THE RISE AND FALL OF THE KUSHAN DYNASTY: Empire, Trade, and Cultural Synthesis on the Silk Road, (c. 30 BCE – 375 CE)
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE KUSHAN DYNASTY: Empire, Trade, and Cultural Synthesis on the Silk Road, (c. 30 BCE – 375 CE) – Dr. Rahul S. Kharat Abstract The Kushan Empire, which flourished across Central Asia and the northern Indian subcontinent from approximately the first to the fourth centuries CE, occupies a pivotal but often underappreciated place in world history. Emerging from the nomadic Yuezhi confederation displaced from the steppes of Gansu, the Kushans forged one of antiquity's great transregional empires, straddling the crossroads of the Silk Road and mediating contact between the Roman Mediterranean, Parthian Iran, Han China, and the Indian heartland. This article traces the trajectory of the Kushan state from its tribal origins through its zenith under Kanishka the Great to its gradual fragmentation under Sassanid, and later Gupta and Hunnic, pressure. Particular attention is paid to the dynasty's administrative innovations, its extraordinary religious plu...