Following the Sasanian conquest of Bactria-Tukhāristān in the third century CE, Kushan cultic traditions centred on the veneration of anthropomorphic divine images continued to thrive under the new Persian rulers. Rather than imposing aniconic Zoroastrian practices, the Sasanians actively patronised local religious customs, commissioning statues of Persian deities such as Anāhitā while incorporating Bactrian gods into their visual and ritual repertoire. Numismatic and architectural evidence reflects this synthesis: Kushano-Sasanian coinage preserves the Kushan pantheon, with deities depicted in novel forms, including enthroned figures and busts emerging from fire altars, while temples at Surkh Kotal and Dilberjin combined divine statues with the veneration of the sacred fire. The coexistence of Bactrian and Middle Persian in inscriptions suggests a broader process of cultural adaptation. The persistence of these practices under subsequent Hunnic rule, and their later diffusion into Sogdiana, demonstrates their long-term impact on the religious landscape of Central Asia. The Kushano-Sasanian period thus marks the emergence of a distinctive cultic tradition, shaped by the cultic fusion, which continued to influence the region long after the decline of Sasanian rule.

This study examines the character of Kush-e Pildandān, the anti-hero of the Kushnāmeh, by arguing that the protagonist of the poem represents the monarchs of the Kushan dynasty. In order to substantiate this claim, the Kushnāmeh is introduced and the process of its formation and its reflections of Kushan history are examined. Then the various components of this image of the enemy are discussed. What is revealed is a polemical strategy of creating an enemy, a unique insight into the political ideology of the Sasanian period. The study offers a glimpse into the ideological discourse of political power in the Late Antique period, and how they drew upon a shared conceptualization of the past.

In the 1930s, the French Archaeological Delegation discovered a few fragments of Chinese lacquerwares at the Hellenistic town of Begram in Afghanistan. These lacquerware fragments, along with other artifacts from this site, have puzzled generations of scholars. Through a comparison of these fragments with lacquerwares discovered in China proper and beyond, this article offers a new chronology of the period from 74 BC to AD 23. This temporal frame corresponds to a time when the social life of Begram is vague in historical records, but it appears that the local aristocracy, for a period of about a hundred years, must have had some political and economic interactions with the late Western Han and Xin dynasties.

The authors show how the Gandharan art of early first millennium Afghanistan used Greek and Roman motifs to give an international context to Buddhist sculpture and reduce tension at home and with the neighbours.