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If the date 78 A.D. is accepted, the conversion of the Yüeh-chih to Buddhism and its diffusion in Central Asia cannot have been the work of Kanishka, for Buddhism began to reach China by land about the time of the Christian era. There is however no reason to assume that they were his work.
It is said to have been several times burnt, and rebuilt, but so solid a structure can hardly have been totally destroyed by fire and the greater part of the monument discovered in 1908 probably dates from the time of Kanishka. The base is a square measuring 285 feet on each side, with massive towers at the corners, and on each of the four faces projections bearing staircases.
The spread of the former was no doubt connected with the growth of the Kushan Empire but may be anterior to the conversion of Kanishka, for though he gave a great impetus to the propagation of the faith, it is probable that, like most royal converts, he favoured an already popular religion. The Mahâyâna subsequently won much territory from the other school.
These exotic influences may indeed have acted as a further solvent upon Buddhism. But in any case, its local and temporary revival as a dominant state religion under Kanishka, whose empire did not long outlive him, failed to arrest its steady resorption into Hinduism. On the one hand, Buddhism itself was losing much of its original purity.
When leaving to return to his own country, Kanishka renewed Asoka's gift of all Kashmir to the Buddhist Church." This compilation was also called Jñâna-prasthâna. He then made a proclamation inviting all who had heard the Buddha preach to communicate what they remembered.
But as these Indo-Scythian kings had not been long enough in India to secure admission to the social aristocracy of Hinduism by that slow process of naturalisation to which so many ruling families have owed their Kshatrya pedigrees, Kanishka, having himself no claim to caste, may well have preferred for reasons of state to favour Buddhism as a creed fundamentally opposed to caste distinctions.
In any case no Canon formed in the time of Kanishka can have been equivalent to the collections of writings accepted to-day in China and Tibet, for they contain works later than any date which can be assigned to his reign, as do also the nine sacred books revered in Nepal.
A definite reply would be premature, for other Sanskrit texts may be discovered in Central Asia, but two circumstances connect this early Buddhist literature in Sanskrit with the epoch of Kanishka.
But the persecution, if it really occurred, was probably local and did not seriously check the spread of Buddhism, which before the time of Kanishka had extended northwards to Bactria and Kashmir. The latter territory became the special home of the Sarvâstivâdins. The whole period was disturbed and confused but some general statements can be made with considerable confidence.
During the period between the end of the brilliance of the Western, and the beginning of that of the Eastern Hans, these people were consolidating an empire in Northern India, and figuring there as the Kushan Dynasty: their power culminated, probably, in the reign of Kanishka.