The Nomadic Element in the Kushan Empire in Light of New Documents

The Kushan empire, which controlled the southern regions of Central Asia and Northern India in the 1st to 3rd centuries CE and exerted a long-lasting influence in the Tarim basin, was founded by the nomadic people of the Yuezhi who had migrated from Gansu at the time of the collapse of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom. The legacy of the nomadic background in the structure and civilization of the empire can be reassessed in light of new epigraphical, archaelogical and iconographical documents. The lecture will address the following points: the first settlements of the Yuezhi in Bactria; the existence of sizable nomadic groups within the Kushan empire; the use of symbols of nomadic origin in Kushan art; and the possible existence of ancestral gods in the Kushan pantheon.

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