hundreds
digit, and so not preparedto make the two series
exactly continuous;but his own preferencewould
producea datein the samegeneralperiod.
Muchof the initialconfusionat the conferencewas
causedby ignorance,misunderstanding,
or deliberate
disregard of the Chinese historical evidence. In the
two papers contributed by Sinologues, the shorter
and more assertive, by Pulleyblank, compounded the
difficulty. The longer, more objective presentation by
Z ircher left a central question still unanswered. Most
of the arguments advanced by others to claim an expansion of Kushan rule over the Pamirs into the
Tarim Basin seemed to him unsound in view of the
Chinese data. He stopped just short of complete denial
because the case for a conquest by Kaniska, made with
more or less plausibility in Buddhist texts, were to

him "corroborated by numismatic evidence" and
"supported by archaeological finds".34I hope to be
able to lay out the Chinese evidence at greater length
with fuller supporting details at a later time. Here I
shall simply present my own conclusions.
The Kushan empire was never extended eastward
across the Pamir divide.
The archaeological finds are non-existent. As for the
numismatic evidence, the few battered Kushan coppers gathered in the Khotan neighborhood during the
last hundred years -invariably by purchase -form a
minuscule total, greatly outnumbered both by their
Sino-Kharosthi counterparts and even more so by
Han coppers.
It is inconceivable that so massive and threateninga

change of balance in Central Asia as a major Kushan
invasion could have taken place without attracting
the attention of the Later Han annalists,even though

no Chinese counter-measures were possible. By a
meticulous sifting of the Chinese records, Pulleyblank
was able to propose that such an event might have
taken place just after AD 175, at the very end of the
great Kaniska's life, and have been reversed some
time before zoz.35 To imagine the Great Kushan
armies rushing eastward to their high tide in one
decade- over one of the major mountain barriers in
Asia, and across a desert whose oases were blocked
by walled cities - and then falling back precipitously
all the way a few years later, is to construct on a far
vaster stage a melodrama like Xerxes' invasion of
Greece, without any known Salamisor Plataea,or the

slightestmention in history.
As we have seen, it is the contention of Professor
Brough that the rulers of the small, scrubby state of
Shan-shan or Kroraina, the first oasis west of Tun34 Ibid., pp. 352 and 358.
as Ibid., pp. 255, 257-58.
III

huang, could hardly have given themselves imperial

titles in the Kushan style, but still longer and more
bombastic, unless Kushan authority had extended
there. To me a much more likely explanation is that
the Kushan authority was too far away to notice or
interfere; or may even have been so magnanimous as
to laugh.
The Chinese evidence opposes more solidly than any
other the various third century dates proposed for
the Kaniska era in the Papers by Majumdar, and later
by Zeymal, Lukonin, and G6bl. To restate the beginning of the case once more, the Later Han History
indicates that the first Kushan unification and the
beginning of the expansion southward under Kujula
took place somewhere around the time of Christ. Kujula lived to be more than 8o; after him the conquest
of "India" was completed by his son Vima. The only
other name recorded for a Kushan emperor appears in
the annals of the third century Wei kingdom for the
year AD 230, when "the king of the Great Yilehchih, Po-t'iao, sent an envoy with tribute". Po-t'iao
is of course a modern Mandarin pronunciation of
characters that Zilrcher renders in something closer
to their original sound by Karlgren's two hypothetical
reconstructions, the "Archaic Chinese" of ca. 6oo BC
and the "Ancient Chinese" of ca. AD 6oo. In these the
name becomes respectively Pwa-d'yeg and Pua-d'ieu.36
Neither is at first sight close to Vasudeva; but the
latter was of course only the pure Sanskrit version of
a name that in Greek writing on the coins comes out
as BAZDEO or BAZODEO, and that on the tongue
of an envoy giving the name its proper Kushan pronunciation - through an interpreter - would have
been something else again. Po-t'iao was certainly
Vasudeva I or II, late in the Great Kushan line, but a
ruler still of such prestige that the Chinese court gave
him an honor never before accorded a foreigner,
confirming his kingly title and calling him Friend of
the Great Wei.
I believe, further, that negative evidence in the Han
records makes it possible to date at least within a
decade or two Vima's triumph in India. The Former
Han History shows a natural curiosity about the
unusual silver coins that reached the Chinese court in
the first century BC from Chi-pin and An-hsi, presumably Gandhilra and Parthia. Nothing is said in the
Later H~anHistory about the far more spectacular gold
pieces struck by Vima, doubtless after the conquest
36 Ibid., bp in list on p. 389.
when great quantities of gold became available. Now

the short period of close official relations between
the Kushan and Han empires lost its chief source of
strength with the retirement of General Pan Ch'ao at
the end of the first century, and was officially broken
when the Han court decided to withdraw entirely
from Central Asia in AD 107. The brief attempt made
by the son, Pan Yung, to repeat his father's triumphs
and restore the western domain in AD 127, affected
only the city-states of the Tarim Basin; we are told
specifically that "the lands beyond the Pamirs remained cut off". Presumably, therefore, the golden
celebration of Vima's triumph in India was not initiated until at least around AD ioo, too late for its
results to be recognized in China.
Vima is likely to have come to the Kushan throne in
the last quarter of the first century. Possibly the royal
marriage bond with the neighboring kingdom of
K'ang-chii, recorded under the year AD 84, occurred
early in his reign and was designed to stabilize his
northern frontier in preparation for the venture into
India. Biological commonsense makes it unlikely that
he ruled very long, after an octogenarian father. I take
it that he died early in the second century, and was
succeeded by Kaniska at a date consonant with Rosenfield's proposal, ca.
i10-15.
(Nothing should be made, incidentally, of the failure
of the Chinese historians to mention Kaniska or
Huviska. Their identities must have been known; but
it was a general practise in the Han histories to name
only those rulers who fell under the jurisdiction of
Han colonial administrators or were in direct conflict
with Chinese generals. So we are given the name or
title of the Yiteh-chih viceroy who was sent on a
punitive raid across the Pamirs in AD 84 and was
outwitted by Pan Ch'ao; but not that of the angry
emperor who dispatched him. Kujula and Vima were
identified elsewhere and their feats summarized for
some special reason, perhaps because the nation they
led had once been a tribal neighbor of the Chinese in
Kansu, and had been courted as a potential ally.
Vasudeva's case is clearer. The Wei court, ruling only
a fraction of China after exhausting civil wars, was
forced by its own weakness to honor a potentate
whose help might be very useful, if only by restoring
cross-continental trade.)
I have not seen the dissertation backing up Zeymal's
claim for AD 278 as the initial year of Kani~ska.His
argument as reported by Frye, that only Roman coins
of the third and fourth centuries- particularly those
lizJ

of Asia Minor- may be cited as prototypes for Kushan imperial iconography, disagrees flatly with
G*bl's opinion as registered in the Papers,based on
prolonged study of the Roman types two centuries
earlier, and particularlythose of Alexandria. What
likeness exists to support Zeymal's comparisons is
due to the common deviation of the two coin series
from the Greco-Romanideal, a stubby awkwardness
explainable in the Kushan case largely by distance
measuredin miles, and in the Late Antique by distance
in time. A similar explanation accounts for much of
the likeness between the Buddhist sculptures of
Gandhara and Early Christian sculptures in Rome
and Provence.
G6bl's "r6misch-kusdnischesMischmedaillon" is a
much more curious problem with which to deal. My
plate reproducesthe right half of his plate 9z, substituting somewhat clearerenlargedphotographs on the
left provided by the British Museum. It will be seen
that what remains of his original illustrationattempts
to show as much as possible of his argument.The two
views marked I give the piece at its actual size. ie
shows the medallion without its ornamentalborder
and suspensionloop. 2, 3, 4 areConstantinianparallels
to the portrait;while 6, 7, 8, 9 show coins of Huviska
with typical renditions of Ardoxsho and her cornucopia.
I find it impossible to imagine circumstances that
would explain such a mixture, or a believable place of
execution. The portrait is a reasonably accurate one.

The goddess in dress, anatomy, and sculptural style
is conspicuously unlike any proper Kushan version.
The drapery has a peculiarly fluid, unoccupied look.
Anatomical carelessness is so marked that one cannot
be sure whether it is a spindly right arm that supports
the cornucopia, or the line is merely the bottom of
the peplum. In these respects the figure is more Late
Antique than Kushan, by far. If it was struck within
the East Roman empire, however, why are the Latin
and Greek legends so maltreated as to be nearly
illegible?
The simplest explanation would be to call the piece an
exotic modern forgery (and it is as a forgery that one
would look for it today in the British Museum collection). Otherwise, what? A wealthy patron of some
third nationality- an Armenian merchant prince, let
the piece as a kind of talisman or
us
say--ordering
thank-offering, recording his debt to two powers, an
East Roman emperor and an East Iranian goddess
of good fortune? A skilful native die-cutter with a
coin of Constantine to copy, but perhaps only a description of the goddess; to whom both Latin and
Greek were wholly alien scripts? Unless the libretto
can be much more convincingly written, the piece
can never be more than a curious footnote to Kushan
numismatic history. That it can ever be made truly
relevant to the date of Kaniska is beyond my powers
of belief.
113


Soper - Recent Studies Involving The Date of Kani Ka

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Recent Studies Involving the Date of Kanika: A Review Article

Papers on the Date of Kanika. Vol. IV by A. L. Basham

This content downloaded from 151.100.101.138 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 06:30:24 AM

on any aspect of the Kaniska/Kushan problem, my

A. L. Basham,ed.: Paperson the Date of

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inscriptions judged on paleographic grounds. Like

tails and coin imports, were cited to justify a dating

diaeval "chronological constructions". 64 is in fact

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precisely the number of years given the reign of the

should, in his opinion, remove the text from the realm

Nirvana itself. The earliest Sinhalese histories, using

In the third postscript Eggermont called attention to

turbances had occurred in the reign of Kaniska, and

two areas of argument drawn from his comprehensive

of overwhelmed by calamities, must have attributed

from Antoninus Pius. With a time-lagfor "coin-drift"

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(In a puzzling postscript Humbach refers to two

important claims. After Vasudeva I the empire split

by VasudevaII from ca. AD 242 on. After a long reign

lowest being VIII); while early in III are found the

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of optimumdesirabilityfor exportin the periodof

lution of the Mathuranpedestal; while the big haloes

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period when the foreign treasures that were to be

between a pedestal of the Mathuran School dated in

Vlisisthiputra, appears in a convenient chart. With

been able to explain its origin; for Majumdar it was the

suggested that the earliest personage known in

ted that his arguments "would by no means preclude

since the conquests of Vima, must have held sway

To Maricq, the Naksh-i-Rustam text should be used

For the independent Magha regime there, the earliest

victim of a foreign war. As to its period of occupation,

century AD., as were the Chinese painted lacquers. The

of the London meeting and was one of its most diligent

most likely to have taken place early in his long reign.

Objecting to dates for the Kaniskan era in the AD

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(perhaps followed by a third of the name). That would

emperors found in Chinese Turkestan. The extent of

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Huviska. The inscription speaks of the founding of a

rapa Rajula of the "Lion capital" through a total of

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analysis has been worked out with great precision.

presumably wrote his letter to a later

Kaniska (II or III), who followed directly after

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Dani chose the later terminus on which both tests

travel record, of the hostages' monasteryfounded by

main body of the book is a summaryby A. H.Dani of

thian empire. Absolute

silence seems to have greeted

Majumdar'sattemptto reintroducea thirdcenturyAD

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by a new speaker on Khorezmian archaeology, B.I.

bach's proposed distinction between a first Kaniska

complaint when Kosambi spoke of o50years as the

century coin find in the Ahin Posh stipa, where Kushan