The Coinage of the Gupta Empire and its Imitations c16.s2.5

c16.s2.5

Mr. Allan is inclined to support the last mentioned view,² primarily on account of the treatment of the legs of the goddess on the reverse which, according to him, indicates that Ghaṭotkacha of the coin was a contemporary of Kumāragupta II;¹ (cf. Pl. XIV. 16 and XV. 4-5). Fresh discoveries have now shown that Kumāragupta II was not ruling between *c.* 530 and 540 A.D., as Mr. Allan had thought,² but about 60 years earlier, from *c.* 472 to 475 A.D. The treatment of the legs of the goddess need not therefore stand in the way of placing this coin in *c.* 470 A.D. It is quite possible that Ghaṭotkachagupta, the governor of Mālwa, might well have survived Kumāragupta I by ten or fifteen years. During the troubled period following the death of Skandagupta, his brother Ghaṭotkachagupta might have assumed independence and started issuing gold coinage. Being a very old man at *c.* 470 A. D. he could not have ruled long and his coinage therefore is scanty. Being issued at about 470 A.D., it naturally shows some stylistic affinity in the treatment of the legs of the goddess with the coinage of Kumāragupta II, who ascended the imperial throne in *c.* 472. A.D.