The Chandra dynasty ruled the Arakan and Chittagong coastal regions of Bengal from roughly the 9th through 11th centuries, a kingdom largely overlooked in South Asian numismatic scholarship until Mitchell's Eastern Arabia cataloguing work began systematically documenting these thin, bracteate-style silver pieces. The extreme diameter-to-weight ratio — a broad flan struck from a minimal silver blank — is a deliberate regional convention, not a production shortcut, consistent across the Chandra series and shared with contemporaneous Bengal issues.
Provenance for individual examples is almost never documented, as most entered Western collections through the Chittagong antiquities trade in the 20th century.
The Chandra dynasty ruled the Arakan and Chittagong coastal regions of Bengal from roughly the 9th through 11th centuries, a kingdom largely overlooked in South Asian numismatic scholarship until Mitchell's Eastern Arabia cataloguing work began systematically documenting these thin, bracteate-style silver pieces. The extreme diameter-to-weight ratio — a broad flan struck from a minimal silver blank — is a deliberate regional convention, not a production shortcut, consistent across the Chandra series and shared with contemporaneous Bengal issues.
Provenance for individual examples is almost never documented, as most entered Western collections through the Chittagong antiquities trade in the 20th century.