A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c16.s1.1

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.