It's been a while since I've had a significant discovery to announce!
This coin immediately stood out to me because of the symbolism above the king's helmet - the Shaivite Trishula, which is the weapon/icon of Lord Shiva in hinduism:
This appears to be a one-off... there are no additional examples of the type in Maheshwari's book, on any auction archive, or on
ebay since at least 2016. Except for the Omkara and Adivaraha types, this is the only Indo Sassanian coin with Hundu religious symbology, and is the only one with distinctively Shaivite symbology.
This raises an interesting implication -
In Dr. Maheshwari's book,
Imitations in Continuity he groups the Gadhaiya coins into Group I and Group II by a metric that I found surprising - whether the portrait's Korymbos (globe over the head - in reality it was a piece of cloth covering a large hair bun - closest modern equivalent would be the Sikh headdress) was round (Group I) or turreted (Group II). Due to the nature of these coins it is often hard to see if the portrait has a korymbos at all, but I had found it odd to divide the coins by that feature when it spans several clearly related types.
Initially, I had thought that since the official Peroz drachms could either have plain korymbos -
- Or ones with patterns -
https://www.zeno.ru/showphoto.php?photo=51896(Hepthalite copy)
- That the Indian imitations simply depended on the original source coin. Now I'm not so sure.
Sadly, due to the pandemic there have been hardly any new Indo-Sassanian coins posted on
ebay since March, but my eyes will remain open for more...
Posted 07/21/2020 10:07 am
