Place · Kushan inscription site · Afghanistan
Rabatak
The Kushan-period Bactrian inscription found in 1993 at Rabatak in Baghlan province, Afghanistan — a 23-line record in Greek script in the Bactrian language that reordered the Kushan king-list when it was discovered. The Rabatak inscription establishes Kanishka I as the direct successor of Vima Kadphises and lists his royal predecessors Kujula Kadphises, Vima Taktu, Vima Kadphises before him — resolving a century of debate about Kushan succession. The text also names Kanishka's conquered Indian cities (Saketa, Kaushambi, Pataliputra, Champa) and his cultic foundations. The inscription's reading was published by Nicholas Sims-Williams in 1996 and transformed Kushan chronology.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 36.130, 68.040
Connections (2)
- Script continuity withKandahar (Old Kandahar edict)
Kandahar's edicts are in Greek and Aramaic and Kanishka's Rabatak inscription is in Bactrian written in Greek letters — two Indian empires, four centuries apart, using the languages of the northwest to address populations for whom Indian scripts meant nothing. The Rabatak text, found in 1993, reordered the Kushan king-list, which is a reminder of how much of this period's history still rests on single inscriptions.
- Imperial inscription atKanishka
The Rabatak inscription, found in northern Afghanistan in 1993, is Kanishka's own account of his accession in Bactrian written in Greek letters, and it gave a king-list that reordered the dynasty — establishing that Vima Takto came between Kujula Kadphises and Vima Kadphises. A single stone found by accident rewrote the chronology of an empire, which is the ordinary condition of Kushan history.
On these journeys
Sources
Rabatak inscription
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