Hindu Deities - Imported by Kushan Warlords? (Part 3)

Read part 1 here and part 2 here.

This is the last of a three-part series that examines the conjecture put forth as a historical fact by historian Aniruddh Kanisetti: that the present-day important features of Hindu Deities were imported by Central Asian warlords for their political interests.

In part-I, the evolution of the iconography of Shiva was examined and in part-II, that of Skanda.

Now in this concluding part the important Indic contribution of Kushanas to the world around them, shall be seen.

Deity or Devotee? Rabatak Inscription Question

Greek invaders starting from Alexander, issued coins that identified the rulers as Gods. Kanisetti and a school of historians extend the same values to Kushana kings.

Kanisetti, on the authority of the famous Rabatak inscription, states:

The twenty-three lines Rabatak inscription in Bactrian language and Greek script, made by Kanishka-I, was discovered in 1993.

Going through the translation of this inscription, first by Prof. Nicolas Sims-Williams of Cambridge University and translated again by Prof.B.N.Mukherjee of University of Calcutta in 1995, what we find is quite contrary to what Kanisetti suggests.

Here is the relevant part:

From the above it is very clear that Kanishka might have projected himself as at best a demi-god but it was not his or his ancestors' worship that was being referred to here. Rather it is the worship of the Deities.

Worship of ancestral kings is mentioned separately. In a detailed study of Kushana Devakulas or dynastic temples in Mathura and Surkh Kotal (modern Afghanistan) (made before the discovery of Rabatak inscription)

The truth of this can also be attested from numismatic evidence.

For example, in the case of Kanishka’s coin, he is shown with elephant goad which was an important feature of Shiva (and definitely not got from any Greek or Iranian divine) but without the trident and on the reverse side Shiva is shown with trident.

The king is no more a god but a devotee of the Lord.

But there is even a more important change.

Yajna and the Kushanas

On Kushan coins one finds an interesting change in the relation between the ruler and the Deity. For the first time the ruler is shown making an offering at the fire altar.

Was this Vedic or Iranian fire altar? The shape resembles the Iranian. At the same time even a historian like Nayanjot Lahiri points out an important fact about this ‘oldest representation of fire altar in Asiatic coins’:

The Indian nature of fire altar is further strengthened by the fact that in the Rabatak inscription, Kanishka calls hjs 'grandfather Saddashkana the Soma sacrificer.'

Archaeologist Satya Shrava in his detailed study ‘The Kushana Numismatics’ (1985) also considered the fire altar, even though the imagery is Parthian, as ‘emerged from Indian customs’ (p.88).

The form is Iranian but the flame is Indian. This change is significant. Yet it is not much discussed.

In India the concept of Yajna has always been nurtured through the typical Hindu process of internalising. It has emerged as an archetype of national consciousness of India.

Conducting Yajna bestowed upon the ruler prestige and ritual power, no doubt, but more importantly it symbolised the ruler’s concern for the welfare of all his subjects.

Aitereya Brahmana proclaims the objective of a sacrifice: Yajna is done for the welfare of the people. So what is this fire pit offering by a king symbolising in the Indian context?

A strong possibility is that statecraft itself got symbolised as the Yajna.

This extension of Yajna as a functional archetype into various domains was strongly done by the Bhagavad Gita, which should have been then a text that influenced the so-called 'elite'.

Almost two thousand years later none other than Mahatma Gandhi pointed this out in his writings.

Being a votary of Ahimsa he could not condone Vedic sacrifice with animal offerings. But he pointed out how Gita has transformed Yajna into a fundamental archetype that could be extended to all domains of life:

It is a possibility. The Yajna offering by the kings on Kushans coins shows a value shift in the kings in their relation to their rule. It is an act of Yajna.

Though from the coins of Huvishka the fire altars do not make an appearance on the coins, definitely the concept of Yajna has influenced Kushana polity.

Return of the Divine Feminine

One can see in the Rabatak inscription an important feature—that the chief receivers of worship were 'Lady Nana and Lady Omma'.

Omma is clearly Goddess Uma. Nana was also the Goddess in whose name the temple was named.

Goddess Nana has a rich, mysterious and complicated history.

Many historians used to assert that she was Inana, a Mesopotamian Goddess. But recent scholarship suggests that that 'Inanna/Istar must be strictly distinguished from Nana' and that she is more frequently 'the Iranian divinity Anāhitā and/or the Greek goddess Artemis.' (Manya Saadi-nejad, Anahita: A History and Reception of the Iranian Water Goddess, I.B.Tauris, 2021, p.13)

In the Indo-Iranian context then, Nana would be Anahita. Originally, she was a powerful all-encompassing, river Goddess - a counterpart of Saraswati.

Even in Zoroastrian monotheism that took over, which had prolonged conflicts with the older religion of the Devas, Anahita had to be accommodated. Her full name was 'Arəduuī Sūrā Anāhitā'.

In a later Zoroastrian liturgical text, Yašt (1000-600 BCE), the full problem of accommodating an older all powerful Goddess into the monotheistic hierarchy becomes obvious.

In some of the liturgical verses, She is the Goddess to whom Ahura Mazda gives sacrifice and pleads (p.57).

In most other verses, She is created by Ahura Mazda and is secondary to him. Even when Zoroastrian royalty made peace with Anahita, she was mentioned in the inscriptions only after Ahura Mazda.

Was Nana a Goddess imported by Kushanas?

Indologist Asko Parpola presents evidence for a continuity of Goddess worship right from Harappan times.

Leaving aside his obsession with identifying different waves of 'Aryans', he provides material evidence for this Goddess worship in the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) seals from Afghanistan which depict 'a winged goddess escorted by lions very probably depict Nana, nearly two millennia before the Kuṣāṇas' and that it was in Afghanistan that 'the Kuṣāṇas adopted, among other local divinities, the goddess called Nana and Nanaya, who is depicted as riding the lion and wearing the mural crown.' (The Roots of Hinduism: The Early Aryans and the Indus Civilization, Oxford University Press, 2015, p.256).

Further Nana In Rig Veda is used to denote mother (RV 9.112.3).

Kushanas evidently brought back the importance and prominence of Nana, along with Uma and perhaps took it further into Iran.

The Rabatak inscription itself shows the predominance of the Goddesses. It is a 'Nana Sanctuary' with 'water on the surface' for the deities 'Ziri (Sri), Pharo (Farrah) and Omma (Uma).

Incidentally the descent of Ganga with Shiva breaking her fall is clearly stated in Mahabharata (3.108.9–14 and 5.109.6). While it was Ikshvaku of Surya vamsa who toiled for her descent, in Mahabharata she has a very intimate role with Chandra Vamsa kings.

In a striking comparison, Anahita is also prayed for her descent and it was by Ahura Mazda himself.

While many scholars have compared her to Saraswati, she as milky way Goddess descending to earth makes her comparison with Ganga also possible. As Nana she is also the Goddess who anoints the kings.

Kanishka in the Rabatak inscription states that he received his kingship from Nana. Then in his portrayal of Oesho with Shiva iconography we find water coming forth from one hand of Shiva through a jar.

Is that symbolic of Nana identified with the already-developed Ganga with a remarkable syncretism of Nana-Anahita?

While Ganga becoming a consort of Shiva is not fully described in Mahabharata, Uma is very much His consort. She is also Himavat's daughter right from the early Upanishadic age.

We find in the legend of one of the coinsof Huvishka, the legend of Nan-Oesho. This is very similar to much commoner Oesho-Omma.

Clearly this reflects the evolution of the imagery of Uma and Ganga as consorts of Shiva being taken and used to create a syncretic parallel with Iranian deities.

Over all one can say that the Kushanas with their Indic influence brought back to eminence a Goddess who lost her primal place during monotheistic Zoroastrianism. But again with the monopolistic take over, it is only in India that the river veneration of Ganga (and other rivers) still happen.

Samanvaya

Almost all the scholars who have studied Kushan period art, architecture and numismatics have been struck by what they call its 'eclectic' and/or tolerant nature. Many Gods, Goddesses of diverse cultures and civilisations have been accepted, including the pantheons.

Almost all studies of Kushan rulers point out this aspect.

Satya Shrava in his study (cited earlier) points out how the Kushan coins proclaimed the 'religious syncretism of the rulers' and that 'the heterogenous religious elements in Kushana coinage betray also an eclectic attitude of the Kushanas towards religion.' (p.9)

Even Richard D Mann, who argues for a political motivation in what he alleges to be the elevation of Mahasena worship under Kushanas suggests:

In one study on Kushanas, a historian claims that the religious broadmindedness led to their assimilation into Hinduism.

Despite the use of the typical cliché of 'growing reaction against the high pretensions of the Brahmins' and 'the inequity engendered by the Hindu caste system', Dr. Kanchan Chakraberti is closer to truth when he quotes the following words of artist and art-philosopher K.G.Subramanian (1924-2016) to explain the reason why Kushanas were exceptionally and creatively eclectic even for their other pagan counterparts:

Here an alternative is suggested. It is that Kushanas became 'conscious of the unity of all religions' because of their Hinduised nature.

In the Rabatak inscription, after the name Srosharda and before the name Narasa (between lines 9 and 10) an interlinear line is inserted which reads :

In a 2004 translation, Nicholas Sims-Williams reads the line as 'Sroshard—who in Indian is called Mahäsena and is called Visäkha' (The Bactrian Inscription of Rabatak: A New Reading, Bulletin of the Asia Institute, Vol.18, 2004). But this is a typical Hindu-Vedic technique to speak of one Deity being called by different names. Or different names considered as multiple aspects of the same divine.

There is a well known Rig Vedic dictum. This celebrates and proclaims theo-diversity as a condition for spiritual life of India:

Then in the celebrated Prithvi Sukta of Atharva Veda - three essential diversities are mentioned and they are made the basis of creating prosperity for the individual and the nation.

From diversity nourished by mother earth the seeker wishes to harness prosperity like a cow yielding milk:

In India there existed already a spiritual basis to understand and accept diversity.

Kushanas had a multi-ethnic, multi-religious empire. They had an option. They could have with modifications imposed their Deities on all the people they conquered. Or they could have just got converted to the religion of the people whom they conquered.

Instead they imbibed unto themselves the civilisational principles of India. They became Hinduised. Because they became Hinduized, they could see in multiple Deities the same Divinity.

It is not because they were tolerant that they got assimilated into Hinduism. It is because they got Hinduised they became eclectic and religiously broadminded.

The Tyranny of Shallow Historiography

Now the question is: why do a section of historians obsess with the notion of foreign imports into Indian religion and culture and use it as a means to deflate a notion of historical purity which Hindus do not have anyway?

The Hindu mind has never worried about the historical roots of their symbols. They know better as to what the symbolism of the iconography of their Gods and Goddesses means. To them it is more about the inner experience than a historical immutability.

More important is the question: why the same school of historians cannot see any intrinsic value in the emergence of the iconography and worship of Hindu Deities and its evolution? Why do they always see Hindu spiritual movements, Bhakti or temple-building or creation of Murtis, as elite imposition or propaganda alone?

Dr. Meenakshi Jain in her masterly scholarly book ‘The Hindus of Hindustan’ points out that the oldest Saraswati sculpture found in India was actually donated not by any royalty but by a metal worker.

Most of the Hindu spiritual movements emerged from within and were not imposed from above. In fact, Hindu spirituality stands out in pointing that the temple within of a simple devotee is superior to the temples built by kings. Yet these aspects of Hindu religious history would not even be discussed in the historical narrative set by the colonised historians.

Both Protestant colonial historians and colonized Marxist historians see no value in Hindu religious symbols except as tools for the subjugation of people.

These two schools feed into each other and they have a stranglehold on historiography. It is time Hindu historians with a holistic view of religion and society, importance of spiritual experience in emancipating the society and liberating the individual, take up the challenge of writing a holistic history of Hindu civilisation.

That is more a reason why this long three-part essay has been written, and not answering a 'public historian'.