Kushan Empire

  General Description   The Kushan Empire was a confederated state headed by an absolute or near absolute military monarchy. Little is known of its early history due to the scarcity of written records, but it appears to have been founded in Bactria, Central Asia in the mid-1st century CE when Kujula Kadphises united the five tribes of the Yuezhi confederation. ^[1]
The Kushan state, as chronicled by the Hou Hanshu (a Chinese text), expanded from Bactria and Sogdiana into Gandhara (in modern-day Pakistan) and northern India. ^[1] Kushan coins recovered from excavations across this region are a key source of evidence for the expansion of the empire and reveal that Kushan monarchs took a syncretistic approach to religion and culture, utilizing Buddhist, Iranian, Hellenistic and Indian iconography. ^[2]
Population and political organization
Historians are uncertain exactly how the Kushan Empire was governed. According to Rafi-us Samad, the Kushans were ’great conquerors but poor administrators’ and the stable administration of the capital was to a large degree reliant on the Buddhist establishment. ^[3] Nevertheless, the historian B. N. Puri has described the Kushan king’s powers as ’unfettered’ by any kind of advisory body comparable to those found in the Mauryan period in northern India. ^[4] The state chancery used both the Bactrian language, written using the Greek alphabet, and Gandhari, written in the Kharosthi script. ^[5]
One theory holds that the political structure of the empire was characterized by ’hierarchical organization in a feudatory system’. Another view suggests the Kushan state included a mixture of both bureaucratic and feudal elements. The further south into the Indian subcontinent and the further from the capitals one went, the more independent the outer satraps became. ^[6]
The literature does not provide reliable estimates for the population of the Kushan Empire.

[1]: (Sinopoli 2005, 335-37) Sinopoli, Carla M. 2005. “Imperial Landscapes of South Asia.” In Archaeology of Asia, edited by Miriam T. Stark, 324-49. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/JZ73UGSF.

[2]: (Neelis n.d.) Neelis, Jason. nd. “The Kushan Empire.” University of Washington: Silk Road Seattle. https://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/exhibit/kushans/essay.html.

[3]: (Samad 2011, 90-91) Samad, Rafi-us. 2011. The Grandeur of Gandhara: The Ancient Buddhist Civilization of the Swat, Peshawar, Kabul and Indus Valleys. New York: Algora Pub. http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=777134. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/EI23K8AX.

[4]: (Puri 1994, 254) Puri, B. N. 1994. “The Kushans.” In History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Vol. II: The Development of Sedentary and Nomadic Civilizations, 700 B.C. to A.D. 250, edited by János Harmatta, B. N. Puri, and G. F. Etemadi, 239-55. Paris: UNESCO. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/CW6B4KVV.

[5]: (Grenet 2012, 1-2) Grenet, Frantz. 2012. “The Nomadic Element in the Kushan Empire (1st-3rd Century AD).” Journal of Central Eurasian Studies, no. 3: 1-22. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/TMRCJ9QP.

[6]: (Mukherjee 1998, 448) Mukherjee, Bratindra Nath. 1988. The Rise and Fall of the Kushānạ Empire. Calcutta: Firma KLM. Seshat URL: https://www.zotero.org/groups/1051264/seshat_databank/items/itemKey/97W9PEID.