Kushan Dinar

The Kushan dinar is the name commonly given by numismatists to the gold coinage of the Kushan Empire, which in the first centuries CE ruled Bactria, Gandhara and much of northern India. Regular gold coinage began under Vima Kadphises and expanded under his successor Kanishka, whose coins show the change from Greek to Bactrian legends and an unusually wide range of Iranian, Indian and Greek deities.

The coins' original name is not recorded. Modern writers call them dinars or staters; the word dinar, ultimately from the Roman denarius, appears in later Indian sources for gold coins, and Kushan gold was struck to a weight close to that of the Roman aureus.

The Kushans emerged from the Yuezhi confederation that settled in Bactria in the 2nd century BCE. Their early rulers struck silver and copper in the traditions of the Indo-Greek kings and of the Indo-Scythians, which themselves descended from Greek drachma coinage and from Seleucid models.

Vima Kadphises, usually placed in the late 1st or early 2nd century CE, introduced a substantial gold coinage. His coins show the king seated or emerging from mountains on one side and the god Oesho, generally identified with Shiva, standing with a bull on the other. Legends were in Greek on the obverse and in Kharoshthi script on the reverse. The exact chronology of the dynasty is still debated, but Kanishka's accession is most often placed around 127 CE.

The standard Kushan gold coin weighed about 8 g, with double and quarter pieces also struck. Its fineness was high in the early reigns. The similarity to the Roman gold standard has led some scholars to suggest that Roman coins reaching India through trade were melted down as a source of metal, but the evidence is indirect and the point remains open. Kushan copper coins, struck in large numbers, served for everyday payments.

Kanishka's earliest coins carry Greek legends and Greek names for gods such as Helios and Selene. Early in his reign the legends were changed to Bactrian, an Iranian language written in Greek letters, with the king styled "king of kings, Kanishka the Kushan". The Rabatak inscription, found in Afghanistan in 1993, refers to a change in the language of official use under Kanishka, which is consistent with the coin evidence.

Kanishka and his successor Huvishka placed a large number of deities on their reverses, each named in Bactrian. They include Iranian figures such as Mao (the moon), Miiro (the sun), Athsho (fire), Pharro (royal glory) and Ardochsho (abundance), the goddess Nana, the Indian Oesho and Skanda, and occasionally Greek or Roman gods. Huvishka's coinage shows the widest variety of any Kushan ruler.

A small number of gold coins of Kanishka depict a standing Buddha labelled BODDO. They are among the earliest representations of the Buddha in any medium and are extremely rare. Copper coins of Kanishka show Shakyamuni Buddha and Maitreya. Their presence does not mean the coinage was Buddhist; it reflects the empire's mix of religious traditions.

Under Vasudeva I in the early 3rd century the reverse type settled largely on Oesho, and later Kushan gold became more stylised, with Brahmi letters added to the field. In the 3rd century the western Kushan lands fell to the Sasanians, whose governors struck Kushano-Sasanian coins influenced by both the Kushan dinar and the Sasanian drachm. Later Kushan gold influenced the early gold coinage of the Gupta dynasty, and Kidarite and other Hunnic rulers, described under Alchon Hun coinage, also took up Kushan models.

Kushan gold is one of the most important sources for the history of the empire, its rulers and its religions, and it marks the start of a long tradition of gold coinage in northern India that sat alongside the older silver karshapana. The empire's position across overland and maritime routes made its money part of a wider network of international trade linking the Roman world, Iran and China, and the name dinar was later carried west again by the gold Umayyad dinar.

• British Museum – Collection online
• American Numismatic Society