Double AE Unit - Saurashtra Peninsula

The city-states and tribal republics of the Saurashtra Peninsula — the Kathiawar region of modern Gujarat — produced a distinctive series of copper coinage in the last centuries BCE, largely outside the administrative reach of the declining Mauryan successor kingdoms. These issues circulated within a trading economy already well-connected to the western Indian Ocean routes, with Saurashtra ports handling goods moving between the subcontinent and the Persian Gulf long before Roman merchants found their way there.

The billon uncertainty here is genuine — some Saurashtra issues show trace silver content that may reflect deliberate alloying or simply the quality of available local copper ore.