_Note._—The monograms in Fig. 3b occur on coins
of the following: (1) Eukratides, (2) Apollodotos, (3)
Apollodotos, Maues, (4) Azes I, (5) Sotēr Megas, (6)
Gondopharnes and Aspavarma.
The Yueh-chi, who drove the Śakas out of Bactria about the year 126
B.C., were destined to create “one of the greatest empires of ancient
India.” At some date after A.D. 25, one of the five tribes of which
they were composed, the Kushāṇas, became supreme, and under the
leadership of the head of that tribe, Kujūla Kadphises, they passed
south of the Hindu Kush, and overwhelmed the Pahlavas, then ruling in
the Kābul valley. The deposition of Pacores, successor of Gondopharnes
to the Pahlava kingdom of Taxila, must have taken place between the
years A.D. 45 and A.D. 64, and was effected by Vima Kadphises, the
second Kushāṇa king. Henceforward there is less confusion of dynasties.
We know the names and the chronological order of these powerful Kushāṇa
princes—Kujūla Kadphises, Vima Kadphises, Kanishka, Huvishka, Vāsudeva;
the names of the three last are even recorded in several inscriptions.
It seems to be now generally accepted that Kanishka was the founder of
the so-called Śaka era, and that consequently his reign started in A.D.
78.[24] The chief remaining difficulty is the attribution of certain
copper coins bearing the title _Kujūla Kadaphes_ (Kharoshṭhī—_Kuyula
Kaphasa_); this must remain for the present unsettled.
[24] _Camb. History of India_, Vol. I, p. 583.
The commoner type of these Kadaphes coins deserves special attention
(Pl. IV, 2); for the head on the obverse is directly copied from the
coins of one of the earlier Roman Emperors, probably Augustus, and
bears evidence to that Roman influence which is so marked in the
gold coinage of the Kushāṇas, and which is partly traceable to the
intercourse between the Yueh-chi and the Roman Empire before their
invasion of India, an intercourse which resulted in Kushāṇa ambassadors
being actually sent to the court of Augustus. But the plentiful issues
in gold of Vima Kadphises and his two successors, all struck on the
same standard as the Roman _aureus_, are due also to other causes.
Exports from India to different provinces of the Roman Empire, carried
by sea from the south, and by the overland routes in the north,
were paid for in Roman gold; and the _aureus_ had, like the English
_sovereign_ in more recent times, at this period acquired that status
as a current coin in India, which it already possessed in those parts
of Asia more directly under the influence of the imperial power. It was
only natural that these Kushāṇa invaders should seek to win acceptance
for their new gold currency by placing it on an equality with the
popular Roman gold. There was, moreover, at this time a world shortage
of silver: not only do we find the Pahlava kings striking didrachms in
debased silver, but the silver _denarius_ itself was, during the early
empire, being reduced in weight and fineness. This accounts for the
disappearance of silver and the important place of gold in the Kushāṇa
coinage, and is probably also partly the reason why the Western Satraps
struck only small hemidrachms, and these often in inferior silver.
The coins of Kujūla Kadphises are all of copper. Those which he struck
in the style of Hermaios have the head of the Greek king on the obverse
(Pl. IV, 1), and he used the same type after the name of Hermaios
had disappeared from the inscriptions; both these types were current
in the Kābul province. Another type, akin to the Śaka coins, has a
bull on the obverse and a Bactrian camel on the reverse. In one of
his inscriptions, for which like his successor he uses both Greek and
Kharoshṭhī, he is styled “_The Great King, King of Kings, the Son of
Heaven_.”
The gold of Vima Kadphises (c. A.D. 45-78) was struck in three
denominations, the double stater (Pl. IV, 3), the stater or
_dināra_,[25] as the Kushāṇas called it (= the Roman _aureus_ of 124
grains weight), and the quarter stater. On the obverse of these appears
either the king’s head or bust, or the king seated cross-legged on a
couch, or, as on a rare stater in the British Museum, sitting in a
two-horsed chariot. On the copper coins, which are of three sizes, the
king is almost invariably standing, with his right hand placing an
offering upon a small altar at his side. The portrait of the king is
most realistic, though hardly flattering—a corpulent figure with a long
heavy face and a large nose, he appears wearing the long Kushāṇa cloak
and tall “Gilgit” boots, on his head a conical hat with streamers.
Vima Kadphises must have been a zealous convert to the worship of the
Hindu god Śiva, for the god or his emblem, the trident battle-axe,
is the invariable device on the reverse of all his coins. The title
“_Sotēr Megas_” on this king’s copper coins indicates a relationship
between him and the so-called “nameless king” mentioned in the previous
chapter, whose coins bear the same legend.
[25] _Dināra_ is derived from the Roman _denarius_. It affords an
interesting example of the vicissitudes which so many coin names have
experienced. The first letter of the same word _d (enarius)_ now
signifies copper in English money.
Kanishka, the real founder of the great Kushāṇa empire, which stretched
from Kābul[26] to the banks of the Ganges, may have belonged to
another branch of the Yueh-chi—he was not, at any rate, nearly related
to Vima Kadphises, whose coins are distinct in many respects from
those of Kanishka and his successors. One marked distinction is the
use of Greek legends only by these later kings. The Greek is often
very debased, and the reason suggested for its employment is that
Khotanese, the native tongue of the Kushāṇas, was first reduced to
writing in the Greek character. Kanishka also introduced the Iranian
title, _Shāonānoshāo_—“King of Kings”—in place of the Greek form
_Basileōs Basileōn_. On the reverse side of the extensive gold (full
and quarter staters only) and copper coinage of Kanishka and Huvishka
is portrayed a whole pantheon of gods and goddesses; among them are
the Greek gods, Helios, Herakles (Pl. IV, 8), Selene; the Hindu god,
Śiva (_Oesho_ on the coins); the Iranian deities, Athro, “Fire,” Oado,
the wind god, Ardokhsho and Nāna, and even the great Buddha himself
(Pl. IV, 4), who had previously appeared on a copper coin of Kadaphes.
The representation of this “mixed multitude” was probably intended to
conciliate the religious scruples of the numerous peoples included
within the vast territory of the Kushāṇa Empire. A standing figure of
the king appears on the obverse of Kanishka’s gold staters, on the
small quarter staters is a half (Pl. IV, 5) or quarter length portrait.
On Huvishka’s gold the standing figure never appears; the portrait is
either half-length or merely the king’s head; on one coin the king is
seated cross-legged; on another (exceedingly rare) he is riding an
elephant (Pl. VI, 7). Vāsudeva closely imitates Kanishka’s standing
figure type on his gold.
[26] The province of Kābul must be reckoned Indian territory from the
time of Chandragupta Maurya till the eleventh century. It was reunited
to India by the Mug̱ẖal Emperor Bābur in the sixteenth century and
lost again in the middle of the eighteenth.
Kanishka’s copper coinage is of two types: one has the usual “standing
king” obverse (Pl. IV, 6); and on the rarer second type the king is
sitting on a throne. Huvishka’s copper is more varied; on the reverse,
as on Kanishka’s copper, there is always one of the numerous deities;
on the obverse the king is portrayed (1) riding on an elephant, or (2)
reclining on a couch, or (3) seated cross-legged, or (4) seated with
arms raised.
Kanishka had been a great patron of Buddhism. Vāsudeva was evidently a
convert to Hinduism and an ardent devotee of Śiva. On the reverses of
his coins the deity is almost invariably Śiva accompanied by his bull
(Pl. IV, 9), but there is a rare copper piece on which the word “Vāsu”
in Brāhmī occupies the obverse, and the special symbol of Vāsudeva the
reverse. About half-a-dozen other symbols, which take the place of the
monograms of the Indo-Greeks, appear on the coins of the Kushāṇas.
After the death of Vāsudeva, in A.D. 220, the Kushāṇa power declined,
though the descendants of Kanishka held the Kābul valley till A.D. 425.
The coins of these kings, principally of two classes, are degenerate
copies of the gold coins of Kanishka and Vāsudeva. One continues the
standing king type with the Śiva and bull reverse; the second has the
standing king obverse, with the deity Ardokhsho, who was by this time
identified with the Indian Lakshmī, represented as sitting on a throne
and holding a cornucopia on the reverse (Pl. IV, 10). Certain Brāhmī
letters, now unintelligible, seem to have distinguished the coins of
successive rulers. It was this latter type, current throughout the
Panjāb, that the Gupta kings took as the model for their earliest
coinage. In A.D. 425 a tribe of the Little Yueh-chi, under a chief
named Kidāra, replaced the great Kushāṇa dynasty at Kābul; but they
were driven out fifty years later by an inroad of the Ephthalites, or
White Huns, and settled in the Chitrāl district and in Kashmīr. There
they struck coins in much alloyed gold and also in copper of this same
standing king and seated goddess type, and there it survived in a
hardly recognizable form in the later coins, until the Muhammadans put
an end to the Hindu kingdom in the fourteenth century. Certain kingdoms
in the Panjāb also copied the large copper coins of the Kushāṇas: the
most striking of these minor coinages is that of the Yaudheyas, whose
territory included the modern state of Bahāwalpūr. One type of their
coins shows a female standing figure on the obverse, and a soldier
with a Brāhmī inscription on the reverse (Pl. IV, 11). The earliest
coins of Nepāl current from the fifth to the seventh century also
show traces of Kushāṇa influence. These large copper pieces give the
names of at least four kings, Mānāṅka, Gunāṅka,[27] Aṅśuvarman and
Jishṇugupta. Various devices are used, among them the goddess seated
cross-legged. The coins of Aṅśuvarman, of the seventh century, have a
cow standing to the left on the obverse and a winged horse with the
king’s name on the reverse (Pl. V, 1).
[27] It has been suggested with great probability that these are really
compound words signifying “the mark or device of Māna, of Guna.”