Varahran Kushanshah
The sixth and last Kushanshah of Kushanshahr (330–365)
Bahram Kushanshah (also spelled Varahran), was the last Kushanshah of the Kushano-Sasanian Kingdom from 330 to 365. He was the successor of Peroz II Kushanshah.
Name
His theophoric name "Varahran" is the New Persian form of the Middle Persian Warahrān (also spelled Wahrām), which is derived from the Old Iranian Vṛθragna. The Avestan equivalent was Verethragna, the name of the old Iranian god of victory, whilst the Parthian version was *Warθagn. The name is transliterated in Greek as Baranes, whilst the Armenian transliteration is Vahagn/Vrām.
Reign
Unlike his immediate predecessors, Varahran's domains only included Tukharistan, as both Gandhara and Kabul had been incorporated into the Sasanian Empire by the Sasanian King of Kings Shapur II (r. 309–379). Varahran did not issue coins in Gandhara, and his predecessor Peroz II is the last known Kushano-Sassanian ruler to do so. After that point Shapur II issued his own coinage from Kabul.
Varahran Kushanshah wears a distinctive crown on his coinage, which is flat-topped with a crown ball and florets, and pearls or lotus petals as a decoration on the sides. In the second phase of his reign, the coinage of Varahran minted in Balkh incorporated the Kidarite tamga () replacing the nandipada () which had been in use since Vasudeva I, suggesting that the Kidarites had now taken control, first under their ruler Kirada.
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This entry incorporates text from “Varahran Kushanshah” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.