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Drachm - Sri Gupta

Issuer Gupta Empire
Year 487-497
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Value Drachm (1)
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Obverse description Degraded bust of the ruler facing right, rendered in the debased Indo-Sasanian style derived from Western Kshatrapa prototypes, occupying the central field. The facial features — including a prominent eye with a pellet pupil, a broad nose, and a stylized mouth — are rendered in low relief typical of late Gupta provincial coinage. A vertical line or sceptre-like element appears to the left of the bust, and a row of pellets is visible to the right. The lower field is bordered by a beaded or segmented arc, and the design retains traces of the earlier Kshatrapa bust tradition adapted to Gupta iconographic conventions.
Obverse script Brahmi
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Additional information

Sri Gupta is conventionally treated as the founder of the Gupta dynasty, but the coins attributed to his reign — and to the transitional rulers bridging him to Chandragupta I — remain among the least securely attributed issues in the entire series. The decade-range assigned here reflects ongoing scholarly disagreement rather than documented mint records. No inscriptional evidence firmly ties surviving silver drachms to Sri Gupta himself; attribution rests almost entirely on typological sequence and weight standard comparisons against later, better-documented Gupta issues.

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