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CHRONOLOGY OF GUJARAT
the 5 and 17 testify to the independent sovereign position of king Bappa.--( Plate LXXXII a).
Indo-Sassanian Coins :—These coins of different patterns and sizes were current in Rajputana, Malwa and Gujarat between the 8th and 11th centuries A.D. These are thick and circular pieces bearing a crude head of the king of Sassanian pattern on one side, and a series of lines and dots all over the other side. These lines and dots represent the fire-altar of the Sassanian coins. Bhandarkar presumes (Carmichael lectures ', 1921, p. 208) that the Gurjaras strongly imbibed the Sassanian coinage, and that is why the standard weight of a dramma comes to 65 grains, quite near to the Greek drachma, weighing only 66 grains. The name dramma was restricted to silver coins alone. Various rulers of this period issued drammas named after them. Thus we find-Srimadadivarāha dramma, (EI, I, p. 175, 1. 27), called after Bhoja-Adivarāha of the Pratihāra dynasty.
Gadhia Coins :-One popular tradition in Gujarat ascribes gadhiā coins to Gardhabhilla, who is mentioned in the Jaina story in Kālakācārya Kathānaka, as living in ist Century B.C. But this does not seem to be plausible as these coins cannot be so early. From the beginning, Cunningham, and Bhagvanlal Indraji maintained and demonstrated how these coins were mere copies and subsequent degraded forms of the Indo-Sassanian coinage. According to Wilford, Gardabhi is the name of a Sassanian dynasty and is identified with Varaharan Gur ( 420 A.D.). According to Taylor, the latter was fond of hunting wild ass; and the Hūras, in derision, might have called his coinage as “ Ass-money", and it was Sanskritised in India. He derived Gadhiā' in this way: Gardabhiya < Gaddhahiya <Gadhāiyā.
The classic study of the development and deterioration of this form of the coin, was made first by Dr. Bhagvanlal Indraji, who illustrated the whole evolution of what he called “the oblong button from the Persian head ", and of the series of dots and lines from the fire-altar. Actually, he illustrated the original Sassanian Coin from which the whole form could have evolved, or to put it correctly, deteriorated. On the obverse of the coin illustrated by him was the bust of the king, which had a face with a pronounced nose, short chin, round beard, ear-rings with two pendants, a necklace with a round pendant in the middle, two rising ends of cloth on the shoulders, a head covered with round hat, having two rows of dotted ornamentation at the lower part and on the top a crescent and a ball.
This form gradually deteriorated by the replacement of a physical representation by a system of dots and lines, but still keeping its form and outline. The main face which was always shown in relief, gradually became button-like in an oblong shape. On the reverse of the coin, there was a fire-altar with four rows of flames, one above the other. The altar, being wide at the top and bottom, contracting like an hour-glass (ghatikayantra ) in the middle. On the sides of the altar, pieces of cloth were tied. Two attendants, holding swords extended towards the altar, were represented on either side of it. Star and Moon were also represented on either side of the flames. As in the case of the obverse,
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