KANISHKA, a king who ruled in Kashmir and N.W. India in the 1st century, about A.D. 40; but his sway extended to both sides of the Himalaya, from Yarkand and Khok and to Agra and Sind. He was the most famous of the Saka conquerors. Under him was held the fourth and last Buddhist council. Its 500 members drew up their com mentaries on the Buddhist faith. These comment aries supplied in part materials for the Tibetan or Northern Canon, completed at subsequent periods. The Northern Canon is called by the Chinese Buddhists, the Greater Vehicle of the Law. It includes many later corruptions or develop ments of the Indian faith, as originally embodied by Asoka in the Lesser Vehicle or Canon of the Southern Buddhists, B.C. 244.
The Buddhist Canon of China, a branch of the Greater Vehicle, was arranged between A.D. 67 and 1285 ; it includes 1440 distinct works, comprising 5586 books.
The ultimate divergence between the canons is great, both as to the historical aspects of Buddhaks life and as to his teaching. The original northern commentaries were written in the Sanskrit lan guage. Kanishka and his Kashmir council became in some degree to the Northern Tibeto-Chinese Buddhists what Asoka and his Patna council (n.c. 244) had been to the Buddhists of Ceylon
and the south. Kanishka, Hushka, and Juahka are three Turushka (Turk) kings, of the Buddhist religion, mentioned in the Raja Tarangini. The names of the first two are also on inscriptions and on coins in Northern India, that of Kanishka at Mathura,Manikyala,Bahawulpur,and Zeda; that of Hushka at Mathura, and on a metal vase found at Wardak in Afghanistan. The Manikyala tope was built by Kanishka, and a Roman coin, n.c. 33, was found in it. Kanishka founded the Saka era A.D. 79. Kanishka established Buddhism in the province between Kabul and the Indus. He erected a great st'hupa or tope at Peshawur, which Fa Hian (A.n. 400) describes as 470 feet high, but it was in ruins when Hiwen Thsang passed it in A.D. 629-645.
Kanishka's coins have two figures of Buddha, one as the teacher seated, and the other as the teacher standing, in each case with the right hand raised as if in the act of speaking. The word Saka can bo read on all the coins.—Fergusson ; Imp. Gaz.