The gold coins of the Gupta kings, who ruled over North India in the fourth and fifth centuries, are renowned for the exquisite artistic quality of their designs. Less familiar are the striking variety in iconography and style of their images and the great diversity in the technical and material properties of these coins.

This study focuses on those gold coins that show the Gupta king with a banner carrying a miniature image of the mythic eagle Garuḍa, the supreme symbol of his power. They belong to five coin types - from a range of twenty-one different obverse designs - which together comprise about sixty percent of the dīnāras struck from the reign of Samudragupta up to and including that of Skandagupta.





All volumes of the print edition will become available in individual e-books: 9789004542532 (volume 1) - 9789004542549 (volume 2).