his left hand and a mace scepter in his right.56 The inscription—Bactrian in modified Greek script—reads, “Shah of Shahs, Huviška the Kushan.” The reverse shows a variety of male and female gods. The ones in the hoard are all from the Iranian pantheon: Pharro, Nana, Ardoxsho, Miiro (Mithra), Teiro, and Ashaeixsho.57
FIGURE 10. Coins of Huviška, found in the Debra Damo hoard. After Göbl (1970).
The last coins found in the hoard are six gold staters from the reign of Vasudeva I showing a standing king facing left with a spear in his left hand and his right tending the altar (figure 11). The obverse shows Wesho with a bull. Although the history of this period remains obscure, this is generally accepted to be a time of crisis and retrenchment for the Kushan Empire. Much of their territory in northern India was lost, and to the west their old neighbors, the Parthian kings (like the Yuezhi, originally settlers from the steppe), had been replaced by an Iranian dynasty, the Sasanians, commencing under Ardashir I (r. 224–42). He was threatening Kushan territory from the north and west. Some accounts tell that Vasudeva sought alliances at this time to counter these threats, joining with the Armenian king Khosroes I (r. 217–52) against Ardashir. The Chinese histories also report a diplomatic visit, probably sent by Vasudeva, to the Wei court of northern China in 230.58 We do not know of any alliance resulting from this. However, given the composition of the hoard, with only six coins from Vasudeva’s reign, it may be assumed that it left Kushan early in Vasudeva’s reign before the start of the Sasanian campaign, perhaps on a more general diplomatic mission.
FIGURE 11. Coin of Vasudeva I, found in the Debra Damo hoard. After Göbl (1970).
If we speculate that the hoard of coins of Vasudeva and his predecessors was a gift sent in a diplomatic embassy across the Indian Ocean, then they would have traveled from one of the Kushan capitals—possibly Peshawar or the summer capital Bagram. The mission would have undoubtedly had many other treasures to take as gifts for foreign rulers. From the city they would have followed well-traveled routes to the valley of the Indus River or one of its major tributaries.59 From here it was possible to travel by river downstream. We have an early account of such a journey through Alexander the Great (r. 336–323 BC). He returned home this way in late 326 BC, marching first to the Jhelum River, where he had established the cites of Nicaea and Bucephala on opposite banks earlier in the year. He assembled eight hundred river ships, many of them newly built, and set sail in November after the end of the monsoon when the river was navigable. The boats were rowed by Phoenicians, Cypriotes, Carians (from southwestern Turkey), and Egyptians, all seafaring peoples. Soldiers accompanied them on both banks. They traveled for ten days before reaching the confluence with the Ashkini, where several boats lost control and many people were drowned. Further downstream his army was attacked, and, in the ensuing battle Alexander was seriously wounded. He survived and his army eventually won. He had to fight other battles as they progressed, and the army did not reach the ocean until the monsoon in 325.60
At its greatest extent Kushan rule extended along the Indus River to the ocean, so there was less threat of such delays.61 Vasudeva might not have had his own fleet and might instead have relied, as did many diplomatic missions of the time, on getting passage on a merchant ship, probably for the river voyage and, at Barbarikon, changing to a seafaring vessel for the crossing of the Indian Ocean.
INDIAN OCEAN TRADE
Chapter 2 looked briefly at the maritime trade between India, the Red Sea, and the Gulf up to the first century BC. In the first centuries AD this trade continued and grew as new players came into the equation. In northern India and Central Asia the Kushan Empire provided a climate for trade by both land and sea. This was a major factor in the growth and success of the Silk Road. The stability provided by the Kushan enabled safe travel from the steppe to India through north-south routes, and from the Iranian Plateau to the Tarim, by east-west routes. Striking evidence for the trade is seen in the rock-cut graffiti at a way station called Shatial, high in the Indus River valley on the route from the north through Gilgit.62 Most are in Sogdian, left by merchants from Samarkand, Penjikent, and other cities north of the Kushan. But there are also inscriptions in Bactrian, Middle Persian, and Parthian. The routes south led from the Kushan capitals—such as Bagram and Taxila—to the Indus valley and thence to the seaport of Barbarikon—near Karachi in present-day Pakistan. There is plentiful evidence, archaeological and textual, to show the existence of Kushan-Roman trade at this time, most notably the Roman bronzes and glass and the ivories uncovered during excavations at Bagram.63
One of the main textual sources is the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, an anonymous handbook on Indian Ocean trade, written in Greek probably by a merchant based in Egypt in the mid-first century. Although at this time the Kushan Empire did not extend to the seaport of Babarikon, it is likely that items found in Bagram and elsewhere came in through this route and were traded at a site a little way inland. The Periplus lists glass as among the items traded there, along with gemstones, frankincense, textiles, silverware, wine, and coins.64 It is supplemented by other texts, and although the imports from Asia have mainly long disappeared, scholars have made a strong argument for regular trade “undertaken for commercial profit, facilitated by the use of coinage and underwritten by accumulated capital.”65 By this time ships were making use of the monsoon winds. These are caused by the Asian land mass heating up during the summer months; the rising hot air creates a vacuum that is filled by air from the ocean, causing strong winds that blow from the southwest. The opposite happens in the winter months, with the winds changing direction to come from the northeast. This system is supplemented by other regular patterns, such as equatorial winds and southeast trade winds. It was possible for ships to take advantage to sail from the mouth of the Red Sea and the coasts of East Africa and southern Arabia in summer, helped by the southwest monsoon, and for ships to set sail in winter from the ports on the east coast of South Asia, from Barbarikon to Taprobane (Sri Lanka), to be helped across to the Gulf and Red Sea. There was also the alternative of coast hopping from port to port, used from earliest times.
From the western edges of the Indian Ocean, ships came from the ports of the Red Sea, southern Arabia, and the Gulf. Those from the Red Sea included Roman boats that sailed from the ports in the north but also ships made by the Axumites, a kingdom in East Africa in what is now Eritrea and Ethiopia.66
THE AXUM EMPIRE
In the third century the Axumites were a major political and trading power. Axum was listed as one of the four most important kingdoms in the world by the Persian religious teacher Mani (ca. 216–74)—alongside Persia, Rome, and China.67 Two centuries earlier, the Periplus had noted Axum’s importance as a market for ivory: “Here is brought all the ivory from the land beyond the Nile, across the region called Cyenum and thence to Adulis.” This is sometimes given as the reason for the siting of the Axumites’ capital, Axum, relatively far west from the coast, as it acted as a hub for ivory hunters working inland to bring their goods over the Sudanese steppes and through the Nile valley.68 But the city also lay on fertile ground with ready access to water. Adulis, described by the Periplus as a “large village,” had become the major port by the third century. From Axum, it was an eight- to ten-day journey over the highlands and down into the coastal plain and the port. Although the Axumites had a written language, Ge’ez, and also used Greek, there are no extant documents from this period. The name of the Axumite king contemporary with Vasudeva’s reign is known from inscriptions found in southern Arabia. The script used for this gives consonants and no vowels, and in this unvocalized form he is named “GDRT.”69 This is tentatively vocalized as Gadarat. He was succeeded in about 230, the same time as the end of Vasudeva’s reign, by “DBH” (possibly Azaba or Adhebah).70 Although the Axumites started
