The empire of Kushan flourished in the 1st through 3rd centuries AD in region of present North India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Central Asian republics. Its center lay between
Gandhara and the upper reaches of the Ganges. Kushan, a descendant of the Mauryan Empire, was most probably a Tocharian realm. The Tocharians, the most eastern Indo-Europeans, had been evicted from Chinese Turkestan by the Xiongnu, a conglomerate of nomadic tribes that controlled most of the steppes north and northwest of China. The name Xiongnu is usually translated as “Huns,” but whether the Xiongnu may indeed be equated with the Huns who appeared in Europe during the 4th century is uncertain. The Kushan Empire was of great importance as a crossroads of cultures: it was one of the regions influenced by Irano-Hellenistic culture and served as a bridge between India and China. It played a significant role in the dissemination of the Hellenistic heritage in South - and Southeast Asia and of Buddhism in Central Asia and China. The Indo-Scythian Empire of the Sakas and other indigenous realms were located south of the Kushan region. Around 240 AD, Kushan came under Sassanid (i. e., New Persian) influence; in the 4th century, it became part of the territory of the Hephthalites or White Huns, who were formally Sassanid vassals. The same century saw the emergence of a new empire in northern India: the Gupta Empire, whose center was the middle Ganges region. This empire subsequently expanded in all directions. After a brief period of intense bloom, the Gupta Empire broke up into an eastern and a western part in the 5th century AD; at its northern borders, it was threatened by the White Huns. During the 6th century, new Hindu empires came upon the scene, and also, in Afghanistan and Central Asia, the Turks.
World History
