Drachm - Buddhatala /King C/ Sassanian style, type 18, unknown mint

The Kidarites occupied a peculiar position in Central Asian history — a Hunnic group that absorbed enough Kushano-Sassanian administrative culture to mint coins almost indistinguishable from their predecessors and overlords. This type, catalogued by Göbl under his Kidarite emission sequence, belongs to the period after the Kidarites had been pushed eastward out of Bactria by the Hephthalites, concentrating their remaining authority in the Gandharan region. The unknown mint attribution is genuinely unresolved, not a cataloguing shortcut — no die analysis has yet fixed this type to a specific workshop with confidence.