The Age of the Imperial Guptas c10.8

c10.8

(ii) “Were the Gupta coins a local development in Magadha of the late Kushan coins, from which they are obviously derived, one would expect the latter to be present in finds of Gupta coins . . . . . . we must, therefore, place the origin of the Gupta coinage in a period when the Guptas had come into closer contact with the late great Kushans whose (eastern) Panjab coinage they copied; what historical knowledge we possess points to this period being, not in the reign of Candragupta I, but in that of Samudragupta.”²