I was inspired to collect some ancient Indians recently, owing to Doug Smith's page at FORVM, THCoin's thread on the Gadhaiya Paisa family tree, Chrismat's thread on the Nagas of Narwar mini-bulls, and of course Anoobs numerous posts about Indian coinage. So here is a set of three... I'm charmed by these little coins, and intrigued by the complex history of ancient Indian kingdoms, of which I know next to nothing, but you've got to start somewhere. (And for me that means buying some coins.)
Those three are quite small, very nice JA. Did you take the pic of you handling the coins 9 am or pm?
All three are nice specimens for their types. As a challenge, I'll ask anyone who has one to show their nicest specimen of the Raja Raja Chola bronze. It is among the most common of the Indian coins but well centered, full detail examples are not as easy to find as I would prefer. I paid $10.16 for mine from an eBay dealer I have not used before or since (they don't carry much in my line). Perhaps you have seen it in my earlier avatar.
Nice coins.... not something I have sought, yet. Dougs reminds me of a plasticine TV character called Morph from my childhood....
Good thanks John......had a tough few months, but back again for a bit. hope you guys and girls are all good....I have been popping in to view occasionally.
Very nice and representative specimen for the type ! Here a quick snapshot of your Naga type with his next of kin: Your type is the upper one. The others are from other kings of the same dynasty.
Mine was sold to me as a 1/2 kakini, and I believe that's correct by comparison to other pieces. It comes in at 10mm, 1.2g. I'm now looking at a few 1/4 kakini at 0.5g, of the same type. I thought for sure mine was the smallest denomination!
The 1/4 kakini i have are just a bit smaller at about 8 mm. The difference with the 1/2 kakini is mainly in the thickness of the coins.
JA- If y our getting interested in Ancient India..here a cool map that outlines some of the major kingdoms...there is no shortage of different cultures.
nice little indians JA! man, the greeks are confusing, the indians are evern more confusing to me....but i dig 'em! when you get greek and indian together...ah man, that's SWEET! cool chola coin DS, i posted a related sri lankan coin in AN's thread...it's an interesting comparison with the earlier chola coin. THC...thanks for that clarification...thickness (or weight). i was trying to figure out what the heck was the difference in the mini-bull denominations, they all seems to overlap in size. my mini-bull is a "1/2 kakini" like JA, and measures almost 2 mm thick on average..fairly chunky for a 10 mm coin at 1.0 g.
At first glance At the photos I thought this thread was about fancy cookies. Than I read the posts. And I still have some reading to do to catch up on these coins. But I do have a couple that sorta roll in this direction...I think. And they look a little like...cookies!
I like those, especially the first one. It's Kushan, Soter Megas, right? I think Doug's got a handful of these as well.
