Kanishka's accession and the Kushan Greco-Buddhist synthesis

Date

c. 127 CE

Category

Culture, arts & philosophy

Region

Northwestern India and Central Asia (Gandhara, Mathura)

Era

Classical Antiquity

Significance

Around 127 CE Kanishka I acceded to the throne of the Kushan Empire, which at its zenith stretched from Central Asia and Bactria across Gandhara to the Gangetic plain, with capitals at Purushapura (Peshawar) and Mathura.

Straddling the overland Silk Road and Indian Ocean networks, the Kushans presided over an unprecedented exchange of goods, peoples and ideas linking Rome, Parthia, India and Han China. A patron of Buddhism, and traditionally associated with a major Buddhist council in Kashmir that advanced Mahayana doctrine, Kanishka fostered the artistic fusion now called Greco-Buddhist art. In the workshops of Gandhara, sculptors blended Hellenistic-Roman naturalism with Indian religious themes to produce some of the earliest anthropomorphic images of the Buddha, while the parallel Mathura school developed an indigenous Indian idiom. The dated Kanishka casket reliquary from Peshawar anchors his first regnal year to 127 CE. This Kushan synthesis created the iconography of the Buddha that would spread across Central Asia, China, Korea and Japan.

Empires active in c. 127 CE

• Roman Empire
  27 BCE to 476 CE
• Han Dynasty
  202 BCE to 220 CE
• Kingdom of Funan
  50 CE to 550 CE
• Zapotec State of Monte Albán
  500 BCE to 800 CE
• Kushan Empire
  30 CE to 375 CE
• Parthian Empire
  247 BCE to 224 CE

Related culture, arts & philosophy events

• First Anthropomorphic Buddha Images (Gandhara and Mathura Schools)
  c. 1st century CE
• Founding of Nalanda Mahavihara
  c. 427 CE
• The Mahayana Ajanta cave paintings under Vakataka patronage
  c. 460 to 480 CE
• Construction of the First Emperor's mausoleum and Terracotta Army
  c. 246 to 208 BCE
• Panini composes the Ashtadhyayi, the first systematic grammar
  c. 400 BCE
• Zeno of Citium founds Stoicism in Athens
  c. 300 BC

Essential reading

• Cai Lun standardises papermaking
  105 CE
• Nagarjuna Founds the Madhyamaka School and Systematises Mahayana Philosophy
  c. 150 CE
• Indianisation of Southeast Asia: Spread of Hindu-Buddhist Culture
  c. 1st century CE
• Antonine Plague
  165-180 CE

Further reading

The Story of Art

The wider story

The Story of Art

E. H. Gombrich

The best-selling art history ever written, from cave paintings to the modern age.

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