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Guptas: Samudragupta, gold dinar (King and Queen type), c. 335-375 CE
Weight: 7.44 gm, Diameter: 20 mm.
King standing at right and queen at left, facing each other, king holding up his right hand,
Brāhmī legend at left: Sri Kumaradevi
Brāhmī legend at right: Samudra / gupta /
Goddess (Durga?) enthroned facing, seated on recumbent lion right,
holding cornucopia and diadem, Brāhmī legend at right: Lichchhavayah
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The King and Queen type of Samudragupta memorializes the most important event of early Gupta history: the marriage of
Chandragupta I to the Lichchavi princess Kumaradevi. This marriage greatly improved the fortunes of the young and ambitious king, allowing him to begin his campaign
of expansion.
The attribution of the King and Queen type has been the subject of some debate, Allan, in his catalogue of Gupta
coins in the British Museum, assigned them to Samudragupta, while Altekar, in his studies of the Bayana hoard and the corpus of Gupta coins, argued for attributing them
to Chandragupta I. On numismatic grounds, it seems pretty clear that these coins must have been issued by Samudragupta. The clothes worn by the king resemble more
the clothes in the later Sceptre type coins of Samudragupta (see the second through the fourth coins on the
Samudragupta page) rather than the fully Kushan style clothes in the earliest
Sceptre type coins, such as the first coin on that page. Thus the coins are telling us that the King and Queen coins were issued after the earliest coins of Samudragupta.
On the coins, the king has his right hand raised up close to the queen's face, and numismatists have been wondering what is transpiring between them. Various
suggestions have been made, such as that he is holding up an object or applying sindhoor to her forehead. To me, considering the position of his hand near her
mouth, it seems most likely that he is offering her something to eat. Feeding the bride is an important component of the wedding ritual and I can remember my father
always offering the first morsel of his dinner to my mother ... a daily reaffirmation of his marriage vows.
You can see more coins of Samudragupta on the Samudragupta page).
A Note on Image Sizes: On the web, it is impossible to present coin images in their actual sizes, the way they can be in print. Throughout the CoinIndia website,
however, an attempt has been made to present the coins in sizes proportional to one another. Thus a coin that has twice the diameter as another coin will be shown as
double in size (with the exception of the image on this page, which is always shown at this fixed size, no matter what the size of the original coin was). Wherever possible, the actual
diameter (for round coins) or dimensions (for rectangular or oddly-shaped coins) is provided. Of course, enlargements of each coin are available by clicking on the images.
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