The Age of the Imperial Guptas c10.33

c10.33

No coins of Rāmagupta, the son and successor of Samudragupta, have been discovered and he is not referred to in any of the inscriptions of the later emperors of this dynasty. He was succeeded by his younger brother Candragupta, in whose reign we find a more bewildering variety of coins. Candragupta was the first emperor of the Gupta dynasty who introduced a silver coinage. A silver coinage became necessary after the conquest of Mālava and Kathiawad, where the early and later Western Kshatrapas had been issuing such coins from about the 1st century B.C. The gold coinage of Candragupta II shows a definite effort to leave the standard of the later Kuṣāṇas and to approach that of the heavier standard of the Indian *Suvarṇa*. Allan distinguishes three standards:—