Kushan
The Kushan Empire was a state that at its height, about 150 - 250 CE, stretched from Tajikistan to the Caspian Sea to Afghanistan and down into the Ganges river valley. The empire was created by Tocharians from modern Xinjiang. They had diplomatic contacts with Rome, Sassanian Persia and China.The name Kushan derives from the Chinese term, traditionally transliterated Guishang, that described a branch of the Yuezhi — a loose confederation of Indo-European peoples speaking versions of the Indo-European Tocharian language. They were the easternmost Indo-Europeans, who had been living in the arid grasslands of the Tarim Basin in modern-day Xinjiang, until they were driven west by another group, the Xiongnu, in 176ÃÂÃÂ160 BCE.
The Yuezhi reached Hellenized Bactria (northernmost Afghanistan and Uzbekistan) around 135 BC. In the following century, charismatic leaders welded the group into a tighter confederation. Gradually wresting control of the area from the Parthian tribes, the Yuezhi expanded south into the region traditionally known as Gandhara (the Pathan areas now shared between Pakistan and Afghanistan) and established a capital near present-day Kabul. They adapted the Greek alphabet, which they encountered in Bactria, to suit their own language and soon began minting coinage, the first in India.
The rule of Kanishka, the third Kushan emperor, who flourished from the late first to the early/mid-second century AD, was administered from two capitals: Purushapura (now Peshawar in northern Pakistan) and Mathura in northern India. The rule of the Kushans linked the seagoing trade of the Indian Ocean with the commerce of the Silk Road, through the long-civilized Indus Valley. At the height of the dynasty, Kushan loosely oversaw a territory that extended to the Aral Sea through present-day Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan into northern India. The loose unity and comparative peace of such a vast expanse encouraged long-distance trade, brought Chinese silks to Rome, created strings of flourishing urban centers, and eventually encouraged the expansion of a hellenized form of Buddhism (Greco-Buddhism) into Central and Northern Asia.
The art and culture of Gandhara, at the crossroads of the Kushan hegemony, are the best known expressions of Kushan influences to Westerners.
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In computer games, the "Kushan" refers to the protoganists in all three games of the Homeworld series, developed by Relic Entertainment and Barking Dog Studios and produced by Sierra Entertainment.
The Kushan were a powerful empire divided into extended families called kiithid, centered on the planet of Hiigara before they fell from grace in a war and were exiled from their world on pain of death. Some of them hid in the Nebula of Kadesh while others fled to the planet of Kharak where they forgot their origins and became similar to the Bedouin in terms of culture and religion.
Later they discovered they were not really from Kharak when they found the ruins of an ancient starship and within it a map to their home. Building a giant colony ship called the Mothership they went on their way to return home before discovering their ancient enemies, the Taiidan who were determined to destroy them.
After returning to their homeworld and destroying the Taiidan Empire the Kushan lived out their life and recovered from the war, fighting other fights as explained in . One hundred years after returning they were forced to meet a new enemy in Homeworld 2.