A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c16.s1: Section I. Coinage
A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c16.s1
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Section I. Coinage
c16.s1.1
The early punch-marked and cast indigenous coins of India make no pretence to artistic excellence. Regular double-die coinage with royal portraits and legends recording kingly names and titles was an importation from Europe which never became thoroughly acclimatized. The brilliant realistic portrait dies of Eukratides and other Indo-Greek rulers on the north-western frontier between 200 and 100 b. c., never successfully imitated by Hindu die-cutters, cannot be claimed as the production of Indian artists. Fergusson's proposition that the history of Indian art is 'written in decay' is absolutely true in the numismatic field, all Indian attempts to carry on Hellenistic tradition in coin types being failures. For some reason or other the foreign practice of cutting well-designed coin dies did not interest the artists of India, who never produced even one coin of high merit.
c16.s1.2
The few tolerably good specimens are collected in Plate LXXIII. They belong to two periods, that of the foreign Kushān or Indo-Scythian sovereigns about a. d. 100, and that of the earlier kings of the native Gupta dynasty in the fourth century.
c16.s1.3
Figs. 1 and 2 are gold coins of the Indo-Scythian king, Wima or Hima, commonly called Kadphises II, who conquered the Panjāb at some time in the first century of the Christian era. They show a fairly successful attempt at realistic portraiture. The reverse bears the purely Indian device of Siva and his bull.
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Figs. 3 and 4, which seem to be authentic, recognizable portraits of the great Kanishka (? a. d. 78 to 123), are curiously superior in design and execution to the contemporary effigy on the Peshāwar reliquary (*post*, p. 358). Figs. 5 and 6 similarly give distinctive portraits of Huvishka, the second successor, and probably son of Kanishka. The later Kushān coinage is barbarous or semi-barbarous.
c16.s1.5
A temporary revival in the die-cutter's art, obviously based on European models, took place in the reigns of the earlier Gupta kings of the fourth century, whose best efforts are shown in Fig. 7, the Tiger type of Samudra-gupta; Fig. 8, the Archer type of the same king; and Fig. 9, the unique Retreating Lion type of his son and successor, Chandra-gupta II. This last is the best coin ever struck by a native Indian sovereign.¹ Many of the coins of Chandra-gupta II are quite barbarous. After A. D. 400 no Hindu coin is worthy of mention in a history of art.
c16.s1.6
¹ The coins figured in Pl. LXXIII are: (1) Kadphises II (Wima), obv., *not in Catalogue*; (2) the same, obv., Gardner, *Catal. of Greek and Scythic Kings*, Pl. XXV, 8; (3) Kanishka, obv., *ibid.*, Pl. XXVI, 16 (in text 17, by mistake); (4) the same, obv., *ibid.*, Pl. XXVI, 15 (16 in text); (5) Huvishka, obv., *ibid.*, Pl. XXVII, 9; (6) the same, obv., *ibid.*, Pl. XXVIII, 9; (7) Samudragupta, Tiger type, B.M. Eden; (8) the same, Archer type, obv., B.M. Eden; (9) Chandra-gupta, B.M. All the coins are gold. Another variety of the Retreating Lion type has been discovered recently.