Kushan Empire
▶ Explore on the mapThe Kushan empire linked China, India, Persia and the Mediterranean along the Silk Road between the first and third centuries CE. Its rulers came from the Yuezhi, a people pushed west from the Chinese frontier by the Xiongnu, and they took Bactria and then northern India, where Vima Kadphises and Kanishka I struck gold and copper coinage in Greek, Kharoshthi and later Brahmi legends. Kanishka's reign, beginning around 127 CE, is the traditional date for the fourth Buddhist council and for the spread of Mahayana Buddhism towards Central Asia and China; the Gandhara school of sculpture showed the Buddha in human form, using the drapery learned from the successors of Alexander. The empire had no fixed capital, moving between Begram in the north and Taxila and Peshawar in the south, and its merchants carried Roman gold east in exchange for spices, silk and ivory. Religious tolerance was wide: Greek gods, the Iranian Mithra, Shiva and the Buddha all appear on Kushan coins. After the third century, Sasanian pressure from the west and the rise of Mathura from the south broke the state, though the Kushan heritage survived in the art and trade routes of Gandhara. Kanishka is also remembered as a patron of the Buddhist scholar Nagarjuna.