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The author reveals that the subjoined Memoir on the obscure annals of the Gupta Kings of India was undertaken, in the first instance, with the limited purpose of describing James Burgess`s newly-acquired coins in the pages of his Archaeological Report for the season of 1874-75. Circumstances connected with his return to India, and the incidentally-delayed calls for MS., have enabled him to revise and amplify several sections of his original text; others, wholly or partially set up in type, have been retained in their outline form; while, latterly, important notes, which would have required time to complete, have been deferred for future publication, so as to avoid any interference with the progress of the Editor`s leading Report, already somewhat in arrears. A brief notice of some Muhammadan coins — obtained on the same occasion — which illustrate the transfer of Ethnic supremacies in the valley of the Indus, concludes these independent Chapters. The writer has taken advantage of the opportunity to arrange and classify in the accompanying autotype plate, contrasted examples of the various provincial currencies of the latter dynasty, and he has attempted, in a general way, to collect the extraneous data bearing on the still obscure history of a race, whose domination forms so important an epoch and hitherto undefined time- mark amid the dynastic revolutions of India within itself. This may be held to be a very bold expansion of a text based upon a handful of coins, but Numismatic studies he has always maintained properly and scientifically treated, open out a very large and expansive circle of investigation. It contains an Illustration of Gupta and Surashtran coins.
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ISBN : 9788121228046
Pages : 74
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