The Coinage of the Gupta Empire and its Imitations c9.s1.15

c9.s1.15

The Allahabad inscription (l. 17) shows that Parākrama was the special biruda of Samudragupta and the legend Parākramaḥ and Aśvamedhaparākramaḥ occurring on the Tiger-slayer and the Aśvamedha types respectively must be taken as referring to him. On one of the Standard type coins of Samudragupta found at Bamnala in Indore state (now Madhyabharat state) the legend on the reverse is clearly Śrī-Vikramaḥ (Pl. II. 10). As the biruda Vikrama is so far known to occur only on the coins of Chandragupta II, and as the Allahabad inscription issued towards the end of his reign expressly states that Parākrama was the special biruda of Samudragupta, it is very likely that this solitary Standard type coin of the Bamnala hoard may be due to an accidental mistake committed early in the reign of Chandragupta II; the obverse die of the Standard type of the late king was by oversight used along with a reverse die of one of the varieties of the Archer type of the new king. This mistake must have been soon detected, and hence we have so far got only one coin of this type. If we do not assume the occurrence of such a mistake, we shall have to suppose that Samudragupta assumed the biruda of Vikrama along with Parākrama. This appears to be very improbable, for Gupta kings had usually one biruda only. We have, however, tentatively accepted the evidence of the Bamnala coin at its face value and included it among the Standard type coins of Samudragupta.