Revisiting Indian History: Reading Gupta Coinage

World of Coins, 2016

The Gupta Empire is rightfully considered the "Golden Age of Indian History" with Gupta Coins considered as one of the most beautiful in the world and a pristine example of native Indian art. This paper commences with an imaginary introduction story about the life and coronation of Samudragupta, and includes selective coinage of the Gupta Empire; a table of common legends with its translation found on coins ; and detailed explanation for certain coin types eg Lion Slayer, Veena (Lyrist), Asvamedha (Horse Sacrifice), Archer, etc.

2016

At the end of the 3rd Century AD, a new power emerged in North Eastern India to fill the void left by the collapse of the Kushanas. This new power was the Gupta Dynasty which at its zenith controlled most of North and Central India. The Gupta Kings struck massive coinage, primarily in Gold, Silver and Lead, to support a vibrant economy. These coins have become a rich source of data -the inscriptions & legends seen on coins and the iconography, all helps scholars piece together the events that transpired during this golden age of India's rich history. While coins have existed for over two thousand years in India, none have matched the sheer beauty and complexity of design as the coins issued by the kings of Gupta Dynasty from the 4th through 6th century AD. This book covers the history and the entire Coinage of the Gupta Dynasty from the start in 319 AD to it's end in 543 AD. It also includes the Coinage of the Later Guptas and the related dynasties of Bengal. The author has illustrated every coin variety in Gold, Copper and Lead as well as a complete range of all known Silver coins with dates struck by the Gupta kings. The classification is comprehensive and intuitive. ​ Starting from the first of the Gupta kings, Chandragupta I in 319 AD, to the last the King Vishnugupta in 543 AD, their coins are a historical record detailing the evolution of the Gupta style and its impact on religious art from this golden age of India. The clues hidden in the coin designs, legends, dates and metrology all speak volumes and have here been deciphered to help reconstruct the history of the dynasty. In this book an attempt has been made to catalogue the entire coinage in gold, silver, lead and copper, listing all known coin types and varieties. The book provides a detailed analysis of the designs, dates and metrology and an extensive discussion of the history of the Gupta Empire. The book includes an excellent section on the iconography, metal analysis, history and the evolution of the designs seen on the Gupta gold coins. It is a quintessential guide for Scholars & Collectors of coins to better understand the relative rarity and the different varieties with a full representation of the coins from Private Collections and most of the major Museums in India and across the world. The last complete catalogue of the Gupta Dynasty coinage was published by Dr. A.S. Altekar in 1957, and since then no one has been successful in fully cataloging the entire series. This work, published here on the 60th anniversary of Dr. Altekar’s seminal work, is a continuation of that effort to fully document the coinage and to understand its impact on the history of India. It includes the rarest of the coins, published here for the first time, from major Museum collections in India, and around the world as well as private collections, most of which are inaccessible to researchers. The research, data and analysis provided within, will help scholars to fully understand the complex history and inscriptions, as well as the vast and beautiful coinage of the Gupta Dynasty and will continue to serve as a comprehensive reference on the Gupta Dynasty numismatics. Mr. Sanjeev Kumar is Chairman of the Shivlee Trust and is an independent researcher and numismatist who has spent an entire lifetime studying the history and coinage of the Gupta Empire. He is considered one of the world's foremost authorities on Gupta Dynasty coinage. This is a culmination of a love affair that sprouted from the mind of a young child growing up in India. The stories of the great Gupta kings and the legendary King Vikramaditya, his exploits and treasures are now fully documented here for everyone to enjoy. Book Review: Robert Bracey, Editor, Journal of the Oriental Numismatic Society, British Museum. "Sanjeev Kumar’s Treasures of the Gupta Empire (TGE) is the first attempt at a comprehensive type catalogue of Gupta coins for fifty years. Implicitly, it is a replacement for Allan and Altekar both in content (with a lot of new material in the last half century) and in terms of organization (also supported by a great deal of new scholarship). There is no doubt about the size of the corpus which Kumar has assembled. Though only a part of the corpus is on display in TGE there are still far more images, of generally higher quality, than previous publications. The more significant question is whether this corpus has allowed Kumar to resolve those problems of classification and attribution, and how much this impacts on the reconstruction of Gupta history more broadly... ...certainly lives up to the implicit promise of the book, not only does it provide new data about the coins themselves but it offers clear historical implications from that data... So how well does TGE succeed in its objectives? As a comprehensive reference on the gold coinage of the Gupta’s it is no doubt a huge contribution. The enlarged images, relative ease of use, and comprehensive nature, will likely ensure the volume supplants any of its predecessors as the catalogue of choice... overall this is a volume that I would recommend as a standard reference to anyone with an interest in Gupta coinage. "

Treasures of the Gupta Empire, 2017

Chapter 8 discusses the different currencies used during the Gupta Era - 3rd - 6th Century AD. Chapter 4 is also included: This chapter addresses the question of who was the legendary King Vikramāditya, a title used to describe many kings ruling over a large span of time in ancient India.

Coins are as important as the inscription in history. They confirm the information derived fr om literature. They are of various metals – gold, silver, copper, or alloy and contain legends or simple marks. The coins are very important to the reconstruct of the ancient Indian history. It is a part of archaeological sources .Those with dates is prob ably very valuable for the framework of Indian chronology. Coins are almost our sole evidence with regarded to the Indo Scythian and Indo Bactrian King. The Bilingual coins had served as Rosetta Stones in deciphering the Ancient Indian writings. The purity of the metal reflects the financial conditions of the Gupta Empire. The inscription on the coin indicates territory over which the rulers ruled. Some coin throws significant light on the personal events of certain rulers. The discovery of the same kind of coins at different places helps up in fixing the coverage of various kingdoms in ancient India.

NUMISMATIC STUDIES NO. 5 OF THE NUMISMATIC SOCIETY OF DIEST, 2023

The Gupta dynasty ruled over a vast expanse of northern India (AD 319–543) and produced a large coinage in gold, silver, copper, and lead. In 2017, Sanjeev Kumar published Treasures of the Gupta Empire, a comprehensive book discussing history, iconography, trade routes, hoards and findspots, metrology, metals, and weight analysis, as well as provided a substantial catalogue of over 6,400 coins. In 2020, Pankaj Tandon published a paper presenting a new attribution for certain Gupta coins. Through his analysis of ca.1,600 gold coins, Tandon questions some of Kumar’s attributions and proposes different ones. A response to Tandon’s assessment, this paper challenges his reattributions, which are based on a far smaller sample. Due to the complexity of this historic period and its coinage, a consideration of both scientific data and the full extent of iconographic content are integral to the study of Gupta coinage, especially for the purposes of attribution.

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2005

This article argues for a radical revision of later Gupta chronology based on a review of the primary evidence. The paucity of dated material has meant that historical reconstructions of the period have been based on late-Victorian assumptions about the nature of society and kingship. Removing this ideological framework allows not only for a revision of chronology — a traditional historical concern — but for a new understanding of Gupta kingship and the constitution of state.

CoinWeek.com, 2019

IN INDIA’S LONG HISTORY, the Gupta Empire (c. 319 – 550 CE) is remembered as a golden age of art, literature, science, and culture. Economically it was truly a golden era; Gupta kings issued a flood of beautiful gold dinaras – coins that reflected the prosperity created by the thriving Silk Road trade in luxury goods between East and West. The empire’s heartland was the central Ganges plain of northern India. Ancient Pataliputra was the royal capital. For Gupta rulers the precise dates are disputed, but generations of diligent work by Indian and Western scholars have unraveled the sequence of which kings issued which coins.

World of Coins, 2016

The Kushan Empire was established by ethic Chinese migrants over the remnants of the Indo-Greeks and Scythian territories. The Kushan coinage is very impressive drawing its inspiration from the diverse cultures of various people residing in the Indian sub-continent. This paper commences with an imaginary recreation of the inspiration behind Vima Kadphises to issue India's first gold coins with Shiva featured prominently on them; the various deities appearing on Kushan coins; and the outline of the various elements associated with Kushan coinage.

2019

Coins as a symbol of ideas and ideals, working behind the mind of the rulers at different periods, open up a most comprehensive and interesting study. Although references to coins occur in the early Indian Literature, punch-marked coins are found the earliest ones spread over a large area 2 from Pakistan in the northwest to Tamilnadu (India) in the south; from Taxila (Pakistan) in the west to Chandraketugarh (India) in the east. These comprise both silver and copper coins; in the first group, bent bar coins from Taxila are also included. Their chronology is not definite, however, their beginning may be assigned to the sixth-fifth century BC.