A very common medieval coin of Central Asia is the silver jital of Samanta Deva showing a bull and horseman type. I have posted on these before and realize that few of you collect them. Today's coin is a bronze from that same series. As with the silvers, these rarely show the entire design so you have to find one that is off center in a way you can accept. The coin shows an elephant under a legend reading Samanta Deva backed by a lion. I have half a dozen of these each with it own set of faults but this one is reasonably well struck (translation: on flan) on the heads of both animals and the legend so I had to have it despite the missing rears and feet.
Very nice & interesting coin. I like it. Almost bought a silver jital of Samanta Deva With Horseman but opted for that Western Kshatrapas instead.
Roughly 850-1000 AD. The minor distinctions between types have not been made clear in the literature I have seen so I am not able to narrow it down as closely as I'd like. Some coins of the time may have been issued privately under license from the ruler rather than actually by the main ruler himself so we don't always get a reign name with a coin like we do on Romans. It is more like the Greek coins where we see the city name but have to figure out the rest by style or other evidence. There are coins that are attributed to a place mostly because the type is usually found near there. I never felt the hobby ancient coins was a good choice for people who require concrete answers to every question but, compared to Romans, the Asian ones are many times as mysterious.
That's the beauty of these obscure issues, the unanswered questions in regard to who, what, when, and where. I love numismatic mysteries myself, and that's one of the main reasons I enjoy the pursuit of answers in my research of maverick counterstamps. It's nice to know, but even better to wonder. Congratulations on your great coin. Bruce
Since it was my thread to begin with, I don't feel too bad hijacking it: I like counterstamps, too. These are some of my favorites. The first is Germanicus and Drusus of Sardes, Lydia, and is a rare example of the entire encircling legend being replaced by use of a donut shaped die. I do not own a coin of the type without the mark for comparison. Of course, you might ask when a c/m becomes an overstrike rather than a c/m? The Septimius Severus/Julia Domna AE35 of Stratonicea with a hole is the most 'maverick' since the c/m was dug out of the coin. The other similar coin shows the c/m was a child's head usually attributed to Caracalla but I can't help wondering if it might have been Geta and was removed when Caracalla declared Damnatio on him.
