SAURASHTRA-GUJERAT Chalukya billon gadhaiya paisa circa 950-1050
$25.00
SAURASHTRA-GUJERAT, Chalukya, gadhaiya paisa, no date (circa 950-1050), Obverse: bust R, Reverse: altar, billon, 16mm, 4.14g, MN425, cleaned XF
1 in stock
Description
The so-called “gadhaiya paisas” were an evolution of the Sasanian drachm, with a right facing bust and the fire altar and attendants reduced to dots and lines.
The Chalukyas controlled a large chunk of central India including a big stretch of the western coast for about six hundred years. In the 10th and 11th century there were two Chalukya kingdoms, the one in the west issued these coins.
The earliest ancient Indian coins were the “bent bar” punchmarked silvers of the Achaemenid Persians occupying Gandhara in northwest Pakistan. By the 3rd century BC coins were in general use in most of India and Ceylon, and in subsequent centuries struck round coins in gold, silver, and copper came into use throughout the subcontinent and beyond to Southeast Asia and Pacific islands to Java and beyond.