The Coinage of the Gupta Empire and its Imitations c13.s14.4

c13.s14.4

The nature and attribution of these pieces is shrouded in mystery. It is not certain that they are coins. Gold coins, so thin and with one side blank, are not very common. Such pieces were current only in South Kośala. Assuming that they were coins, like the similar coins of the Naḷa dynasty, the question of their attribution is not easy to solve. Mr. V. P. Rode¹ and Prof. V. V. Mirashi² maintain that these coins were issued by Kumāragupta or for Kumāragupta by rulers of a local dynasty ruling in Raipur. Mr. A. Ghosh has doubted the attribution of these coins to Kumāragupta I.³ Conclusive evidence is yet not forthcoming to settle the question, but I am inclined to think than these coins were not issued by the Gupta emperor Kumāragupta I. It may be that Gupta era was occasionally used in South Kośala in some solitary records; but there is no sufficient evidence to show that the province was under Gupta rule. If such was the case, why should this type alone of the Gupta gold coinage be current in the province ? Why should not the Khairtal hoard have contained some gold Gupta coins of the ordinary common types like the Archer and the Horseman ones ? Gupta gold coin types were not confined to particular localities; why should coins of this type not be found in big hoards like the Bayana or the Bharsar one ? It is most probable that the coins of this type were issued by king Mahendrāditya of some local dynasty in South Kośala, who borrowed the type from the coin of Prasannamātra. The discovery of a small hoard of 12 coins in the Chanda district of Madhya Pradesh in 1947, which contained 11 coins of king Prasannamātra along with one coin of Mahendrāditya,¹ would tend to support our view that Mahendrāditya and Prasannamātra belonged to a local dynasty in South Kośala, holding sway there in the 5th or the 6th century A.D.