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RELIGION AND CULTURE OF THE JAINS
now is : if the tradition is accepted as genuine, how can we explain the absence of any coin bearing the name of Mūlarāja ?
There may be several answers to this question, the first of them being that the coins were not issued in large quantities and the few coins that were available to the people were melted for making ornaments. We have other instances of this kind. Thus, although no coins bearing the name of any of the Sūryavaṁsi Gajapati kings of Orissa have so far been discovered, Jivadeva's Bhaktibhāgavatu composed in 1510 A.D. speaks of gold coins bearing the figure of Gopāla (Krşņa) and the king's name which had been issued by the author's disciple, the Gajapati king Pratāparudra (14971540 A.D.), and were in circulation in many lands. 1 4 No such coin has, however, as yet come out. In the same way, the Rewa inscription (1193 A.D.)16 of Malayasimha a feudatory of Kalacuri Vijayasimha of Tripuri,says that the chief excavated a tank with 15,000 tankakas (i.e. țanka, probably of silver) stamped with the figure of the Bhagavat meaning the Buddha, though there is no indication regarding
the issuer of the coins. In this case also, no coins of the type have been so far discovered.
Another possibility is that, unlike the Gopāla type gold coins of Pratāprudra which bore his name, the issues of Mülarāja I referred to in Haribhadra's work may not have had a legend mentioning the king's name. In any case, the coins remind us of the seated Lakşmi type issues (in gold and possibly also in silver) of the Kalacuri king Gängeyadeva Vikramāditya (c. 1015-41 A.D.) and their imitations minted by the rulers of dynasties like the Candellas and Gāhadavālas.18 Mülarāja I, however, ruled earlier than the said
14 Sircar, Studies in Indian Coins, p. 247.
15 Ep. Ind., Vol. XIX, pp. 296ff.; Bhandarkar's List of Inscriptions, No. 2033.
16 Cunningham, Coins of Medieval India, p. 72; Smith, Catalogue, pp. 352-53.
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