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Updated: June 29, 2025
But indomitably powerful as a social amalgam, Hinduism failed to generate any politically constructive force that could endure much beyond the lifetime of some exceptionally gifted conqueror. The Mauryan and the Gupta dynasties succumbed as irretrievably to the centrifugal forces of petty states and clans perpetually striving for mastery as the more ephemeral kingdoms of Kanishka and Harsha.
So far as is known, the story of this journey is not supported by more ancient documents or other arguments: it contains a prediction about Kanishka, and may have been composed in or after his reign when the flourishing condition of Buddhism in Gândhâra made it seem appropriate to gild the past.
It took place when Buddha had been born as a Brahman in the village of Daliddi; and from the merit of the act, he was next born in a devaloka. Formerly, when Buddha was travelling in this country with his disciples, he said to Ananda, "After my pari-nirvana, there will be a king named Kanishka, who shall on this spot build a tope." The boy said, "I am making a tope for Buddha."
The attitude of Kanishka and of the Council which he summoned towards the Mahayana is far from clear and I shall say something about this difficult subject below.
Firstly it mentions "Agiśala the overseer of works at Kanishka's vihâra," that is, probably Agesilaus, a foreigner in the king's service. Secondly it states that the casket was made "for the acceptance of the teachers of the Sarvâstivâdin sect," and the idea that Kanishka was the special patron of the Mahayana must be reconsidered in the light of this statement.
The majority of scholars place his accession about 78 A.D. but some put it rather later . The evidence of numismatics and of art indicates that he came towards the end of his dynasty rather than at the beginning and the tradition which makes Aśvaghosha his contemporary is compatible with the later date. Some writers describe Kanishka as the special patron of Mahayanism.
The Tibetan historian Târanâtha is not of much help, for his chronology is most confused, but still he definitely connects the appearance of Mahayanist texts with the reign of Kanishka and the period immediately following it and regards them as a new phenomenon. Greater assistance is furnished by the Chinese translators, whose dates are known with some exactitude.
This silence makes it primâ facie probable that he lived either before or after Pan Ch'ao's career. But this unfortunately proves nothing except that Kanishka cannot have been very late. The work is not a scripture for whose recognition some lapse of time must be postulated. But he also states that it was after the Council that Mahayanist texts began to appear. Sut. Majj.
But Indian literature is equally unconscious of the conquests made by Alexander, Kanishka and many others. Poets and philosophers were little interested in the expeditions of princes, whether native or foreign.
Their great king Kanishka is a figure in Buddhist annals second only to Asoka. Unfortunately his date is still a matter of discussion.
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