The Deities on the Kushano-Sasanian Coins

Summary

Abstract: This article deals with Kushano-Sasanian coins, aiming to interpret the images of deities used on their reverses. The topic has occasionally been discussed in numismatic studies on the Kushano-Sasanian series, and some images have also been examined in archaeological literature on Central Asia. Yet Kushano-Sasanian religious imagery has never really been the subject of specific treatment. In fact, such series provide extremely interesting evidence of the religious imagery of the Sasanian period, due to the conventions which governed typological selection, since these allowed a more varied iconographic repertoire in comparison with what we can see on the imperial issues. Contrary to previous hypotheses of the phenomenon of syncretism produced by the supposed Bactrian religious specificity, the analysis results in a picture showing a fully Zoroastrian imagery, which absorbed iconographic features of Sasanian and Kushan derivation against the background of the presence of the new Sasanian power.

Key words: Kushano-Sasanians, Kushanshahs, Sasanians, numismatics, religious iconography, Iranian deities, Zoroastrian imagery.

The coin series struck by the governors of the former Kushan lands conquered by the Sasanians in the third century represent an extremely interesting phenomenon from several points of view. Their most prominent characteristic is the mixture of Sasanian and Kushan features, which provides researchers with material for various kinds of enquiries – from numismatics to history, to iconographic studies and the history of religions – that have so far only been explored in part.

Due amongst other things to the objective difficulties in the historical reconstruction and to the priority given to the analysis of the coin sequence and the resulting issue of attributing the series to specific rulers, Kushano-Sasanian coinage has been the subject of various studies that have always been of a strictly numismatic nature. These have mainly dealt with relative as well as absolute chronology – the latter in the framework of the debate on the eras used in Central Asia – and have only cursorily tackled other aspects. Among the latter, a topic of some interest is the religious imagery displayed by such series, namely the depictions of deities on coins of various denominations.