The Kushan Empire

Both articles examine art in the Kushan Empire and the influence from other cultures on the art. For example both articles mention a Hellenistic influence on Gandharan Buddhist art. Also both articles deal with the implications scholars today face when trying to retrieve information from Kushan art. In Czuma’s article it states that scholars today have trouble composing a chronological order of Kushan art during the era of Muthura and Gandhara sculpture schools because both schools flourished at the same time in different parts of the Empire. Similarly in Liu’s article it discusses that the artwork (more specifically the sculptures) does not reveal Kushan physical characteristics. When historians analyze art to learn facts about a culture it can be problematic. Art can be interpreted in many different ways and can mean different things to many different people. However art can also be very helpful to scholars as well. For example when a culture was mostly oral and hardly wrote anything down art become vital to scholars trying to decode an ancient culture.

The presence of Buddhism in the Kushan Empire was significant. Lui’s article states that there was a large amount of Buddhist art; this shows the popularity of the religion. This popularity also enhanced prestige of horses and horse riding. Horses are associated with Buddhism including many legends of early Buddhist missionaries. The popularity of horse riding also lead to changes in clothing, “women wearing hats with hanging veils along with attire that combined a tight-sleeved blouse with riding pants was a common scene on the streets of the capital at Chang’an” (Liu, 286). Therefore Buddhism influenced changes in Kushan culture. Buddhism however was not the only religion in the Kushan Empire. There were many religions present in the Kushan Empire which means that there was not one religion that all the people of the Kushan Empire believed in such as Catholicism at one point in Rome.