Æ Unit

Anga was one of the sixteen Mahajanapadas — the great territorial kingdoms recorded in early Buddhist and Jain texts — occupying the lower Gangetic plain in what is now Bihar and West Bengal. By the mid-fifth century BC, Anga had been absorbed by the expanding Magadha kingdom under Ajatashatru, making coinage attributable to an independent Anga state politically precarious to date with confidence. Whether this piece predates that annexation or was struck under residual local authority afterward remains an open question in South Asian numismatics.