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Rabatak Inscription | |
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Period/culture | 2nd century CE |
Discovered | 36°08′58″N68°24′15″E / 36.149434°N 68.404101°E |
Place | Rabatak, Afghanistan |
Present location | Kabul Museum, Kabul, Afghanistan |
The Rabatak Inscription is a stone inscribed with text written in the Bactrian language and Greek script, found in 1993 at Rabatak, near Surkh Kotal in Afghanistan. The inscription relates to the rule of the Kushan emperor Kanishka, and gives remarkable clues on the genealogy of the Kushan dynasty. It dates to the 2nd century CE.
The Rabatak inscription was found near the top of an artificial hill, a Kushan site, near the main Kabul-Mazar highway, to the southeast of the Rabatak pass which is currently the border between Baghlan and Samangan provinces. It was found by Afghan mujahideen digging a trench at the top of the site, along with several other stone sculptural elements such as the paws of a giant stone lion, which have since disappeared.
An English aid worker who belonged to the demining organization HALO Trust, witnessed and took a photograph of the inscription before reporting the discovery. The photograph was sent to the British Museum, where its significance as an official document that named four kings of Kushan, was recognised by Joe Cribb. He determined that it was similar to an inscription found in the 1950s at Surkh Kotal by the French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan. Cribb shared the photograph with one of only a handful of living people able to read the Bactrian language, Nicholas Sims-Williams of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). More photographs arrived from HALO Trust workers, and a first translation was published by Cribb and Sims-Williams in 1996.
English translation | Transliteration | Original (Greco-Bactrian script) |
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Because of the civil war in Afghanistan years passed before further examination was possible. In April 2000 Jonathan Lee, an English specialist in Afghan history, travelled with Robert Kluijver, director of the Society for the Preservation of Afghanistan's Cultural Heritage, from Mazar-i Sharif to Pul-i Khumri, the provincial capital of Baghlan, to locate the stone. It was eventually found in a storehouse at the Department of Mines and Industry. Lee took photographs that allowed Sims-Williams to publish a more accurate translation, and another translation once Sims-Williams had examined the stone in person (2008).
In July 2000 Robert Kluijver travelled with a delegation of the Kabul Museum to Pul-i Khumri to retrieve the stone inscription (weighing between 500 and 600 kilograms [1,100 and 1,300 lb]). It was brought by car to Mazar-i Sharif and flown from there to Kabul. At the time the Taliban had a favorable policy towards the preservation of Afghan cultural heritage, including pre-Islamic heritage. The inscription, whose historical value had meanwhile been determined by Sims-Williams, became the centrepiece of the exhibition of the (few) remaining artifacts in the Kabul Museum, leading to a short-lived inauguration of the museum on 17 August 2000. Senior Taliban officials objected to the display of pre-Islamic heritage, which led to the closing of the museum (and the transfer of the Rabatak inscription to safety), a reversal of the cultural heritage policy and eventually leading to the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamyan and other pre-Islamic statuary (from February 2001 onwards).
Today the Rabatak inscription is again on display in the reopened Afghan National Museum, or Kabul Museum.
The Rabatak site, again visited by Robert Kluijver in March 2002, has been looted and destroyed (the looting was performed with bulldozers), reportedly by the local commander at Rabatak.
The first lines of the inscription describe Kanishka as:
Follows a statement regarding the writing of the inscription itself, indicating that the language used by Kanishka in his inscription was self-described as the "Aryan language".
Also, Kanishka announces the beginning of a new era starting with the year 1 of his reign, abandoning the therefore "Great Arya Era" which had been in use, possibly meaning the Vikrama era of 58 BCE.
Lines 4 to 7 describe the cities which were under the rule of Kanishka, among which four names are identifiable: Saketa, Kausambi, Pataliputra, and Champa (although the text is not clear whether Champa was a possession of Kanishka or just beyond it). The Rabatak inscription is significant in suggesting the actual extent of Kushan rule under Kanishka, which would go significantly beyond traditionally held boundaries: [1]
Finally, Kanishka makes the list of the kings who ruled up to his time: Kujula Kadphises as his great-grandfather, Vima Taktu as his grandfather, Vima Kadphises as his father, and himself Kanishka:
B. N. Mukherjee also published a translation of the inscription. [2] [3]
Note: This translation differs from Nicholas Sims-Williams, who has "Vima Taktu" as the grandfather of Kanishka (lines 11–14). Further, Sims-Williams does not read the words "Saddashkana" or "Soma" anywhere in the inscription. [4] [5] [6]
History of Afghanistan |
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Kanishka I, Kanishka or Kanishka the Great, was an emperor of the Kushan dynasty, under whose reign the empire reached its zenith. He is famous for his military, political, and spiritual achievements. A descendant of Kujula Kadphises, founder of the Kushan empire, Kanishka came to rule an empire extending from Central Asia and Gandhara to Pataliputra on the Gangetic plain. The main capital of his empire was located at Puruṣapura (Peshawar) in Gandhara, with another major capital at Mathura. Coins of Kanishka were found in Tripuri.
The Kushan Empire 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 Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, 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.
Hermaeus Soter or Hermaios Soter was a Western Indo-Greek king of the Eucratid Dynasty, who ruled the territory of Paropamisade in the Hindu-Kush region, with his capital in Alexandria of the Caucasus. Bopearachchi dates Hermaeus to c. 90–70 BCE and R. C. Senior to c. 95–80 BCE.
Kujula Kadphises was a Kushan prince who united the Yuezhi confederation in Bactria during the 1st century CE, and became the first Kushan emperor. According to the Rabatak inscription, he was the great grandfather of the great Kushan king Kanishka I. He is considered the founder of the Kushan Empire.
Vima Kadphises was a Kushan emperor from approximately 113 to 127 CE. According to the Rabatak inscription, he was the son of Vima Takto and the father of Kanishka.
Vima Takto or Vima Taktu was a Kushan emperor who reigned c. 80–90 CE.
Vāsudeva I was a Kushan emperor, last of the "Great Kushans." Named inscriptions dating from year 64 to 98 of Kanishka's era suggest his reign extended from at least 191 to 232 CE. He ruled in Northern India and Central Asia, where he minted coins in the city of Balkh (Bactria). He probably had to deal with the rise of the Sasanians and the first incursions of the Kushano-Sasanians in the northwest of his territory.
Oesho is a deity found on coins of 2nd to 6th-century, particularly the 2nd-century Kushan era. He was apparently one of the titular deities of the Kushan dynasty. Oesho is an early Kushan deity that is regarded as an amalgamation of Shiva.
Bactrian is an extinct Eastern Iranian language formerly spoken in the Central Asian region of Bactria and used as the official language of the Kushan and the Hephthalite empires.
Mujatria, previously read Hajatria, is the name of an Indo-Scythian ruler, the son of Kharahostes as mentioned on his coins.
Surkh Kotal (Persian: چشمه شیر Chashma-i Shir; also called Sar-i Chashma, is an ancient archaeological site located in the southern part of the region of Bactria, about 18 kilometres north of the city of Puli Khumri, the capital of Baghlan Province of Afghanistan. It is the location of monumental constructions made during the rule of the Kushans. Huge temples, statues of Kushan rulers and the Surkh Kotal inscription, which revealed part of the chronology of early Kushan emperors were all found there. The Rabatak inscription which gives remarkable clues on the genealogy of the Kushan dynasty was also found in the Robatak village just outside the site.
Within Buddhist mythology, Sadashkana according to the gold plate inscription of Senavarman, mentions Sadashkana as the Devaputra, son of maharaja rayatiraya Kujula Kataphsa :
Vāsishka was a Kushan emperor, who seems to have had a short reign following Kanishka II.
Nicholas Sims-Williams, FBA is a British professor of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, where he is the Research Professor of Iranian and Central Asian Studies at the Department of the Languages and Cultures of Near and Middle East. Sims-Williams is a scholar who specializes in Central Asian history, particularly the study of Sogdian and Bactrian languages. He is also a member of the advisory council of the Iranian Studies journal.
The legacy of the Indo-Greeks starts with the formal end of the Indo-Greek Kingdom from the 1st century, as the Greek communities of central Asia and northwestern India lived under the control of the Kushan branch of the Yuezhi, Indo-Scythians and Indo-Parthian Kingdom. The Kushans founded the Kushan Empire, which was to prosper for several centuries. In the south, the Greeks were under the rule of the Scythian Western Kshatrapas.
In the coinage of the North Indian and Central Asian Kushan Empire the main coins issued were gold, weighing 7.9 grams, and base metal issues of various weights between 12 g and 1.5 g. Little silver coinage was issued, but in later periods the gold used was debased with silver.
Dilberjin Tepe, also Dilberjin or Delbarjin, is the modern name for the remains of an ancient town in modern (northern) Afghanistan. The town was perhaps founded in the time of the Achaemenid Empire. Under the Kushan Empire it became a major local centre. After the Kushano-Sassanids the town was abandoned.
The Wardak Vase is an ancient globular-shaped buddhist copper vase that was found as part of a stupa relic deposit in the early nineteenth century in the Wardak Province of Afghanistan. The importance of the vase lies in the long Kharoshthi inscription which dates the objects to around 178 AD and claims that the stupa contained the sacred relics of the Buddha. Since 1880, the vase has been part of the British Museum's Asian collection.
Kushan art, the art of the Kushan Empire in northern India, flourished between the 1st and the 4th century CE. It blended the traditions of the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara, influenced by Hellenistic artistic canons, and the more Indian art of Mathura. Kushan art follows the Hellenistic art of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom as well as Indo-Greek art which had been flourishing between the 3rd century BCE and 1st century CE in Bactria and northwestern India, and the succeeding Indo-Scythian art. Before invading northern and central India and establishing themselves as a full-fledged empire, the Kushans had migrated from northwestern China and occupied for more than a century these Central Asian lands, where they are thought to have assimilated remnants of Greek populations, Greek culture, and Greek art, as well as the languages and scripts which they used in their coins and inscriptions: Greek and Bactrian, which they used together with the Indian Brahmi script.
Rupiamma was a Great Satrap in India during the 2nd century CE, who is known from an inscription found at Pauni in Central India, south of the Narmada river.