Kushan Empire - Origins

Origins

Chinese sources describe the Guishuang (貴霜), i.e. the Kushans, as one of the five aristocratic tribes of the Yuezhi (月氏), with some people claiming they were a loose confederation of Indo-European peoples, though many scholars are still unconvinced that they originally spoke an Indo-European language.

"For well over a century, however, there have been many arguments about the ethnic and linguistic origins of the Da Yuezhi (大月氏), Kushans (貴霜), and the Tochari, and still there is little consensus.

The Yuezhi had been living in the arid grasslands of eastern Central Asia's Tarim Basin, in modern-day Xinjiang, China, possibly speaking varieties of the Tocharian languages, until they were driven west by the Xiongnu in 176–160 BC. The five tribes constituting the Yuezhi are known in Chinese history as Xiūmì (休密), Guishuang (貴霜), Shuangmi (雙靡), Xidun (肸頓), and Dūmì (都密).

John Keay contextualizes the movements of the Kushan within a larger setting of mass migrations taking place in the region:

"Chinese sources tell of the construction of the Great Wall in the third century BC and the repulse of various marauding tribes. Forced to head west and eventually south, these tribes displaced others in an ethnic knock-on effect which lasted many decades and spread right across Central Asia. The Parthians from Iran and the Bactrian Greeks from Bactria had both been dislodged by the Sakas coming down from somewhere near the Aral Sea. But the Sakas had in turn been dislodged by the Yueh-chi who had themselves been driven west to Xinjiang by the Xiongnu. The Xiongnu would not reach India for a long time. But the Yueh-chi continued to press on the Shakas, and having forced them out of Bactria, it was sections or clans of these Yueh-chi who next began to move down into India in the second half of the first century AD."

The Yuezhi reached the Hellenic kingdom of Greco-Bactria (in northern Afghanistan and Uzbekistan) around 135 BC. The displaced Greek dynasties resettled to the southeast in areas of the Hindu Kush and the Indus basin (in present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan), occupying the western part of the Indo-Greek Kingdom.

General Cunningham identified the Kushans as Gurjars or Gujjar. The word Gusur is referenced in the Rabatak inscription of Kushan king Kanishka. According to some scholars the Word Gusur, which means Kulputra or a "man or woman born in high family", in this inscription stands for Gurjara. The Gurjars of Central Asia are termed as Gusur (Gujur) even today.