The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c28.56

c28.56

Kadphises II was succeeded by Kanishka, who alone among the Kushān kings has left a name cherished by tradition, and famous far beyond the limits of India. His name, it is true, is unknown in Europe, save to a few students of unfamiliar lore, although it lives in the legends of Tibet, China, and Mongolia, and is scarcely less significant to the Buddhists of those lands than that of Asoka himself. Notwithstanding the widespread fame of Kanishka, his authentic history is scanty, and his chronological position strangely open to doubt. Unluckily no passage in the works of the accurate Chinese historians has yet been discovered which synchronizes him with any definite name or event in the well-ascertained history of the Middle Kingdom. The Chinese books which mention him are all, so far as is yet known, merely Buddhist works of edification, and not well adapted to serve as mines of historic fact. They are, in truth, as are the books of Tibet and Mongolia, translations or echoes of Indian tradition, and no student needs to be told how baffling are its vagaries. Kanishka and his proximate successors certainly are mentioned in an exceptionally large number of inscriptions, of which considerably more than a score are dated; and it might be expected that this ample store of epigraphic material would set at rest all doubts, and establish beyond dispute the essential outlines of the Kushān chronology. But, unfortunately, the dates are recorded in such a fashion as to be open to various interpretations.¹