History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c14.s4.11

c14.s4.11

ham obtained about a hundred. Carlleyle obtained thirteen at Indor Kherā, Bulandshahr district. They have been also collected in the Etah district, as well as at Kanauj and at other places in the Farukhabad district.¹ It is thus evident that he occupied Mathurā and ruled all over the Āryāvarta Doab. 'The commonest variety' of his coinage is the small rectangular piece 'with a palm tree on obverse'² and a figure seated on a throne³ (V. Smith, C.I.M., p. 191). The palm tree, as already pointed out above, is a Nāga symbol. It recurs, as we shall see later, in the architectural monuments of the Bhāraśivas (§ 46A). Another variety of his coinage is the one illustrated by General Cunningham in his Coins of Ancient India, pl. VIII, fig. 18, where a human figure⁴ probably seated, holds a standing nāga. A third issue is illustrated by Prof. Rapson in J.R.A.S., 1900, fig. 15, in the plate facing page 97, where a female figure is seated on a canopied throne and a nāga rises from the bottom of the throne up to the chhatra (canopy) as if upholding the canopy and protecting the throne. It is the figure of Gaṅgā as the right-hand holds a jar.⁵ There is a palm tree on the reverse flanked by a symbolic design of the same type on each side of the tree. The coin is artistically connected with those of Nava; the Nāga figure is made to complete the title. It is dated like Nava's. The nāga represents the dynasty and the palm tree, the royal emblem. In the issue where the nāga rises up to the chhatra of the throne, probably a double significance is artistically intended to denote Ahi-chhatra, i.e. it is the issue of the Ahi-chhatra mint. There is also an issue of the Padmāvatī mint of this king,⁶ with the legend Mahārāja V(i)