When I wrote “ancient history” above, I meant it literally. We often refer to “ancient history” in our own lives—“Bob here was a criminal, but that’s ancient history.” And among most people in the West, the term refers to events in the classical Greek and Roman worlds. Fair enough, but there were civilizations all over Asia, Africa, the Americas, etc., that existed at the same time as the Greeks and Romans (not to mention those that existed before the classical Greeks, such as Egypt, Babylon, the Hittites, the Elamites, etc.)
The ancient people I want to write about are the Kushans, who had an empire in central Asia that included what is modern Afghanistan, Pakistan and Northern India. (The Kushan empire existed from about 100 BCE to 350 CE.) There is a lot of history here that I don’t know or have only a vague outline of at best. So if any of my readers notice me making an error, speak up! I love to be educated.
It is believed that the Yuezhi were one of the nomadic peoples from the steppe north of China. They were in conflict with the Xiongnu, another nomadic group that bedeviled China for centuries. The Xiongnu Confederacy pushed the Yuezhi west. In about 150 BCE, they migrated into Bactria, one of the successor states to Alexander the Great’s empire. The Kushans were one of the Yuezhi tribes, and they wound up ruling the Greco-Bactrian kingdom. It’s an old story—”barbarians” from the steppe or the rough hill country move into an urbanized society and like what they see. They basically adopt the culture of the conquered people. (For example, the Kassites were an uncivilized hill people in the bronze age who conquered Babylon in 1595 BCE and morphed into a new Babylonian empire that lasted for hundreds of years.)
The Kushan elite integrated with the existing Greco-Bactrian elite and adopted many of their religious practices. They worshipped Greek gods, Hindu gods, and practiced Zoroastrianism. They picked up Buddhism from the Indo-Greek Kingdoms, which were conquered by the Kushans. The greatest Kushan emperor was Kanishka, who ruled roughly from 127 CE to 150 CE. He converted to Buddhism and became a vigorous supporter. The Kushan’s Buddhism was syncretic, combining Greek gods like Heracles with their Buddhism.
This is an image of Buddha with his protector and companion Heracles from the 2nd century in Gandhara, which was an area in Northwest Pakistan and Afghanistan. Gandhara became a major Buddhist center and sent missionaries into China, introducing the religion to them. (As far as I know, Heracles was not adopted into a Buddhist pantheon by the Chinese.) The first Buddhist monk to translate Buddhist scriptures into Chinese was a Kushan monk named Lokakṣema.
The Han Chinese empire butted up against the Kushan empire and it was during both these empires that the Silk Road became a thing. What was necessary for the Silk Road to exist was the presence of strong empires along the road who could protect caravans. There were, from east to west. the Han Chinese, the Kushan empire, the Parthian empire, then Rome. The Kushans became rich because of this well-maintained trade route through their territory. Goods and ideas could travel freely to and from the Kushan empire, until the Han dynasty collapse in 220 AD meant that the Chinese section of the silk road was no longer guarded by the Chinese military, and the defeat of the Parthians by the much more belligerent Sassanids in Iran cut off Kushan’s trade to the west. They went into a slow decline.
What intrigues me about them was their decision to send Buddhist monks to China. That move alone changed world history. I wonder what would have happened if they had sent those missionaries west instead of east. What if the Parthians or the Romans became Buddhist? In the first and second centuries, it could have happened.
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