Regulated Roman Coins and Their Imitations from India: Did Roman Coins Circulate as Money in the Subcontinent? (original) (raw)

Roman Coins in India and their impact.pdf

ROMAN COINS IN INDIA AND THEIR IMPACT KANCHAN GANGULY The English word ‘Numismatic’ is derived from latin word ‘Numisma’, means ‘study of coin’. Coins are remarkably durable objects and remained in circulation for long periods of times after they were originally issued. There are several series of foreign coins found in India. It is often applied in India to coins by dynasties of non-indigenous origin, as well as to coins imported from abroad. Among such coins, I would like to discuss some of the best coins found in Ancient India, the Roman coinages. So I shall pick up only a few of them to illustrate the relevance of their study, imported into India by a way of trade, brought by the Indians and left behind by the travelers. The discovery of a large number of Roman coins in India should originally indicate about commercial contacts of their origin. The coins are actually used for payments, but their value would have been determined by the worth of their metal in the Indian market. The Roman coins imported as bullion could have been used in certain areas and periods as media of exchange. It containing precious metals such as gold and silver will have arrived in India as trade consignments. The importance of the Roman coins in India goes beyond their commercial implications. The impact and influences of Roman coins directly reflects on Indian coins. The arrival in India of large number of Roman coins can however be dated to the early phase of Indo-Roman trade, the period 30 BC - 45 AD. The coins are found in various parts of India, like Andhrapradesh, Gujrat, Nasik, Kerala and Tamilnadu. The issues of gold aurei and silver denarii coins exported to India were carefully selected with weight-standard and high gold and silver content. The coins are generally used as a medium of exchange, as raw material for the indigenous coinage, and as ornaments for the natives. In the present essay an attempt has to be made to investigate the impact and influence of Roman coins on India. The types, techniques, weight-standard, metal, variety of these coins have to be studied. Since a large number of research papers, some monographs and books are available for serious researcher. Here an attempt will be made to acquaint the layman about the significance and importance of the foreign coins specially the Roman coins found in India.

Kujūla Kadphises' "Roman" Coin: an Issue for Merchants

Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia 30, Issue 1, 2024

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license. The paper studies a copper coin type issued during the reign of the Kuṣāṇ king Kujūla Kadphises (ca. 40/50–90 AD) called “Roman Emperor Type”. These coins, dated towards the end of the first century AD, present on the obverse the image of a ruler recalling the imperial iconography of the Julio-Claudian period, and on the reverse Kujūla himself seated. The coin is a real innovation in the history of ancient Indian numismatics and can be the starting point to understand the political choices of Kujūla in a context still embryonic for the Kuṣāṇs. This paper, through the literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources at our disposal, aims to demonstrate that the issuing was influenced not only by the halo of authority that the Romans had in India, but mainly by the economic and religious context of the city of Taxila, which the sovereign used as a place of experimentation for this particular hybrid type of coin.

Coin use in the Roman Republic

In: F. Haymann, W. Hollstein and M. Jehne (eds.), Neue Forschungen zur Münzprägung der Römischen Republik. Beiträge zum internationalen Kolloquium im Residenzschloss Dresden 19.-21. Juni 2014, Nomismata 8 (Bonn 2016) 347-372, 2016

AN INTRODUCTION TO ANCIENT INDIAN COINS

Coins are as important as the inscription in history. They confirm the information derived fr om literature. They are of various metals – gold, silver, copper, or alloy and contain legends or simple marks. The coins are very important to the reconstruct of the ancient Indian history. It is a part of archaeological sources .Those with dates is prob ably very valuable for the framework of Indian chronology. Coins are almost our sole evidence with regarded to the Indo Scythian and Indo Bactrian King. The Bilingual coins had served as Rosetta Stones in deciphering the Ancient Indian writings. The purity of the metal reflects the financial conditions of the Gupta Empire. The inscription on the coin indicates territory over which the rulers ruled. Some coin throws significant light on the personal events of certain rulers. The discovery of the same kind of coins at different places helps up in fixing the coverage of various kingdoms in ancient India.