The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c28.33

c28.33

¹ Many books antedate the unification of the Kushān monarchy in consequence of a misunderstanding of a condensed version of the history given in Ma-twan-lin's Chinese encyclopaedia of the thirteenth century. The publication of translations of the original texts which the encyclopaedist abstracted has made the true meaning plain, although exact dates are not known. In a valuable paper 'Indoskythische Beiträge' in *Sitzungsber. d. königl. preuss. Akad. der Wissenschaften*, 1916, pp. 787–827, Sten Konow suggests (p. 814), and he may well be right, that the Śaka era was founded by Kadphises II, and that the Mālava or Vikrama era originated at Ujjain, and was established by a king named Vikrama, who defeated the Śakas, who preceded the Kushāns. The king called Kadphises I in the text is the Kieū-tsieū-k'io of the Chinese, and the Kozolakadaphes, Kozoulokadphises, and Kujulakarakadphises of various coins. The exact meaning of these names or titles is unknown. Full references will be found in my paper entitled 'The Kushān or Indo-Scythian Period of Indian History' (*J. R. A. S.*, 1903, pp. 1–64). I have given up the theory advocated in that essay that the Kushāns used the Laukika era. The name of the clan is spelled Kushana in the Kharoshṭhī script, which does not mark long vowels, but there is good Chinese and Sassanian evidence that the second vowel was long, e. g. the words *rabbā Kushān* on coins of Hormazd II (A. D. 302–9). See Drouin, 'Les Légendes des Monnaies Sassanides,' in *Revue Archéologique*, 1898, pp. 62 foll. I therefore follow Cunningham and Drouin in using the form 'Kushān' instead of the more fashionable 'Kushana'. Baron A. von Staël Holstein believes that Kusha (Kusa) 'was the correct name of the warlike race that gave Kaniṣka to the Buddhist world'. The forms transliterated as 'Kushān', &c., appear to be genitive plural of the name Kusha (Kusa). ('Was there a Kuṣana Race?' *J. R. A. S.*, Jan., 1914, pp. 79–88). Fleet and Allan disagree with the Baron (*J. A. R. S.*, 1914, pp. 369–81, 413). See also Fleet, *ibid*, 1915, p. 532 and Thomas, *ibid*, 1915, p. 532. Laufer (*Language of the Yüe-chi*, Chicago, 1917) denounces the speculations of A. v. S. Holstein as 'entirely inadmissible'. The names Yüe-chi and Kuṣana have no philological connexion, but are 'thoroughly independent'. Laufer agrees with F. W. Thomas (*J. R. A. S.*, 1906, p. 203) that Kuṣana was 'not a tribal name, but a family or dynastic title'. See also K. P. Jayaswal (*J. B. O. Res. Soc.*, vi, pp. 12–22), who suggests that Kushān was actually the personal name of Wema Kadphises' predecessor, Kadphises I.