XXVI THE SECRET OF KANISHKA (Concluded from p. 6S8.) BY J. KENNEDY II The Coinage of Kanishka E have considered Kanishka, so far, only as an Indian w king, whose existence is revealed to us through the incidental mention of him in inscriptions and the accounts of the Yue-che (Tokhari) given by the Chinese. And we have found that his permanent achievements were twofold. A barbarian prince, he became a convert to an alien faith, and set an example which was followed by his tribe; he also instituted an era which, although essentially Buddhist, was accepted by the Brahmans and the Jains, and has endured to the present day. So far we might regard him merely as a prototype of many a barbarian chief of the West in the early centuries of the Middle Ages. We have now to consider him as an important figure on a much larger stage, a connecting link in the history of the earliest commerce between China and Europe. I have already brought forward direct evidence to prove that he flourished in the latter half of the first century B.C. I shall now show by two independent lines of research that he cannot be assigned to any other period. The basis of our study is the coinage of Kanishka and his successors, more particularly of Huvishka. This coinage is quite striking in its novelty. 1. These Kushans mint gold — a thing practically unknown in India since the days of Euthydemus and Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. INSEAD, on 06 Mar 2018 at 11:32:27, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00043562 982 THE SECRET OF KANISHKA Demetrius and the battle of Magnesia (190 B.C.)x—and they mint no silver, which formed the usual currency. 2. The growing scarcity of gold had reduced the value of silver from the middle of the second century B.C., so that the exchange had fallen to something like 11 of silver to 1 of gold. But the new gold coinage, although gold has suddenly become abundant, is struck at a still lower rate, the rate of 1 of gold to 12 of silver. 3. All this is startling enough; but more wonderful still, these Kushan coins have only Greek legends, although the kings who minted them held no lands outside India, and although from the time of Demetrius and Eukratides, that is to say from the commencement of the second century B.C., Greek and Scythic kings alike had put bilingual inscriptions on their coins. 4. As if this were not sufficient, Kanishka and Huvishka engrave the figures and the names of some thirty deities, a motley group—Hindu, Buddhist, Greek, Elamite, possibly Babylonian, mostly Zoroastrian.2 5. Moreover, they use for their legends a cursive Greek alphabet which was a new feature on Indian coins, 1 "With the exception of two or three gold coins of Eukratides, one of Menander, and, perhaps, one of Taxila, and another coin of uncertain attribution, no specimens which can possibly have been struck in India, during the two centuries previous to the date of Hima (Wema) Kadphises, are to be found in the collections of the present day" (Rapson, Grundriss, "Indian Coins," p. 17). Wema Kadphises' father, Kozoulo Kadphises, struck only copper coins. Rapson makes Kanishka succeed Wema Kadphises, whom he dates c. 30-78 A.D. As to Kanishka he says, " The Saka era has usually been supposed to date from the abhiseka of Kanishka at Mathura in 78 A. D. ; and to this era the dates found in the stone inscriptions of Kanishka, Huvishka, and Vasudeva have usually been referred." Although the supposition that Kanishka instituted the Saka era has now been completely disproved by M. Boyer, a latent belief that Kanishka followed Wema Kadphises is still very general. Messrs. Fleet, Francke, and S. Levi have always rejected it, and Cunningham originally did so, although he afterwards adopted another theory. 2 Cunningham {Coins of the Kushans, pt. iii, p. 23 of the reprint ; Num. Ohron., ser. in, vol. xii, pp. 40-82) gives a list of thirty-three types. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. INSEAD, on 06 Mar 2018 at 11:32:27, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00043562 THE SECRET OF KANISHKA 983 and was further remarkable by including a certain antiquated letter to be noticed later. The singularity of this coinage is equalled by its diffusion; it is found not only throughout Northern India and the Gangetic Valley as far as Ghazlpur and Gorakhpur, but also in countries far to the west of India: solitary specimens have been found buried in the ground in Scandinavia and Wales. Clearly all these facts have an organic connexion; we require, not a separate key to each, but a single key which will explain the whole. Three things are obvious at the outset of our inquiry-— 1. This coinage was struck, not to supply local wants, but for the purposes of foreign trade. For 150 years before Kanishka the local currency had been in silver and copper. The Indo-Parthians, who were contemporaries of Vasudeva, strike silver and copper. The Satraps of Mathura follow the rule. Before, during, and after the times of Kanishka and his group, a bilingual silver currency prevails; silver is the local currency of the bazars. 2. The foreign traders, for intercourse with whom this gold currency was minted, used Greek as a lingua franca ; they were not supposed to understand Prakrit. Where a bilingual currency is in vogue, it is a proof that buyer and seller belong to two nationalities and speak two different languages. But where three or more different languages are concerned, it is, usually impossible to represent all of them upon so small a field as that of the coins.1 As a rule, that language alone will find a place which is the general medium of communication; and that language in this case was Greek. 1 There is an exception, to a certain extent, on the coins of Nahapana: these bear Greek legends on the obverse, and on the reverse Brahml and KharoshthI legends which represent two separate dialects, though not exactly two distinct languages : see, e.g., JRAS, 1907, p. 1044. In this case the arrangement was made practicable by the brevity of the legends. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. INSEAD, on 06 Mar 2018 at 11:32:27, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00043562 984 THE SECRET OF KANISHKA 3. The abundance of gold must be ascribed to a sudden and great revolution in trade. Such a revolution took place at the commencement of the first century B.C., when, for the first time in the annals of the world, the trade of China made its way to the West. The history of that trade will form the subject of a special inquiry; I shall confine myself at present to the briefest outline of so much of it as bears upon our subject. Up to the time of the great Han emperor, Wu-ti (140-86 B.C.), the Hiung-nu, ancestors of the modern Turks, were overlords of all Central Asia from Sogdiana to Manchuria. The twenty-six " bowmen nations " of the nomads owned their supremacy; the settled peoples of Chinese Tartary were subject to them; and they pastured their herds in three out of the seven provinces of China. Wu-ti, the real founder of the Chinese Empire, engaged in a series of lifelong campaigns against them. By 121 B.C. he had driven them north of the Gobi Desert, and in twenty years more by war and diplomacy he brought all the petty states of Chinese Tartary under his authority. The " settled peoples " of Chinese Tartary were keen traders; they sent commercial embassies every year to China, and a lively trade soon sprang up. This trade followed one of two routes: it went either by Khotan across the Himalayas to Kashmir, Gandhara, and Kabul; or the goods were carried to Kashgar and Yarkand, and thence to Sogdiana and Bactria. The former route was always open, and was the principal channel of the silk trade in the first century B.C. In the following century Kashgar and Yarkand took the lead.1 Whichever route the silk might take, it ultimately found its way to Syria, where it was reworked 1 Reinaud (Relations, etc., de VEmpire Somain avec I'Asie Orientate, p. 172) says : "Bien que d'origine chinoise, c'est en grande partie par l'lnde, surtout en temps de guerre, qu'elle (la soie) arrivait dans Pempire." But I think it can be shown that M. Reinaud is mistaken. It was only during the first century B.C. that the bulk of the silk trade passed through India. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. INSEAD, on 06 Mar 2018 at 11:32:27, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00043562 THE SECRET OF KANISHKA 985 for the Roman market; and silk was first seen at Rome in the last days of the Republic. Virgil, Horace, and Propertius are among the first to mention it.1 But although all the silk found its way to Syria, there was a great difference in the intermediaries by whom it was brought.