The Coinage of the Gupta Empire and its Imitations c8.4

c8.4

The obverse shows the king and the queen facing each other, the former offering to the latter a present at which she is looking with great interest. The object offered has been differently represented on different coins. Sometimes it is a ring held between the thumb and the forefinger (Pl. I. 8), sometimes it is a *sindūradānī*,² with its handle grasped in the king's closed fingers and its circular or square end peeping above them (Pl. I. 11-12). In some cases, the object looks like a bangle or *kaṭaka*, (Pl. I. 10), but a *kaṭaka* cannot be held in the manner in which it is held on these coins. We have therefore to presume that what looks like a bangle is the circular end of the *sindūradānī*. In some cases, the end of the *sindūradānī* looks like a bud (Pl. I. 9), but this may be due to a defective representation of the circle at the end.