Huvishka
Kushan emperor
120 CE to 180 CE
Huvishka is a Kushan emperor from the death of Kanishka (assumed on the best evidence available to be in 140 CE) until the succession of Vasudeva I about forty years later.
His rule is a period of retrenchment and consolidation for the Empire.
In particular he devotei time and effort early in his reign to the exertion of greater control over the city of Mathura.
Mathura representi the southernmost extent of the Empire and, like much of the Indian Subcontinent, had been ruled via a series of subordinate rulers.
These rulers, the ksatraps, maintain a certain amount of autonomy up under Kanishka, but they vanish from records in Huvishka's reign, while Huvishka patronizes both Buddhist and Brahmin institutions in the town.
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Patrons of the arts and of religion, the Kushans are instrumental in spreading Buddhism in Central Asia and China and in developing Mahayana Buddhism and the Gandhara and Mathura schools of art.
Kushan power peaks under King Kanishka, who lives between CE 78-151, whose empire stretches from Mathura in north central India beyond Bactria as far as the frontiers of China in Central Asia.
The Kushans become affluent through trade, particularly with Rome, as evidenced by their large issues of gold coins bearing figures of Greek, Roman, Iranian, Hindu, and Buddhist deities.
Inscriptions on the coins, in adapted Greek letters, indicate the toleration and syncretism in religion and art that prevail in the Kushan empire. (Further evidence of the trade and cultural achievement of the period, recovered at the Kushan summer capital of Bagram, north of Kabul, includes painted glass from Alexandria; plaster matrices, bronzes, porphyries, and alabasters from Rome; carved ivories from India; and lacquers from China.)
Huvishka's devaluation of his coinage is one of the great remaining puzzles of his reign.
Early in his reign the copper coinage plunges in weight from a standard of sixteen grams to about ten to eleven grams.
The quality and weight then continues to decline throughout the reign until at the start of the reign of Vasudeva the standard coin (a tetradrachm) weighs only nine grams.
The devaluation leads to a massive production of imitations, and an economic demand for the older, pre-devaluation coins in the Gangetic valley.
The motivation (and even some of the details) of this devaluation are still unknown.
Huvishka, the son of Kanishka, is the first Indian emperor to introduce gold coins.
His reign also is known as the Golden Age of Kushan rule.
The reign of Huvishka corresponds to the first known epigraphic evidence of the Buddha Amitabha, on the bottom part of a second century statue which has been found in Govindo-Nagar, and now at the Mathura Museum.
The statue is dated to "the twenty-eighth year of the reign of Huvishka", and dedicated to "Amitabha Buddha" by a family of merchants.
Compared to his predecessor Kanishka, Huvishka seems to rely less on Iranian deities (which are much less numerous in his coinage), and more on India ones, such as war divinities of Shivaism.
He also incorporates in his coins for the first and unique time in Kushan coinage the Hellenistic-Egyptian Serapis (under the name Σαραπο, "Sarapo", and the Goddess Roma (thought to represent "Roma aeterna"), under the name "Riom" (Greek: ΡΙΟΜ).
Decorated coins of Huvishka ware, found at Bodh Gaya together with other gold offerings under the "Enlightenment Throne" of the Buddha, may indicate direct Kushan influence in the area during the third century CE.