Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/274

 236 THE KUSHAN OR INDO - SCYTHIAN DYNASTY Greek both in script and language, with effigies of the sun and moon personified under their Greek names, Helios and Selene. On later issues the Greek script is retained, but the language is a form of old Persian, while the deities depicted are a strange medley of the gods worshipped by Greeks, Persians, and Indians. The rare coins exhibiting images of Buddha Sakya- muni with his name in Greek letters are usually con- sidered to be among the latest of the reign, but they are well executed and may be earlier in date than is generally supposed. It is impossible to fix the exact date of Kanishka's conversion, but the event evidently did not occur until he had been for some years on the throne. The appearance of the Buddha among a crowd of heterogeneous deities would have appeared strange, in fact would have been inconceivable to Asoka, while it seemed quite natural to Kanishka. The newer Bud- dhism of his day, designated as the Mahayana, or Great Vehicle, was largely of foreign origin, and developed as the result of the complex interaction of Indian, Zoroastrian, Christian, Gnostic, and Hellenic elements, which was made possible by the conquests of Alexander, the formation of the Maurya empire in India, and, above all, by the unification of the Roman world under the sway of the earlier emperors. In this newer Bud- dhism the sage Gautama became in practice, if not in theory, a god, with his ears open to the prayers of the faithful, and served by a hierarchy of Bodhisattvas and other beings acting as mediators between him and sin-