check out this cute little coin... Nagas of Narwar (Padmavati) Ganapti Naga circra 340 AD AE fractional unit (1/2 kakini or 10 ratti?) o: bull in circle of dots r:Maharaja Sri Ganendra in a circle in Brahmi (right side up? upside down? no clue) 9.5mm 1.0g Mitchiner 4739-4753 with a cent.... this coin has been sitting on ebay for a reasonable price for weeks. finally picked it up as a consolation prize for loosing another auction. neat little coin. there isn't much known about the nagas of narwar. they were in northernish india and seem to have been forced out or assimilated by the guptas...i don't really know. maybe AN, THC, MED, or one of you other eastern coin gurus can shed some light on these guys?
I've seen a lot of these lately but few as well centered. Mine is not as nice and was $6 a few years ago.
These are indeed fractional kakini of the Nagas Narwar. Padmavati was their capital. It is located in Madhya Pradesh in central northern India. The nagas were a bit of an "in-between"dynasty. Before various empires fought over this territory, most important the Western Satapas and the Satavahanas. Their end came with the expansion of the Gupta empire. These coins are still plentifull available quite cheap, but as always nice ones are scarcer. The most prevalent come in thee sizes and designs and are attributed to three consecutive kings. - There are big bull coin weighing close to 2 grams. These are considered to be issued by Bhavanaga and likely are the oldest. These also have a trident in the center of the inscription side. - The small bulls are attributed to Ganapati. These weigh below 1.0 gram. - Then there are coins with on one side an 8-spoked wheel and circular inscription on the other. These are Devanaga. Usually you need multiple coins to be able to read the entire inscription. On Doug's coin, reading clockwise between 6 and 11 o'clock, there is "RaJa Sri" the rest of the name is not readable.
Great little coin, Chris, and thank you for the context, THC. I like collecting miniscule bronzes, so I looked a few of these up. I don't think the prices are reasonable at all. But I have no idea of their scarcity or what sort of demand collectors have for them... Yours seems to be in quite a high grade for the type.
Nice example for the type Chris. Yeah, I try to get into Indian numismatics, but for some reason I do not get much traction. I have some huns in India, western satraps, some gupta, etc but for some reason its just hard to keep things straight. Maybe its not growing up hearing about these great civilizations to put them in context, but I just cannot seem to keep Indian civilizations straight in my head like I can other areas of the world. Maybe I am just getting old, or have too many other collections going on.
Well, Chris set me up with his super secret source of cheap kakini, so I just added one to my collection. This is the seller's image tweaked with a black background. I have no idea which way is up on the reverse... Can't wait to see it in hand. Thanks for the help, comrade!
awesome! glad i could be a bad/good (? not sure which) influence. that's a nice one also, i like how the horns are bit more clear.
