Debased Dinar - Vigrahatunga

The Kidarites entered the historical record as successors to the Kushano-Sasanian kings in Bactria, and their coinage tells the story of a dynasty under sustained fiscal pressure. This piece, struck sometime within a two-century window, sits at the extreme end of a long debasement sequence: what began as near-pure Kushan gold dinars had by this point collapsed to a tri-metallic alloy barely qualifying as gold coinage by any ancient standard. The debasement was not sudden — it tracks the political fragmentation and repeated Hephthalite incursions that eroded Kidarite territorial and economic control across the region.