The Kushan Empire and its languages
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Jean Nota Bene, the biggest French YouTuber (millions of followers) on historical subjects, recently focused on the Kushans. He follows many of the same themes that we do on Language Log and Sino-Platonic Papers (including Greek-Indian-Chinese associations), so many readers of this post will be interested in what he has to say about the Kushan Empire (ca. 30–ca. 375 AD). Although Nota Bene speaks in French, I think readers will be able to glean a lot of valuable information on this subject. Plus his presentation is richly illustrated, so watch carefully and pause the video if you want to take a closer look.
Nota Bene touches on the history, religion, art, architecture, ethnicity, locale, numismatics, and virtually all other major aspects of their political and cultural identity.
The Kushans migrated vast distances in response to pressure from enemies and the attraction of new lands to occupy
Here are the common languages of the Kushan Empire:
| Greek (official until c. 127) Bactrian (official from c. 127) Gandhari Prakrit Hybrid Sanskrit |
The Kushan Empire (c. 30–c. 375 CE) was a syncretic empire formed by the Yuezhi in the Bactrian territories in the early 1st century. It spread to encompass much of what is now Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Eastern Iran and Northern India, at least as far as Saketa and Sarnath, near Varanasi, where inscriptions have been found dating to the era of the Kushan emperor Kanishka the Great.
In addition, the people bearing the demonym Yuezhi were a key, formative component of the confederation of Indo-European nomadic tribes who ultimately formed the Kushan Empire.
Under the rule of the Kushans, northwest India and adjoining regions participated both in seagoing trade and in commerce along the Silk Road to China. The name Kushan derives from the Chinese term Guishang, used in historical writings to describe one branch of the Yuezhi—a loose confederation of Indo-European people who had been living in northwestern China until they were driven west by another group, the Xiongnu, in 176–160 B.C. The Yuezhi reached Bactria (northwest Afghanistan and Tajikistan) around 135 B.C. Kujula Kadphises united the disparate tribes in the first century B.C. Gradually wresting control of the area from the Scytho-Parthians, the Yuezhi moved south into the northwest Indian region traditionally known as Gandhara (now parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan) and established a capital near Kabul. They had learned to use a form of the Greek alphabet, and Kujula’s son was the first Indian ruler to strike gold coins in imitation of the Roman aureus exchanged along the caravan routes.
(The Met)
There is a strong likelihood that the Yuezhi were linked to the Tocharians, the second oldest (after the Hittites) Indo-European people, who had affinities with the centum group to the west and early loans into Sinitic, after passing through Central Asia. See Victor H. Mair, “Die Sprachamöbe: An archeolinguistic parable,” The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia, 2 vols. (Washington D.C. and Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Man and the University of Pennsylvania Museum, 1998).
The Kushans were most probably one of five branches of the Yuezhi confederation, an Indo-European nomadic people of possible Tocharian origin, who migrated from northwestern China (Xinjiang and Gansu) and settled in ancient Bactria. The founder of the dynasty, Kujula Kadphises, followed Iranian and Greek cultural ideas and iconography after the Greco-Bactrian tradition and was a follower of the Shaivite sect of Hinduism. Two later Kushan kings, Vima Kadphises and Vasudeva II, were also patrons of Hinduism. The Kushans in general were also great patrons of Buddhism, and, starting with Emperor Kanishka, they employed elements of Zoroastrianism in their pantheon. They played an important role in the spread of Buddhism to Central Asia and China, ushering in a period of relative peace for 200 years, sometimes described as "Pax Kushana".
Because of the recent craze for ancient DNA studies, there has been much speculation about how genetic analysis can help us understand where the homeland of the PIEs may have been (around 4000 BC, the Pontic-Caspian steppe region [between the Black Sea and the southern Ural Mountains]), and the pattern of their dispersal during the following two to three thousand years. In contrast, I have come to rely more heavily on hard archeological evidence (horses, chariots, textiles, bronze weapons and other implements, pottery, botany, zoology, biology, etc., and, of course, the development and relationships of languages.
That is to say, I prefer empirical, direct, precisely measured evidence over speculative, statistically derived results from what is essentially chemical, statistical research.
Pots, bones, stones, and artifacts over ciphers!
Selected readings
- J. P. Mallory, The Problem of Tocharian Origins: An Archaeological Perspective (Sino-Platonic Papers, 259 [Nov. 2015]; free pdf, 63 pp.)
- "The geographical, archeological, genetic, and linguistic origins of Tocharian" (7/14/20)
- "Of chains and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (1/27/21)