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EPIGRAPHIA INDIOA.
(VOL. XVIII.
Professor Rapson has no doubt about the identity of the maharaja rajatiraja Khushana yavuga with Vima Kadphises. He says: "Most of the coins of Kujala Kadphises show clearly both by their types and by their fabric that they were struck in the Kábul valley. They are imitated from the barbarous issues of that region which still continued to reproduce mechanically the legends with the name of the last Yavana king, Hermaeus, long after his death. They are found in enormous numbers beyond the limits of the Kábul valley in Takshasila, where the stratification of the objects discovered in the excavations proves unquestionably that, in that district, they are rather later than the coins of Gondopharnes. At first sight the evidence of the finds would thus seem to show that Kujula Kadphises himself was later in date than Gondopharnes and that he was the actual conqueror of Takshasila ; but since the coins in question manifestly come from the Kábul valley, we must suppose that they represent the ordinary currency of the Kushăņas at the time when the invasion took place, and that they were introduced into Takshasilā as large numbers of Sassanian coins were brought into the country of the lower Indus from Irān by the Hüņas of the fifth century A.D. It is, therefore, by no means impossible that Kujala Kadphises may have been not later than, but contemporary with, Gondopharnes; and there is no reason to doubt the statement of the Chinese writers that it was not Kujúla Kadphises, but his son and successor, Vima Kadphises, who extended the dominions of the Kushåņas from the Kabul valley to N.-W. India."
I quite agree with Professor Rapson that the bulk of Kujala Kadphises' coins may have been struck in the Kabul valley, but in other respects I differ from him toto coelo. The Chinese sources do not, as we have already seen, tell us that Vima Kadphises, and not Kujala Kadphises, conquered N.-W. India. They state that the latter invaded An-si (Parthia), conquered Kao-fu (Kabul), P'u-ta (probably the country about Ghazni) and Ki-pin. But we know that Ki-pin comprised parts of the Panjab, i.e., N.-W. India, and the "India" conquered by Vima Kadphises cannot be identified with N.-W. India.
In such circumstances it seems to me that the Sirkap coins must be ascribed to Kujala, and not to Vima Kadphises. Coins of the known types of the former were found in the same locality, but no coins of Vima Kadphises or of Soter Megas. It cannot be objected that Kujala Kadphises' bast does not occur on any of the coins which can, with certainty, be ascribed to him. Professor Rapson has given the explanation of this fact : these coins were struck in the Kabul valley, and it was only after the conquest of Takshafila that Kujala Kadphises introduced his bust on his coins, probably in direct imitation of Gondopharnes.
It is of interest to note that the form Khushana occurring in the Sirkap legends is also found on some coins of Kujāla Kadphises with the legend Khushanasa yavuasa Kuyula Kaphsasa sachad hramathitasa, and some of these coins were found together with the new type at Sirkap, with the legend Khushanasa yavugasa Kuyula Kasasa.
So far as I can see, the cumulative weight of all these indications makes it necessary to Ascribe the silver coins found at Sirkap, with a head "resembling" that of Vima Kadphises, to Kujala Kadphises and to infer that they were struck during his rule at Taxila, in imitation of the practice adhered to by his predecessors.
Now I have tried to show above that the date of the Gudufara inscription must fall between 16 and 26 A.D. Nineteen years later, i..., between 35 and 45, the Kushana ruler of the Panjtår record had assumed the title Maharaja, and 33 years later, i.e., between 49 and 59, he uses the imperial titles Mahārāja rājātirāja dēva putra. If the ruler in question was Kujala Kadphises, he had already a distinguished career behind him when he began his conquest of the Parthian empire. He had succeeded some other ruler as yavuga, and he had subjected four
11.c. p. 581 f.
* Cf. Franko, Beiträge aus chinesischen Quellen nur Kenntnis der Türkrölker und Skythen Zentralaien, Berlin, 1904, pp. 59 f.
