The Coinage of the Gupta Empire and its Imitations c7.3

c7.3

In its artistic merit, variety and originality, the gold coinage of the Imperial Guptas has hardly any equals among the coinages of ancient India. The artistic merit of Indo-Bactrian coins is no doubt very high, but they do not show that striking and pleasing variety in types and motifs, which we see on the Gupta coins. On the Indo-Bactrian coins, the obverse usually shows the bust of the king; in rare cases, we find the king shown as a horseman. On the Gupta coins, on the other hand, the bust of the king is rare. The king is shown in a variety of attitudes and with a variety of attributes. He is usually standing and wielding either a bow (Pl. II. 14), or a battle-axe, (Pl. III. 1-5) or a standard (Pl. II. 1-6); sometimes there is an umbrella-bearer by his side (Pl. VIII. 11). He is often shown in a deadly grapple with the lion (Pl. VI. 1-15), the tiger (Pl. III. 14), or the rhinoceros (Pl. XIII. 3). Sometimes we find him riding a horse (Pl. X. 11), sometimes an elephant (Pl. XII. 14); sometimes he is playing on a lute (Pl. III. 15) and sometimes feeding a peacock (Pl. XIII. 13). We see no such pleasing and artistic variety on the Indo-Bactrian coinage. There is a remarkable variety on the reverses of the Kuṣāṇa coinage; but it is due simply to the desire to include a number of Greek, Roman, Iranian, Hindu and Buddhist deities, and not to any artistic impulse of the age, as is clearly the case with the Gupta coinage.