Divine kingship in India during the Kuṣāṇa and Gupta periods

জাতীয়তাবাদী ঐতিহাসিকদের দৃষ্টিতে গুপ্তযুগ প্রতিভাত হয়েছে ব্রাহ্মণ্যধর্মের পুনরুত্থানের যুগ হিসেবে। কিন্তু ব্রাহ্মণ্যধর্ম কোনো অখণ্ড সত্ত্বা নয়। যে ধর্মমতটি গুপ্ত রাজাদের সাম্প্রদায়িক পরিচয় হিসেবে গুপ্তযুগের লিপিগুলিতে ঘোষিত তা হল পৌরাণিক ভাগবতধর্ম। গুপ্তসম্রাট দ্বিতীয় চন্দ্রগুপ্ত ‘পরম-ভাগবত’ উপাধি ধারণ করেন যা পরবর্তী গুপ্ত শাসকেরা অনুসরণ করেন। পৌরাণিক ভাগবতধর্ম, যা পরবর্তীকালে বৈষ্ণবধর্ম নামেই সমধিক পরিচিত হয়, এবং গুপ্তসাম্রাজ্য প্রায় সমান্তরালভাবে বিকশিত হয়। এই নিবন্ধে দেখানো হয়েছে যে দ্বিতীয় চন্দ্রগুপ্তের ভাগবতধর্মের প্রতি আকর্ষণের সঙ্গে জড়িত রয়েছে শিল্প ও ধর্মের মাধ্যমে এক নতুন রাজনৈতিক দৃষ্টিভঙ্গীকে অনুমোদন প্রদানের চেষ্টা। রাজ্য-সমৃদ্ধির দেবী শ্রী-লক্ষ্মীকে বিষ্ণুর স্ত্রী হিসেবে বৈষ্ণবধর্মে আত্তীকরণ ছিল এই প্রচেষ্টার অন্যতম অঙ্গ। বিষ্ণুর সঙ্গে অভিন্নরূপে রাজা প্রতিভাত হয়েছেন শ্রীদেবী ও ভূদেবীর রক্ষাকর্তা হিসেবে। ফলতঃ বিষ্ণুর অবতারবাদের ধারণা প্রচলিত হলে ভূদেবীর রক্ষাকর্তা হিসেবে বরাহ হয়ে ওঠেন জনপ্রিয়তম অবতার। দ্বিতীয় চন্দ্রগুপ্ত, যাঁর রাজত্বকালে নির্মিত উদয়গিরির বরাহমূর্তিতে ভূদেবীর উদ্ধারকারী বিষ্ণুর সাথে গুপ্তসম্রাটের অভিন্নতাই প্রতিফলিত হয়েছে, তাঁর চক্রবিক্রম মুদ্রায় বিষ্ণুর চক্রপুরুষের থেকে গ্রহণ করেন চক্রবর্তী শাসকের প্রতীকস্বরূপ তিনটি চক্র। এই চক্রবর্তী ধারণারই প্রতিফলন দেখা যায় দিল্লীর মেহরাউলির লৌহস্তম্ভে, যেখানে বর্ণিত রাজা চন্দ্র সম্ভবতঃ দ্বিতীয় চন্দ্রগুপ্তই। দ্বিতীয় চন্দ্রগুপ্তের এই নতুন ধর্মীয়-রাজনৈতিক আদর্শ প্রতিফলিত হয়েছে তাঁর রাজসভার সাহিত্যেও। তাই শৈব কালিদাসের ‘রঘুবংশে’ রাম একাধারে বিষ্ণু-অবতার ও আদর্শ রাজার ভূমিকায় গৌরবান্বিত। এই আদর্শ ব্রাহ্মণ্য-বৈষ্ণব রাজার ধারণাও সম্ভবতঃ দ্বিতীয় চন্দ্রগুপ্তের ধর্মীয়-রাজনৈতিক নীতিরই প্রতিচ্ছবি।

This article argues for a radical revision of later Gupta chronology based on a review of the primary evidence. The paucity of dated material has meant that historical reconstructions of the period have been based on late-Victorian assumptions about the nature of society and kingship. Removing this ideological framework allows not only for a revision of chronology — a traditional historical concern — but for a new understanding of Gupta kingship and the constitution of state.

At the end of the 3rd Century AD, a new power emerged in North Eastern India to fill the void left by the collapse of the Kushanas.  This new power was the Gupta Dynasty which at its zenith controlled most of North and Central India.  The Gupta Kings struck massive coinage, primarily in Gold, Silver and Lead, to support a vibrant economy.  These coins have become a rich source of data -the inscriptions & legends seen on coins and the iconography, all helps scholars piece together the events that transpired during this golden age of India's rich history. While coins have existed for over two thousand years in India, none have matched the sheer beauty and complexity of design as the coins issued by the kings of Gupta Dynasty from the 4th through 6th century AD.

This book covers the history and the entire Coinage of the Gupta Dynasty from the start in 319 AD to it's end in 543 AD. It also includes the Coinage of the Later Guptas and the related dynasties of Bengal.  The author has illustrated every coin variety in Gold, Copper and Lead as well as a complete range of all known Silver coins with dates struck by the Gupta kings.  The classification is comprehensive and intuitive.
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Starting from the first of the Gupta kings, Chandragupta I in 319 AD, to the last the King Vishnugupta in 543 AD, their coins are a historical record detailing the evolution of the Gupta style and its impact on religious art from this golden age of India. The clues hidden in the coin designs, legends, dates and metrology all speak volumes and have here been deciphered to help reconstruct the history of the dynasty. In this book an attempt has been made to catalogue the entire coinage in gold, silver, lead and copper, listing all known coin types and varieties.

The book provides a detailed analysis of the designs, dates and metrology and an extensive discussion of the history of the Gupta Empire.  The book includes an excellent section on the iconography, metal analysis, history and the evolution of the designs seen on the Gupta gold coins.  It is a quintessential guide for Scholars & Collectors of coins to better understand the relative rarity and the different varieties with a full representation of the coins from Private Collections and most of the major Museums in India and across the world.

The last complete catalogue of the Gupta Dynasty coinage was published by Dr. A.S. Altekar in 1957, and since then no one has been successful in fully cataloging the entire series. This work, published here on the 60th anniversary of Dr. Altekar’s seminal work, is a continuation of that effort to fully document the coinage and to understand its impact on the history of India. It includes the rarest of the coins, published here for the first time, from major Museum collections in India, and around the world as well as private collections, most of which are inaccessible to researchers.

The research, data and analysis provided within, will help scholars to fully understand the complex history and inscriptions, as well as the vast and beautiful coinage of the Gupta Dynasty and will continue to serve as a comprehensive reference on the Gupta Dynasty numismatics.

Mr. Sanjeev Kumar is Chairman of the Shivlee Trust and is an independent researcher and numismatist who has spent an entire lifetime studying the history and coinage of the Gupta Empire. He is considered one of the world's foremost authorities on Gupta Dynasty coinage. This is a culmination of a love affair that sprouted from the mind of a young child growing up in India. The stories of the great Gupta kings and the legendary King Vikramaditya, his exploits and treasures are now fully documented here for everyone to enjoy.



Book Review:
Robert Bracey, Editor, Journal of the Oriental Numismatic Society, British Museum.

"Sanjeev Kumar’s Treasures of the Gupta Empire (TGE) is the first attempt at a comprehensive type catalogue of Gupta coins for fifty years. Implicitly, it is a replacement for Allan and Altekar both in content (with a lot of new material in the last half century) and in terms of organization (also supported by a great deal of new scholarship). There is no doubt about the size of the corpus which Kumar has assembled. Though only a part of the corpus is on display in TGE there are still far more images, of generally higher quality, than previous publications. The more significant question is whether this corpus has allowed Kumar to resolve those problems of classification and attribution, and how much this impacts on the reconstruction of Gupta history more broadly...

...certainly lives up to the implicit promise of the book, not only does it provide new data about the coins themselves but it offers clear historical implications from that data...

So how well does TGE succeed in its objectives? As a comprehensive reference on the gold coinage of the Gupta’s it is no doubt a huge contribution. The enlarged images, relative ease of use, and comprehensive nature, will likely ensure the volume supplants any of its predecessors as the catalogue of choice... overall this is a volume that I would recommend as a standard reference to anyone with an interest in Gupta coinage. "

BODHGAYA… place of The Buddha's Enlightenment Its real story from 250 BCE to 2018 Buddha Gaya (Bodhgaya) is an important and holy place for all the Buddhists of the world. It is at this place that Siddhartha attained enlightenment and proclaimed the Four Noble Truths through the Eight Fold path leading to Nibbana. Buddha Gaya was earlier known as Uruvela during the Buddha's times. Uruvela was situated on the sandy banks of Neranjana river, now known as Falgu river. In around circa 250 BCE, Emperor Ashoka visited this place during his 11 th year of reign and donated 1,00,000 gold coins for building a vihara. He also built a 10 feet high wall for protecting the Bodhi tree (pipal) under which the Buddha meditated. During Ashoka's time, this place was known as Sambodhi or Mahabodhi. The name Buddha Gaya came into use in the 18 th century. Ashoka built a polished Vajrasana (a seat where the Buddha sat for meditation and attained enlightenment). Ashoka also recreated the cloistered walk of the Buddha with 22 pillared base each with a mark of "a" to "t" in Ashokan Dhammalipi script. The donations and the work carried out by Ashoka can be seen on the 8 th major rock edict, toranas of Sanchi Stupa 1 and on the Stupa railing at Bharhut.

Since they were 'rediscovered' by the West in 1819, the painted Buddhist caves at Ajanta have attracted a great deal of attention. Yet this interest has tended to focus on the narrative scenes of kingship and courtship. This essay shifts the gaze upwards to examine a kaleidoscope of the weird and wonderful - flying celestial figures, dwarves, aquatic and mythical creatures, verdant foliage, blossoming flowers and decorative meander patterns - inhabiting the ceiling of Cave 1. Such motifs also existed in the visual traditions of the diverse cultures early Buddhist art came into contact with, from Ancient Greece to Egypt and Persia. However, a delicately rendered white elephant surrounded by lotus flowers, found on an unremarkable border of the ceiling, appears to be a uniquely Indian motif. It serves to demonstrate the ceiling of cave 1 was not simply a decorative composite pastiche of non-Buddhist forms, as has been suggested, but a deliberate appropriation of these within a Buddhist framework. Links between the Buddha and the white elephant are revealed through textual evidence found in the Mahayana scriptures and supported with visual analysis of other Buddhist iconography found at the site and throughout India. The elephant panel, whose meaning has long been lost and since rewritten for cultural, social and economic benefits, is used here to reinstate the religiosity of cave 1’s ceiling. This essay argues that, contrary to prevailing wisdom, the seemingly strange and miscellaneous paintings we find here had great significance within the Buddhist practice flourishing at Ajanta in the fifth century CE. The ceiling subtly guided the viewer towards higher states of mind, and in the direction of the most important part of the cave: the shrine of the Buddha.

The complex of the Śaiva beliefs in India and in the Indianised countries of South-East Asia often represented a metaphysical basis for theories of royalty and a ritual vehicle for investiture of the king. The figure of Śiva as sovereign, transcendental divinity, identified with the absolute reality distinct from all, governing all, was in a great many cases closely associated with that of the king, representing the archetypal king. We may cite the case of the kingship of the Pallavas and the Coḷas in Southern India, following through to the Khmer conception of the devarāja.
This tradition seems to have fairly ancient roots, and in North-Western India was apparently documented from the Kuṣāṇa period. The numismatic data, borne out by the epigraphic and archaeological documentation, appear to attest to the profound relationship there was between the figure of the Kuṣāṇa king and that of Śiva (called on the coins Oēšo). In this paper we shall try to go into the subject, studying in detail the relationship between Oēšo/ Śiva and the Kuṣāṇa king on the basis of the iconographical data and trying to reveal the possible meaning and values of some figurative elements of his image in the coinage of Vima Kadphises, Kaniṣka, Huviṣka and Vasudeva I, with the help of textual references especially drawn from Vedic literature.

A yaksa from Mathura with a five-line inscription dating to the reign of Kumaragupa II (c. 414 - 455) is a significant addition to the dated Gupta works from North India. The peculiar dating system in the inscription was also a small part of the puzzle enabling Harry Falk to establish the date of Kaniska (Falk, The Kaniska Era in Gupta Records, Silk Road Art and Archaeology, no. 10. 2004; also posted on Academia.edu under Harry Falk). The inscription names the seated figure as "the senapati of the yaksas, Manibhadra".

SEECHAC 2011 international Colloquium, "Politics and religions in the Himalayas and Central Asia", Rome, National Museum of Oriental Art ‘Giuseppe Tucci’, 10th and 11th of October 2011
Abstract
Some scholars have pointed out the role of Oēšo in Kuṣāṇa kingship as emerging from the analysis of certain characteristics of his image on the coins. On Kaniṣka and Huviṣka specimens, for example, he is represented with extended lower right hand, holding a water-vessel turned downwards, a gesture alluding most probably to the legitimation and consecration of the sovereign through the royal abhiṣeka.
In this paper we shall try to go into the subject, studying in detail the relationship between Oēšo and the King on the basis of the iconographical data and trying to reveal the possible meaning and values of some figurative elements of his image in the Kuṣāṇa coinage, with the help of textual references especially drawn from late Vedic literature