I live close to a antique mall, literally a block away and its a place I havent gone to in awhile. Well bored Sat. I decided to go and see what has changed, nothing much. I checked out the booths with coins and most were overpriced/cleaned moderns. There was one though with a jewelers pad that caught my eye. It was just a pile of coins, I asked to look and the worker opened the case so I sifted through it and this particular one caught my eye, rest was world moderns. It looked like a mauryan punch mark but not silver. Spent time Sun. researching and it looks to be a Sunga, which I never heard of. It seems to match a discription I found buried in google search. $5 for it btw....also my photo. Any more info is greatly appreciated. POST-MAURIYAN SUNGA DYNASTY AE ½ KARSHAPANA Era: 185-75 BC. Obverse: Bull, elephant, swastika and staff symbols. Reverse: Hill, cross and tree symbols. Weight:3.1 gms. Dimension: 14 x 15 mm. Reference: MACW-4348.
Hmm, never heard of the Sunga dynasty, but coins like that have been described as "post Mauryan" for quite a while. Maybe they were alwasy Sunga dynasty and no one ever bothered to list them as such. The Mauryans were one of the first large scale coin producers in India. India was one of the three major independent coin sources, and have their own distinctive style. The square flans actually influenced a large part of Central Asia until about 250 AD. The same denomination then continued with circular flans. The problem with square flans is the strike distorts them outwards changing the shape unless struck with lighter pressure. Cool little story for $5.
Thats cool, can easiliy see the elephant . Makes me want to go back to some of the pawn shops and antique shops to see what they might have.
Well it seems like Sunga because the same type of coin is shown on the history of the sunga empire on Wiki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunga_Empire Interesting little thing. Interesting to see a swastika used that long ago also.
The swastika is actually a long revered symbol, found easily on most Indian and Central Asian coins. It was even used in the US as a good luck symbol. If any nice, respected symbol has ever gotten a bum rap in history its the swastika. It really is sad, but I imagine it will be a few hundred more years at least before people can again use this ancient symbol and not be associated with stupid genocidal white supremists.
http://www.cointalk.com/t34658/ These seem to be cropping up lately. I got one but the above is an old CT post with one. Mine: http://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=78143.0 I still don't know how to separate the early ones from later copies as mentioned in my post.
I saw your forvm thread today actually. The old CT ones & yours are excellent examples. Maybe a hoard was found?
