Yep, you heard me, Indian. I vowed I would explore this territory some more this year, so it may as well have a thread. This is all AN's fault. I realize we just posted a bunch of these recently, but here is mine. I thought this example had very crisp detail on the obverse punches, although the reverse punch is only partial... I've merely copied this attribution from the dealer. If anything is incorrect, please let me know... INDIA, MAURYA: Series VIb Silver punchmarked karshapana, GH 582. Obverse Five official punches. (See image below for the official marks) Reverse Blank Date c. 3rd-2nd century BCE Weight 3.46 gm. Dimensions 10 x 13 mm. Die axis n.a. Reference GH 582 Comments According to Gupta and Hardaker, the Series VIb coins date to c. 270-175 BCE, the time of the great Mauryan emperor Ashoka and his successors. Ashoka, of course, was the emperor who spread the word of the Buddha throughout his empire. The reverse of this coin normally has a mark that repeats one of the official marks on the obverse, except that it is smaller. This coin has the railed tree.
Funny, bought one on the 24th, hasn't arrived yet from canada. Needed one since the one I had was a thrown in and horrid.
Cool pick-up, JA ... yah, I've had one of these hanging around in my vcoins want-list for a couple of years now, but I never seem to pull the trigger (good on ya => these are very cool) ..... that sure is a tiny lil' puppy for having so many punch-marks, eh? (pretty wild)
nice...these thing are pretty cool. i posted one recently, but here's my first one... the "sun" and the "hills" seem to be very common punchmarks.
I spent a few weeks very interested in these but fell out due to a few things that told me we were not meant for each other. The OP coin is one that sent me packing. I'm not saying it is not GH 582 (I bought the book) but I'm not able to convince myself it is either. Coins NEVER have five clear strikes of the marks but that is OK since the first two or three are on so many coins you really don't care whether you see them well or not. The last two are critical to the ID and 90% of the coins I see are less than clear on those marks. For me to collect these, I'd need to find a source of pick-outs where I could select coins I thought I was good enough to ID. I have seen a few guys selling these in bulk and 90% of what they had were the same two or three types. It is like Roman where 90% of the Julio Claudian denarii you see are Tribute Pennies. GH 582 is one of seven types with four matching marks of which 582 is the one marked very common but this specimen is not convincing me that it is any of them. If someone could tell me how to turn the coin to see what part of mark 5, I might have an 'ah-ha' moment and be able to agree with the ID rather than just accept it. I don't think it is any of the other six either so that's why I dropped out. I do find many interesting things about these coins. One is how closely they match early Roman denarii in weight. I guess that is how much silver seemed right to base your system on at that time. Coincidence? I don't think so. I'll share two of mine. These are as common as they get. They are the same coin (GH 574, I think) listed as abundant (more common than very common). The big deal fifth mark is the bull with something under his mouth (upper right and center left on these two) which is at least visible on both. GH even has several pages showing 'Unclear Coins'. I agree with his ID on these. They are really unclear. I really need to study these a lot harder than I have to date and the Gupta Hardaker book is beautiful and should be what I need to learn but I'm not sure I'm ready to take on the intense study required. Call me lazy. Suggestion: Buy coins that allow YOU to see five separate marks until you get better at this than I am. There will be time later to get into the tough ones and rarities from other periods and I don't even want to talk about overstrikes or countermarked issues.
OK, time to be honest: Who noticed that my coins were also the same as the one posted by chrsmat71? His bull head is weak but the thing under the mouth is super clear in the lower left corner. His coin is not round and not shaped like Indiana but that means absolutely nothing as far as I can tell.
What I would like to know is how G&H determine the period of minting for a particular set of punches. Is the "official mark" that occurs on both the obverse and reverse directly associated with an imperial cipher found on artifacts other than coins? And if so, how do we know that such "official marks" are associated with specific rulers?
Doug, your points about attribution are very astute, but I have to admit to being very superficial about collecting this coin. I wanted one of those rectangle punchy things from ancient India, and this one was quite eye-appealing. I'm just a fool spending money.
yeah, that's the only one i can attribute off the top of my head. combining the best features of all 3 coins would make a super nice one! i only have two of these, but i keep my eye out them as targets of opportunity. usually looking for one with a couple three clear punchmarks i dont' have on a coin already....or a weird shape.
