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Message:: [QUOTE="dltsrq, post: 2346574, member: 75482"]The popular attribution of some Kushan-era imitations to the "Jouan-jouan" seems to begin with Mitchiner (ACW p. 442). His argument is that the Kushan Vasu Deva "does not appear to have struck coins in Northern Afghanistan, though his money circulated as far north as the Choresmian kingdom where his coins have been recovered in excavations". Mitchiner then refers to a series of "light weight (emphasis mine), fairly common and generally rude imitations of Huvishka's copper coinage found in Balkh and its environs" as evidence of "an assumption of independence". The last piece of Mitchiner's puzzle is a nebulous reference in Chinese sources to "the Kushan being subject to raids by the Jouan-jouan". Therefore, in Mitchiner's mind, these lightweight Kushan imitations struck in and around Balkh in a period of coin shortage must therefore be the long-lost coinage of the Jouan-jouan! Why? What makes these imitations special among the great mass of imitations found all over the former Kushan realm? Because a coinage attributable to the Jouan-jouan sounds much more romantic than "local imitation" and because Mitchiner really really wants it to be so. To paraphrase Freudian apocrypha, "sometimes a local imitation is only a local imitation". End of rant. Everyone back to work.[/QUOTE]