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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;EWC3, post: 4272730, member: 93416&quot;]Wow.&nbsp; Interesting.</p><p><br /></p><p>The theoretical figure 4.17g comes this way.&nbsp; Although there is a fair bit of variation in Late Sasanid drachms, they have a very clear peak. For late style K II, most are between c. 4.05g and 4.25g, but with a clear target close to 4.13g. That is not Attic, either theoretical (c. 4.37g) nor practical, (down to c. 4.25g). I suspect it is a return to the Ancient mina of Sumer and Darius of 500g. That predicts a half shekel of 500g/120 = 4.17g. So my guess is Sasanid mint masters were allowed wiggle room of one coin per mina – gets you to 4.13g.</p><p><br /></p><p>Turning now to the Boja coins – unlike Arab and Indo-Moslem issues, I think its fairly unusual for Hindu issues to be very carefully regulated by weight. So this finding sticks out like a sore thumb to me. But a few words of caution.</p><p><br /></p><p>Firstly Wilfried Pieper checked his specimens for me and they did not fit, lighter. So if it is going on, it is only for some of the output – perhaps the earliest batch?</p><p><br /></p><p>Secondly, I am something of a heretic on Statistical methods. For instance, I think the stress on standard deviation arises from incorrect dogmatic decisions about a century ago. But further, I do think very small samples can be significant. What are the odds of finding six coins almost exactly the same weight by accident, in what is a rather scarce issue…..</p><p><br /></p><p>Note that some of the Gold Lakshmi staters, and the Chola silver, seem to have a similar target weight</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyhow, I will probably not take this further, but its something maybe worth digging into….</p><p><br /></p><p>Rob T[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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