Kushan-period settlement at Kanispur

A settlement seen through buildings and food

Kanispur’s Kushan-period history brings together two different views of the past: the remains of a settlement and a later account of a royal foundation. Walls, floors, pottery and food remains describe activities at the site. Kalhana’s Rajatarangini supplies the association with Kanishka. These records can be read together, but they do not answer identical questions. A building can belong to the Kushan period without identifying the person who paid for it.

The date used here is a broad archaeological period, approximately the first to fourth century CE. The botanical study uses about 100–300 CE for its Kushan contexts and explicitly reports that these layers produced no absolute dates. Their dating depends on comparisons with other material and historical chronology. Neither range establishes a founding year, and neither supplies a month.

The excavated buildings and tile pavement

The Archaeological Survey of India’s 1998–99 review records work in three areas under B. R. Mani. At Rajteng, a substantial Kushan structure was exposed over roughly 22 by 17 metres. Pebble masonry, lime-brick flooring and a packed stone foundation were accompanied by painted plaster and floral stucco fragments. Perforated roof tiles suggested a wooden superstructure.

At KNP-2, decorated terracotta paving formed concentric circles. Tiles carried floral ornament, wheel motifs, Brahmi letters and Kharoshthi numerals. At KNP-3, roughly 2.5 metres of Kushan occupation rested on natural soil; no Neolithic occupation was found in that excavated area. The report interpreted this as the town associated with Kanishka. Its evidence for occupation is more direct than its attribution to a particular founder.

Objects used and discarded

The excavation report describes red pottery, including bowls, cooking vessels and goblets. A fluted goblet was compared with examples from Taxila. Other finds included a copper coin, silver pendant, figurines, glass-bangle fragment, grinder, iron nails and an arrowhead.

Such objects widen the account beyond royal patronage. They raise questions about preparing food, personal adornment, building maintenance and exchange. A comparison between two objects does not by itself identify a merchant’s route or the birthplace of the person who used them. Those questions require evidence about manufacture, find context and distribution.

Crops, fruit and the limits of a sample

Pokharia and colleagues examined charred plant remains recovered by water flotation. Their Kushan assemblage combined cereals and pulses with fruit and nut remains, including walnut, possible almond and grape. Barley was particularly prominent. They interpreted the wider crop range as evidence of cultivation across two seasons.

The authors considered domestic or storage contexts more plausible than the ritual assemblages known from some other sites. They proposed that diversified farming could have supported population recovery, rather than assuming that every new food represented an exotic Silk Road import. This is an interpretation of sampled remains, not a census or a reconstruction of every household’s meals.

How Kanispur became identified with Kanishkapura

In Book I, verse 168, Kalhana names Hushka, Jushka and Kanishka and associates each with a town bearing his name. Stein’s commentary warns that the order of these names should not be treated as a sequence of reigns: he understood Kalhana’s presentation as placing the three together. This matters when using the chronicle to build a timeline.

Stein preferred Kanispur as the location of Kanishkapura because of a manuscript gloss, forms of the name in Persian chronicles and the village’s position. He rejected Cunningham’s alternative identification with a place on the Srinagar–Shopian road, explaining that its name was Khampur. His note also records information collected in 1891 about a local royal-foundation tradition and a mound yielding carved stones and coins.

These are several strands in the history of an identification. A surviving name, a remembered founder and an excavated occupation should each retain their own evidential status. Stein’s observations preceded the modern excavation; they cannot be presented as descriptions of its trenches.

Questions still open

A fuller account needs a securely dated building sequence, wider exposure of the settlement and stronger links between particular objects and their original contexts. The excavated areas cannot supply a complete street plan or population total. The evidence also leaves room for more work on the people who built, supplied and maintained the settlement. Their history should not disappear behind the name of a king.