The Development of Hindu Iconography c19.s6.4.3

c19.s6.4.3

It has also been shown in Chapter IV that the great Kushan king Wema Kadphises was a votary of Śiva, for it was this god and his emblems, the bull and the trident-battleaxe, that were invariably present on his coins (in his Prākṛt coin-legends he is almost always described as *Mahīśvara*, i.e., Māheśvara, an exclusive worshipper of Śiva). His successors, Kanishka and Huvishka, introduced the somewhat novel feature of the extremely ‘varied reverse devices’ on their coins, the deities there being recruited from such widely divergent religious pantheon as Zoroastrian, Brahmanical Hindu, Buddhist, and rarely Greek. Kanishka’s affiliation with Buddhism is sufficiently established by Chinese literary data, but in this sort of medley of the devices on his coins, many scholars recognised his eclecticism in religious matters. But it can be proved with the help of some of the little known coins of Huvishka, that he paid his homage to more than one deity. Cunningham reproduced some copper coins of this king in his *Coins of the Indo-Scythians and Kushans* (Pl. XXII, Figs. 21-2), on one side of which he is shown standing in a suppliant attitude either before Nana or Umā (on a few of his coins Śiva is once shown accompanied by Nana and at other time by Umā). It is in one of the coins of this very king that the first attempt at cult syncretism may be clearly recognised, and the device may be the earliest representation of the composite cult-god Hari-Hara (*cf.* supra, pp. 123-24).