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The Identity of Prakāśāditya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2015

PANKAJ TANDON
PANKAJ TANDON*
Affiliation:
Boston Universityptandon@bu.edu
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Abstract

One of the enduring open questions in ancient Indian history is the identity of the king who identifies himself on the reverse of his gold coins as prakāśāditya. Most authors have assumed that he was a Gupta king. This paper reviews the various proposals on the identity of Prakāśāditya, arguing why we can be quite sure, as suggested by Robert Göbl, that he was in fact a Hun king and not a Gupta. Then, by presenting a near-complete reading of the obverse legend, it is shown that it is virtually certain that he was in fact the Hun king Toramāṇa, as Göbl had speculated. Implications of this finding are then considered.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , October 2015 , pp. 647 - 668
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2015 

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References

2 Göbl, R.: “Das Antlitz des Fremden: Der Hunnenkönig Prakasaditya in der Münzprägung der Gupta-Dynastie,” Anzeiger der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, 126 (1990), pp. 131–138 Google Scholar.

3 Vincent Smith thought the animal was a tiger; see Smith, V. A.: Catalogue of the Coins in the Indian Museum Calcutta (Oxford, 1906), p.119 Google Scholar. However, this view seems not to have been given much consideration, as the animal appears to have a crudely rendered mane.

4 See, for example, the coin in Figure 10 below.

5 This coin is illustrated below in Figure 11 .

6 See the discussion in Allan, J.: A Catalogue of the Indian Coins in the British Museum: Coins of the Gupta Dynasties and of Śaśāṅka, King of Gauḍa, (London, 1914)Google Scholar, pp. cxxvi-cxxvii.

7 The dates of the Gupta kings are not known with complete certainty. The dates given here rely on the dynastic tree constructed by Michael Willis; see Willis, M.: “Later Gupta History: Inscriptions, Coins and Historical Ideology,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series, 15, No. 2 (2005), p. 135 Google Scholar.

8 Gemini auction II, lot 195.

9 Candragupta had the biruda Vikramāditya, Kumāragupta had Mahendrāditya, and Skandagupta had the biruda Kramāditya; all of these are seen on the reverses of their coins.

10 Horseman coins for Candragupta III were first published in Tandon, P.: “Horseman Coins of Candragupta III,” Numismatic Chronicle, 173 (2013), pp. 171–185 Google Scholar, and the identity of Candragupta III with Purugupta was proposed in P. Tandon: “The Succession after Kumāragupta I,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 24 (2014), pp. 557-572. The dates given here for Purugupta are those given by Willis for Ghaṭotkacagupta; since I have argued (ibid.) that it was he and not Ghaṭotkacagupta who filled the gap between Kumāragupta I and Skandagupta. Indeed, it is possible he continued to rule in parallel with Skandagupta past the year 455.

11 Coin (c) is from the British Museum, photo kindly provided by Joe Cribb. The other three coins in the Figure are from my own collection.

12 Gupta, P. L.: The Imperial Guptas, Volume I (Varanasi, 1974), p. 193 Google Scholar.

13 Pal, P.: Indian Sculpture, Volume I (Berkeley, 1986), p. 114 Google Scholar.

14 Smith, V. A.: “The Coinage of the Early or Imperial Gupta Dynasty of Northern India,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, New Series 21, No. 1 (1889), p. 114 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Hoernle, A. F. R.: “Remarks on an inscribed seal of Kumára Gupta II,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, LVIII, Part I (1889), pp. 93–94 Google Scholar.

16 J. Allan: op. cit., p.li.

17 Ibid., p. lii.

18 Ibid., p. 135.

19 Hoernle, A. F. R.: “The Identity of Yasodharman and Vikramāditya, and some corollaries”. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (1909), p. 135 Google Scholar.

20 See Fleet, J. F.: Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum: Inscriptions of the Early Guptas. Vol. III. (Calcutta, 1888), pp. 147–148 Google Scholar, accessed online on February 26, 2014 at www.sdstate.edu/projectsouthasia/upload/Mandasor-of-Yashodharman.pdf..

21 Allan, op. cit., p. lii.

22 Hoernle, op. cit., p. 94 and p. 122. This dating agrees with what we know from other sources.

23 See P. L. Gupta: op. cit., p. 70 for information on the metal content, and pp. 42, 44 for the dates.

24 Jayaswal, K. P.: An Imperial History of India (Lahore, 1934 Google Scholar, reprint: Patna, 1988), pp. 38-39.

25 Altekar, A. S.: The Coinage of the Gupta Empire (Varanasi, 1957), pp. 284–285 Google Scholar.

26 Sinha, B. P.: Dynastic History of Magadha (New Delhi, 1977), Chapter 1Google Scholar.

27 P. L. Gupta, op. cit., pp. 193-194.

28 Ibid., pp. 162 and 194.

29 Shukla, K. S.: “A Unique Gold Coin of Bhānugupta and Prakāśāditya,” Journal of the Numismatic Society of India, XLII (1980), pp. 120–122 Google Scholar. P. L. Gupta at one time had proposed identifying Prakāśāditya as Bhānugupta because of the close similarity of their names (both referring to the light of the sun) but he had subsequently abandoned this idea.

30 Verma, T. P.: “Editor's Note,” Journal of the Numismatic Society of India, XLII (1980), pp. 122–126 Google Scholar.

31 Ibid., p. 123.

32 Ibid., p. 126.

33 Ibid., p. 122.

34 I am grateful to Jan Lingen for furnishing me with a photograph of the plate from Shukla's paper.

35 Goyal, S. R.: An Introduction to Gupta Numismatics (Jodhpur, 1994), p. 101 Google Scholar.

36 Agrawal, A.: “The Prakāśāditya Problem: A Reappraisal,” Numismatic Studies, II (1992), pp. 107–118 Google Scholar.

37 Ibid., p. 111.

38 Browne, G. M.: “A New Coin Legend for Prakāśāditya,” American Journal of Numismatics, 3–4 (1992), pp. 91–93 Google Scholar. I will consider this paper in detail below, in the section on the legend.

39 The Mañjuśrī-mūlakalpa or Ārya-mañjuśrī-mūlakalpa is a Buddhist text, written originally in Sanskrit in Bengal and dating perhaps from the late 8th century, which provides an overview of the previous 700 years or so of Indian history. Two versions of it have apparently survived, a Sanskrit one and a Tibetan translation dating from the 11th century. These two versions do not agree in every detail, although they are largely consistent with one another. Some of the details provided in the text seem very consistent with other sources of Indian history, but others are confusing and contradictory. The text is therefore not regarded as an extremely reliable source of information. Nevertheless, it does seem to fill in some details that are not known from other sources. Descriptions of this text are available in P.L. Gupta, op. cit., pp. 121-129 and K. P. Jayaswal, op. cit., pp. 1-8.

40 Goyal, op. cit., p. 99.

41 There are differences in the Sanskrit and Tibetan versions of MMK. The son is referred to as P. in the Sanskrit text and Pra. in the Tibetan one.

42 The Sanskrit text gives the name of this king as A., while the Tibetan text calls him H.

43 The interpretation of graha as “planet” is Jayaswal's. An anonymous referee pointed out that graha was “likely intended to evoke similarities with evil spirits and demons referred to by that term” and this is quite plausible.

44 For the text and interpretation of this story in the MMK, see Jayaswal, op. cit., pp. 63-65.

45 I have not been able to examine the source myself, but it appears the version of the MMK being used by Goyal names Pra. as Prakārākhya, the son of Bhakārākhya. Goyal takes Bhakārākhya to be the same as Bhānugupta.

46 Agrawal, op. cit., p. 115.

47 Ibid., pp. 115-116.

48 In fact, we do have an alternative; I have proposed that the coins that have come to be attributed to one “Candragupta III” should plausibly be assigned to Purugupta. See P. Tandon: “The Succession after Kumāragupta I,” op. cit.

49 For example, Classical Numismatic Group, Auction 85, lot 570, September 15, 2010, is listed as a gold dinar of Puragupta Prakasaditya. A search of other auctions all over the world consistently reveals listings of Prakāśāditya as a Gupta king.

50 For example, Gorny and Mosch, Auction 125, lot 273, and Dr. Busso Peus, Auction 366, lot 293.

51 E. Raven: “Gupta coins from the collection of the former Ethnological Museum, Rotterdam,” presented at the meeting of the Oriental Numismatic Society, Utrecht, October 15, 2011, reported in the Journal of the Oriental Numismatic Society 209 (Autumn 2011), pp. 2-3.

52 See, for example, Alram, M. and Pfisterer, M.: “Alkhan and Hephthalite Coinage,” in Coins, Art and Chronology II, eds. Alram, M., Klimburg-Salter, D., Inaba, M., Pfisterer, M. (Vienna, 2010), p. 25 Google Scholar.

53 Smith, V. A.: “White Hun (Ephthalite) Coins from the Panjab ,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (1907), p. 95 Google Scholar.

54 The coin in panel (e) has the legend jayatu baysāra. Other silver coins spell his name vaysāra. The ambiguity in the first letter suggests that the original name started with a W sound. Further, we know the conjoined letter ysa stood for the foreign sound za. Thus this king's name must have been Wazāra, or something similar.

55 Coins a, b, c and e are from the British Museum, photos courtesy Joe Cribb. The other two coins are from my own collection.

56 The Mehama coin is from CNG Triton XIV, lot 551, the Prakāśāditya coin is the same as the one in Figure 1 and the two Gupta coins are from my collection.

57 Some silver coins of Kumāragupta I and Skandagupta do show crescents on the crowns. These followed the coins of the rulers they overthrew in that area: the Maitrakas of Vallabhi, who were a Śaka tribe culturally close to the Huns and therefore liable to have similar crowns. I am indebted to Sanjeev Kumar for reminding me of these coins.

58 Matthias Pfisterer informed me of another point made by Gӧbl, although I was not able to find this in the paper: that Prakāśāditya's coins show the king wearing armour, something never seen on Gupta coins.

59 Plate image © The Trustees of the British Museum, object number ME 124092, accessed online; Prakāśāditya coin from Figure 1.

60 Pathak, V. S.: “Motifs on Gupta Coins and Sassanian Wares – II,” Numismatic Digest, 12–13 (1988-89), pp. 40–62 Google Scholar.

61 Ibid., p. 52.

62 I am indebted to Matteo Compareti for pointing this out to me.

63 The Skandagupta coin is from my own collection; the Toramāṇa coin is from the British Museum, photo, courtesy Shailen Bhandare.

64 See Smith: Catalogue, op. cit., p. 119 and Allan, op. cit., p. 135.

65 Gupta, P. L. and Srivastava, S.: Gupta Gold Coins in Bharat Kala Bhavan (Varanasi 1981), pp. 23 Google Scholar and 83.

66 Browne, op. cit., p. 92.

67 Ibid.

68 I was fortunate to be able to examine and photograph the Lucknow coin on a recent visit to the Museum and thank Dr. A. K. Pandey, the Director of the Museum, for arranging access for me. The Patna and National Museum coin photos were provided to me by Ellen Raven.

69 I initially intended to propose that the king's name should be rendered toramāṇa, as this is the form seen on Toramāṇa's silver coins. However, Harry Falk suggested toramāṇo, and this then renders the legend into the correct meter.

70 I am indebted to Michael Hahn for confirming the meter of the legend. In an email, he indicated that the proposed reading “produces indeed the correct second half of an āryā stanza of the pathyā type with a caesura after the third foot. This would also be the correct first and second half of the upagīti variety of the āryā metre as you have indicated. The likelihood that this occurred by chance is, in my humble opinion, very low, especially since the rule that no ja‐gaṇa is permitted in the odd feet is strictly followed. Therefore I am inclined to regard the text as an intentionally composed metrical line, by someone who knew what he did.” He further pointed out that, technically speaking, the first part of the legend should be presented as a karmadhāraya compound avanipatitoramāṇo, since otherwise we should expect the first word to be the nominative avanipatis, which would violate the meter. Thanks to Paul Harrison for putting me in touch with Prof. Dr. Hahn.

71 From top to bottom, the coins are from the Lucknow Museum, Patna Museum, National Museum, Gemini Auction II lot 195, and Ponteiro auction 148 lot 684.

72 Agrawal, op. cit., pp. 111-112.

73 See Gӧbl, R.: Dokumente zur Geschichte der Iranischen Hunnen in Baktrien und Indien, Band I (Wiesbaden, 1967), p. 119 Google Scholar. Gӧbl rendered the last two words of the legend as deva jayati, but it appears no coin he saw showed the diacritics in the second-to-last word to permit a full reading.

74 The possible reading as gya was suggested by Shailen Bhandare.

75 The Udayāditya coin is from my collection, the Uditāditya coin is from the British Museum (photo, courtesy Joe Cribb), the Prakāśāditya coins are from the American Numismatic Society (accession number 1944.100.17999, accessed online) and a private collection (photo, courtesy Ellen Raven).

76 Tandon: “The Succession after Kumāragupta I,” op. cit.