South Asia (1st–5th c.)Politics and state

Kushano-Sasanians in Gandhara: Sasanian claims reach Peshawar

Once the Sasanians had taken the Kushan lands north of the Hindu Kush, their claims reached across the mountains into India: Shapur I’s inscription of about 262 counts ‘the Kushan realm up to Peshawar’ among his lands. Gandhara appears to have been the farthest eastern extent of the Kushano-Sasanians, while the later Kushans held on east of the Indus.

Date: between 240 and 262exact date unknown: an interval is given
Place: Gandhara: Purushapura (Peshawar)approximate locationtoday: Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan · South Asia
Participants: Kushano-Sasanian Kingdom, Sasanian Empire, Shapur I, Kushan Empire
Threads: South Asia (1st–5th c.)
Also known as: Kushanshahr; Kushanshahs; Indo-Sasanians; Sasanian conquest of Gandhara; Later Kushans; Кушаншахр; Кушаншахи; Индо-сасаниды; Поздние кушаны

Vasudeva I, who reigned from about 191 to 225 or 232, was the last of the great Kushan kings and the last to be named in Chinese sources: in 229 ‘Bodiao, king of the Great Yuezhi’ sent tribute to the Wei court. Around his death the empire split into western and eastern halves. The Sasanians, who had overthrown the Parthians in 224, took the western half — Bactria, north of the Hindu Kush — which was later placed under vassal rulers with the title Kushanshah. In his trilingual inscription on the Ka‘ba-ye Zartosht at Naqsh-e Rostam, carved about 262, Shapur I counts among his lands ‘the Kushanshahr up to Pashkibur, and up to Kash, Sogdiana and the mountains of Chach’; Pashkibur is Purushapura (Peshawar), the former Kushan capital in Gandhara.

When the Kushano-Sasanians actually took Gandhara, and how firmly they held it, is uncertain. Gandhara appears to have been their farthest extent to the east: almost none of their coins have been found at Taxila, just across the Indus, and Sasanian coins become common there only under Shapur II and Shapur III in the 4th century, so the river seems to have marked the limit of their power. Some numismatists believe that the Kushan king Kanishka II (c. 232–247) for a time regained Gandhara and Kapisa. East of the Indus the later Kushans — Kanishka II, Vasishka and their successors — held the Punjab; their territories in the Ganges plain broke away around 270, and in the middle of the 4th century they submitted to the Gupta emperor Samudragupta. Around 360–370 the Kidarites overran most of the Kushano-Sasanian lands.

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