The Coinage of the Gupta Empire and its Imitations c17.s2.8

c17.s2.8

The other possible explanation is that the government wanted to replace the foreign standard of 121 grains by the indigenous standard of 144 grains. This is quite a plausible view, but one wonders why the government found it necessary to take about 75 years to achieve this desideratum. It could have introduced the national standard all at once, without going through the intermediate stages of 124, 127, 132 grains. It may be pointed out that the jump from 132 grains to 144, taken by Skandagupta, was quite a big one. Why was not a leap of a double the magnitude taken at an earlier stage?