A new coin of Amyntas and some Apollophanes forgeries

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The identity of Prakāśāditya

This presentation summarized recent research that has solved a long-standing puzzle in ancient Indian history: the identity of the king who identifies himself on the reverse of his gold coins with the epithet prakāśāditya. Most authors have assumed Prakāśāditya to be a Gupta king. In contrast, Göbl 1990 suggested on stylistic grounds that Prakāśāditya was not a Gupta at all, but a Hun. However, for reasons that are not at all clear, most authors have continued to treat Prakāśāditya as a Gupta king. In any case, Göbl was unable to establish Prakāśāditya’s identity more specifically, speculating without any real evidence that he might have been the Hun king Toramāṇa. Thus the issue of his identity was still an open question. Part of the reason for the uncertainty around the identity of Prakāśāditya is that the obverse legend on his coins had not yet been read. Gupta coins generally carry an epithet or biruda of the king on the reverse, but his name is typically revealed in the obverse legend. The parts of the legend so far read on the obverse of Prakāśāditya’s coins had not contained any parts of his real name. In Tandon 2015, in presenting the first near-complete reading of the obverse legend of the coin, I established that Prakāśāditya was in fact Toramāṇa, as Göbl had speculated

Coins of the Eastern Gangas ruler Anantavarman Chodaganga

Attributing the coins of the Eastern Gangas is a difficult task because the coins do not name the ruler, but only are dated in what are thought to be regnal years. Many authors in the past have tended to attribute the coins to the most prominent king of the dynasty, Anantavarman Chodaganga (1078-1147) (hereafter AC), but without any real justification. 2 In a recent paper, I proposed a method of attribution, based on the regnal lengths of the different kings, which would assign a sizable group of the known coins to the last four kings of the dynasty. 3 Coins attributable on a sound basis to AC remained unknown

Book review: Kushan, Kushano-Sasanian, and Kidarite coins: a catalogue of coins from the American Numismatic Society by David Jongeward and Joe Cribb with Peter Donovan

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Attribution of the nameless coins of the archer type

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