Saka–Kushan · c. 1st century BCE – 3rd century CE

A queen, a relic, and a pillar in the British Museum

In the first decade of the first century, a woman endowed a stupa on the bank of the Yamuna and had her name cut into the stone that recorded it. The stone survives. Her name is still legible, and still argued over.

These are the centuries when Central Asian, Iranian, Greek and Indian forms sat alongside one another in the same cities. Dress was tailored and draped at once; a Buddha could be carved with a Corinthian capital above him; a satrap struck coins with Greek on one face and Kharoshthi on the other. Nothing about the period is culturally tidy, which is why it is worth looking at.

A Saka queen at a workshop, inspecting a lion capital being cut with an inscription — A queen at the workshop where a lion capital is being cut, the inscription going in under her eye.

**Attested:** the capital, its Kharoshthi inscription, a queen's endowment recorded on it, the lion form, red sandstone. **Inferred:** her presence at the carving, her likeness, dress, the workshop, the drawing in her hand.

What the stone says

The Mathura lion capital is red sandstone, about 34 cm high, dated to the first decade of the first century CE and consecrated under Rajuvula, one of the Northern Satraps. It is covered in Prakrit inscriptions in the Kharoshthi script. It was found in the Saptarishi mound at Mathura and is now in the British Museum.

Among the donations it records is the gift of a stupa holding a relic of the Buddha, made by the chief queen of Rajuvula. She established the relic of Sakyamuni, together with a stupa and a sangharama, on the right bank of the Yamuna, for the Sarvastivadin order of the four quarters.

That is an endowment made in a woman's own name, to a named monastic order, on identified ground, cut in stone during her lifetime. It is not a story about a queen. It is her paperwork.

Not settled — her name

Editors read it differently. One reading gives Ayasia, chief queen of Rajuvula and daughter of Kharahostes. Another gives Nadasi Kasa, wife of Rajuvula and daughter of Aiyasi Kamuia. Thomas read the name as Nadadi Akasa, Bühler as Nadasia Kasaye, Konow as Nada Diaka. Whether the capital names one royal woman or two is genuinely open.

Four kinds of life, in one set of centuries

The point of showing these together is range, not a thesis. A donor, a rider, a performer and a court official are four different positions, and the period holds all of them.

A Saka queen in a conical cap and long-sleeved coat, holding a reliquary casket — The donor, with the casket

A queen carrying a reliquary. Relic caskets of this kind are among the best-documented objects of the period.

**Attested:** the pointed Saka cap, the long-sleeved coat, the reliquary casket, lion capitals. **Inferred:** her likeness, the colour and ornament of the dress, the courtyard.

A mounted woman archer in scale armour on a ridge, bow and quiver at her side — The rider

Steppe cavalry equipment is well recorded, and burials of armed women are known from the wider Scythian world.

**Attested:** scale armour, the composite bow and case, animal-style gold belt plaques, trousers and boots. **Inferred:** the individual, the setting. **Depicted for legibility:** the saddle fittings, which are drawn in a later form than the period's.

A consecration in a courtyard: a woman pouring from a gold reliquary while a monk performs a rite — The consecration

The moment the inscription describes: a relic placed, water poured, the order receiving the gift.

**Attested:** relic deposition by lay donors, monastic attendance, winged-lion relief ornament, inscribed pillars. **Inferred:** the participants, the choreography of the rite. **Decorative:** the lettering on the pillars is ornament, not readable Kharoshthi.

A woman drawing back a cloth from a Gandhara Buddha relief, an attendant with flowers and a monk beside her — The unveiling

A donor uncovering the relief she has paid for. Greek dress in a Buddhist setting is not a mistake here; it is what Gandhara looked like.

**Attested:** the haloed standing Buddha in Gandhara relief, Corinthian capitals in Buddhist architecture, Greek-descended populations in the north-west, women donors named in dedications. **Inferred:** the individuals, the ceremony.

A woman in draped dress holding a censer and a lidded lotus casket in a colonnaded hall — The offering

Incense and a lidded casket carried into a hall of Buddha niches. The dress is Hellenistic drape over Indian ornament, which is the period's ordinary compromise.

**Attested:** seated Buddha images in niches, incense offering, layered gold neck ornament, draped upper cloth. **Inferred:** the figure, the interior. **Note:** the colonnade and Corinthian capitals are the Gandharan idiom rather than Mathura's red sandstone one, and the stemmed censer is drawn in a later form.

A dancer with a mirror in a garden of flowering trees — The performer

A gaṇikā with a hand mirror. The profession was a licensed one, taxed and regulated, with training in music, dance and letters.

**Attested:** bronze hand mirrors, girdles with bell pendants, the gaṇikā as a regulated occupation in the legal literature. **Inferred:** the individual, the garden, the pose.

How to read the pictures

These are drawings, not evidence. They are here because a period this mixed is hard to picture from a description, and a wrong picture in the reader's head is worse than a drawn one with its seams showing.

So every caption is split three ways. Attested means the object, garment or practice is documented — in an excavated find, a relief, or a text. Inferred means we filled it in: faces, colours, weather, the particular arrangement of a room. Depicted for legibility means we knowingly drew something in a clearer or later form than the evidence supports, and say so rather than let a reader catch it.

No figure here is a portrait. Where a named woman appears in an inscription, the inscription is the claim and the drawing is only a way of holding her in mind while you read it.

What this does not establish

One queen's endowment says nothing about most women's lives, and royal women are the least representative people in any period. Donative inscriptions also survive selectively: they record those with the means to cut stone.

What it does establish is that a woman could hold property, dispose of it on her own initiative, choose a sectarian beneficiary, and have the transaction recorded under her own name and lineage. Whether that was exceptional or ordinary is a question the epigraphy of the period can answer, and we will take it up rather than assume it.

Sources

The object is public and catalogued; the readings are where the disagreement lives.

Mathura lion capital. Red sandstone, h. 34 cm, 1–10 CE. Found in the Saptarishi mound, Mathura. British Museum.

Sten Konow, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum II.1, Kharoshthī Inscriptions — for the capital's inscriptions and the reading of the queen's name and lineage.

F. W. Thomas and G. Bühler, earlier readings of the same passage — cited for their divergence from Konow's.

J. M. Rosenfield, The Dynastic Arts of the Kushans — on the dating of the Saptarishi Tila statue and why its identification as the queen's portrait is doubted.

Page references are being pinned to printed editions and will be added. Corrections are welcome and published.