The Kushanas: India and Beyond (60 CE - 230 CE)

Just under 2,000 years ago, Kushana Emperor Huvishka (r. 155-190 CE) and his ministers faced an unprecedented problem that will perhaps resonate with most heads of government today. It was a global pandemic of smallpox and measles that had originated in the Han Empire of China and was spreading around the known world.

Eerily, like today, the worst affected were the Han Empire (China), the Roman Empire (Italy) and the Parthian Empire (Iran), as a result of international travellers and businessmen contracting and carrying it along the Silk Route. And then the pandemic arrived in the great Kushana Empire that lay right in the middle of the three.