The Kushan Empire (, Kushano; Kuṣāṇ Rājavaṃśa; BHS: ; Kušan-xšaθr) was a syncretic Empire formed by Yuezhi in the Bactrian territories in the early 1st century. It spread to encompass much of Afghanistan, and then the northern parts of the Indian subcontinent at least as far as Saketa and Sarnath near Varanasi (Benares), where inscriptions have been found dating to the era of the Kushan emperor Kanishka the Great. Emperor Kanishka was a great patron of Buddhism; however, as Kushans expanded southward, the deities of its later coinage came to reflect its new Hindu majority.