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Vidisha — modern Besnagar in Madhya Pradesh — was among the most commercially active inland cities of the Gangetic plain during this period, sitting at the confluence of the Betwa and Bes rivers. Its civic coinage emerged independently of imperial Mauryan authority, likely after the empire's fragmentation following Ashoka's death in 232 BC. These small bronzes circulated within a tight regional economy, and the city later gained fame as the site of the Heliodorus pillar, erected around 110 BC by a Greek ambassador from Taxila who had converted to Vaishnavism.