History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c15.s2.t11.1

c15.s2.t11.1

There have been discovered some crude coins of the Indo-Scythian type bearing the name of Yaśovarma,² which are more barbarous than those of Durlabhaka Pratāpāditya II (circa 700 A. D.), but not quite so degraded as the issues of Jayāpīḍa Vinayāditya (779 A. D.). Their proper place is thus between the coinage of these two kings from the numismatic point of view, and they have accordingly been ascribed to Yaśovarman on the ground that he is the only prince with this name recorded to have been ruling at this period, and that the Kashmir list knows of no such monarch.³ The Rājatarangiṇī⁴, of course, refers to a Yaśovarman, who was related to the royal family of Kashmir, but he never sat on the throne, and his date, circa 850 A. D., also appears to be very late. We cannot, however, be quite definite about their attribution, since the above view is open to certain objections. First, these coins have all been found in the Panjab, Kashmir and in the distant Manikyāla stūpa, none of the specimens coming from the Kanauj territory. Secondly, their fabric and general appearance betray a Kashmiri or Panjabi origin, while there is nothing whatever, even in the exaggerated accounts of Vākpati, to show that Yaśovarman’s arms ever penetrated so far northwards, much less that he was in possession of these regions. Thus it seems more probable from the provenance and deteriorated style of these coins that they were struck by an otherwise unknown minor king of the Panjab or Kashmir during the sixth or seventh century, rather than by Yaśovarman of Kanauj.¹