The Coinage of the Gupta Empire and its Imitations c17.s4.3

c17.s4.3

1. The Kālighāṭ hoard¹ found in 1783 at Kālighāṭ on the eastern bank of the Hugli near Calcutta is the earliest recorded hoard of Gupta coins. No information is available about the exact contents of this hoard, but Nab Kishen, its discoverer, seems to have presented about 200 of its coins to Warren Hastings, the then Governor-General of India. These coins were later sent to the Directors of the East India Company London, who presented 24 of them to the British Museum, nearly an equal number to the Museum of Mr. Hunter, and some pieces to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and to the Public Library at Cambridge. The remaining pieces were eventually melted down by the Directors in a mercenary fit. To judge from the extant specimens of this hoard, it appears that it consisted mostly of the issues of the later Gupta emperors.