Gold coins from a Golden Age

BN Goswamy

The discovery and recovery of a big Gupta hoard, containing as many as 1821 gold coins, is undoubtedly the most sensational numismatic discovery so far made in the history of Indian archaeology. Never before was so big a hoard of gold coins of ancient Indian period ever discovered and recovered. — Dr AS Altekar, writing in 1954

I am no numismatist, and know remarkably little about the world of coins. The terminology used by the numismatists is alien to my ears. I barely know, thus, that the word ‘assay’ refers to a test to ascertain the weight and purity of a coin; ‘billon’ is a low-grade alloy of gold or silver with a high percentage of another metal, usually copper; ‘denticles’ are small tooth-like raised points on the inside edge of coins; or, for that matter, ‘flan’ is the same thing as a ‘planchet’, and stands for a prepared piece of metal on which the coin is struck. And yet, even I had heard, when a student of history a long time ago, about the great ‘Bayana Hoard’ of Gupta gold coins. This, because we were reading then of the ‘Golden Age’ of ancient India, when the Gupta Empire was at its zenith: from the 4th to the 6th centuries. Names like Chandragupta, Samudragupta and Kumaragupta floated about in the air above us.

If I am travelling again in the direction of coins now, it is because a meticulously worked, richly illustrated, recently published book on the Treasures of the Gupta Empire landed on my desk a few weeks ago. Put together by Sanjeev Kumar, who is an avid collector — devotee might be a better word — of such coins, it is truly ‘a comprehensive catalogue’, essentially of the gold and silver coins of the Guptas. It acknowledges, at one end, the work of so many preceding scholars who have worked in the area — Allan, Altekar, Chhabra, Gupta and Srivastava, Mukerji, and Ellen Raven, included — and, at the other, states that ‘a lot of work still needs to be done’. There is a massive amount of material in the work — collections, private and public, accessed; museum holdings scoured; spectrographic analysis done; controversies held up to examination and discussion — but the field it seems is by no means exhausted.

There is prominent attention given in the book to the ‘historical narrative’ of the designs seen on the most famous among Gupta gold coins. But no ‘historical narrative’ is as exciting, or filled with as many surprises, as the one associated with the manner in which the extraordinary cache of these coins surfaced. The story was told with relish and in detail by Dr A S Altekar (1898-1960) — historian, archaeologist and numismatist, who taught at Varanasi and Patna, and was chairman of the Numismatist Society of India — when he wrote in 1954 his classic catalogue of the coins that constituted the ‘Hoard’ to which I have referred above.

“The Bayana hoard of Gupta gold coins,” he began, “was discovered on the 17th of February, 1946 in a field lying east of the village of Nagla Chhela, 7 miles south-east of the Railway junction Bayana in the former Bharatpur State.” The Maharaja of Bharatpur, Brajendra Singhji, descendant of the famous Jat ruler, Surajmal, he went on to say, was out shooting in that area, and after he and his retinue had left, three children of the village went scouring the fields in search of empty cartridges for these for them were real collectibles.

“The actual place where the hoard was discovered is the eastern embankment of a low-lying field to the east of Nagla Chhela, belonging to one Bhoreya Gujar,” Altekar continued. “The embankment is hardly two feet in height, and the pot which contained the hoard, was just below the surface, hardly six inches under the ground. Its edge was accidentally detected when a small shrub above it was removed by three children named Jitamall, Babu and Tulsi. The discoverers of the hoard thought that the pot contained copper buttons and showed them as such to their parents. The latter took no time in detecting the real metal and brought home the pot. There is reason to hold that about 285 coins were distributed among the villagers or transformed into ornaments. With a successful promptitude, of which we have few instances on record, the Bharatpur State authorities managed to get hold of the remaining hoard and could recover as many as 1821 pieces”. It is these that Dr Altekar described in fine detail in his catalogue. But he also hazarded a guess before starting to list and analyse them. “The unknown owner of the present hoard, probably a resident of Bijayagadh, buried it in a field of his own at Hullanpura at the time of the Huna invasions (of the fifth century). Very likely he was killed in the disturbances, and so the hoard remained undisturbed till 1946.”

Every writer who has studied and handled the gold coins issued by successive generations of the dynasty that ruled over the great Gupta Empire, goes naturally into matters like weight and dimensions, shape and design, on his own. But the classification then established still holds in so many ways. The types have become named and the names have not changed. One still refers to them as the ‘lyrist’ type, the ‘elephant rider’ type; the ‘lion trampler’ type; the ‘rhinoceros slayer’ type; the ‘ashwamedha’ type; the ‘king and queen’ type; and so on. There are glorious sights here in these coins that evoke a whole age — the age of Kalidasa and Aryabhata, of Varahamihira and Vatsyayana — in which kings sat playing on musical instruments, went about hunting wild beasts, held imperious staffs in their hands, and rode on elephant backs with a majestic air. But, interestingly, there also appear on them royal or divine women, standing lissom and elegant, showering coins and stroking the plumes of peacocks. 

Where else, or when, does one see sights such as these when one thinks of ancient times?