The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c29.103

c29.103

In some respects, Buddhism in its Mahāyāna form was better fitted than the Brahmanical system to attract the reverence of casteless foreign chieftains; and it would not be unreasonable to expect that they should have shown a decided tendency to favour Buddhism rather than Brahmanism; but the facts do not indicate any clearly marked general preference for the Buddhist creed on the part of the foreigners. The only distinctively Buddhist coins are the few rare pieces of that kind struck by Kanishka, who undoubtedly, in his later years, liberally patronized the ecclesiastics of the Buddhist church, as did his successor Huvishka; but the next king, Vāsudeva, reverted to the devotion for Siva, as displayed by Kadphises II. So the later Śaka satraps of Surāshtra seem to have inclined personally much more to the Brahmanical than to the Buddhist cult, and they certainly bestowed their patronage upon the Sanskrit of the Brahmans rather than upon the vernacular literature.