North Indian Inscriptions

POLITICAL HISTORY

by Allan as memorial medals struck by Samudragupta in honour of his parents,¹ but without any cogent grounds. His contention is that Samudragupta’s Standard Type of Coins is a very close, almost slavish, imitation of those of the Later Great Kushāṇas. In fact, there is no other type of Gupta coins, which comes so close to this prototype. On the other hand, the Chandragupta-Kumāradēvī Type is one step further removed from the Kushāṇa prototype. Again, Allan maintains that there is no evidence that Kushāṇa coins circulated in the Gupta territory about this time. In fact, he says that they belong to the north-west part of India, and are rarely found outside the Panjab. We have therefore to place the origin of the Gupta coinage at a period when the Guptas came into contact with the Later Great Kushāṇas. This was not possible before the time of Samudragupta, because it was he who first came in touch with them, or with the Shāhi-Shāhānushāhis as they have been described in his Allahabad inscription. The Chandragupta-Kumāradēvī coins cannot thus be attributed to Chandragupta I, as has been done by V. A. Smith and others, but must be considered to have been issued by Samudragupta in commemoration of his parents and his Lichchhavi descent.

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This is no doubt what Allan wrote in 1914. We are not sure, however, whether he still clings to the view in the light of the knowledge we possess at present. We have already stated on the authority of R. D. Banerji that the gold and copper coins of the Later Great Kushāṇas are to this day abundant in the markets of Patna and Gaya and that subsequently a hoard of coins came to light in the erstwhile Mayurbhanj State containing 170 Puri Kushāṇas and 112 Imperial Great Kushāṇas. If this is not considered sufficient evidence, we may turn to the account given by D. B. Spooner of his own excavations at Basāṛh in the A. R. ASI., 1913-14. On page 122 thereof, while speaking of clearly legible coin of Kadphises picked up in these excavations, Spooner says : “Coins of Kadphises II have certainly been found as far east as Banares, but I am under the impression that no coin apart from the present specimen, is known from a site so far east as Vaiśālī. The point, however, is of no particular importance, as the difference between Banares and Vaiśālī is inconsiderable, and the Honourable Mr. Burn whom I have consulted, tells me he seems to remember having heard of specimens recovered even at Patna.” And on the same page in a footnote he gives us the following further and more important information : “Since writing the above, I have found large numbers of Kushana coins, copper and gold (2 specimens), Pāṭaliputra.” No detailed report of this find has been published, so far as we know. But under the heading “Mr. Tata’s Excavations at Pataliputra”, Spooner has given a brief account of it in the Report of the Archaeological Survey of India, Eastern Circle, for 1913-14, p. 71.² From it, it appears that he found there a hoard of Kushāṇa copper coins fiftytwo in number. And he remarks further : “This is presumably the largest find of Kushana coins at so easterly a point as Patna. They have not yet been cleaned, however, and cannot individually be assigned as yet. Coins of Kadphises II, of Kanishka and Huvishka appear to be among the lot, but very few are now distinguishable. The majority are not in good condition.” This leaves not even the shadow of a doubt as to Kushāṇa coins having been prevalent just in that province of Bihar where the Imperial Gupta power sprang into existence. No historian or even numismatist will now subscribe to the view that Gupta coinage originated with Samudragupta and at a time when he came into contact with the Later Great Kushāṇas in East Panjab, because no Kushāṇa coins ever circulated in East India when Chandragupta rose to power. It is safer and more natural to say that the Gupta coins were first issued by Chandragupta and Kumāradēvī themselves³ and that, as the figures of both
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¹ Allan, Catalogue of the Coins of the Gupta Dynasty, Intro., pp. lxiv-lxvi and lxviii.
² Our attention to this was first drawn by the late Rao Bahadur K. N. Dikshit of the Archaeological Department.
³ V. A. Smith, EHI., (4th ed.), p. 296; D. R. Bhandarkar, Car. Lec., 1921, pp. 9 ff.