The study of ancient Indian coins is now a well-established discipline with a history of about two centuries behind it. But strangely no monograph on its historiography has so far been published. The present full-length monograph on this subject is thus a pioneering study. It critically examines all the important works and research articles published during the last two hundred years. Divided into eleven chapters it begins with the progress of the study of the problems of the origin and antiquity of coinage in India (Ch. one) and is followed by the historiography of PMC, local and tribal coins, Indo-Greek coinage, coinages of the Imperial Scythians and Pahlavas and the Western Kshatrapas and the coinage of the Kushanas (Chs. second to sixth). Then in the next four Chs. the numismatography of the Satavahanas, the Guptas, the Vakatakas and the post-Gupta dynasties has been discussed. In the last and concluding Ch. some miscellaneous aspects of ancient Indian numismatics, not covered in the study of the coins of various periods and dynasties, have been examined. Thus this monograph is at once a pioneering and comrephensive study of the historiography of ancient Indian numismatics.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Shankar Goyal
Dr. Shankar Goyal (b. 1959), the young and ebullient author of the present monograph, is emerging very rapidly as one of the recognized authorities on the historiography of ancient India. He has already produced three monographs dealing with some aspects of ancient Indian history writing viz. History and Historiography of the Age of Harsha (Jodhpur, 1992), Aspects of Ancient Indian History and Historiography (New Delhi, 1993) and History Writing of Early India (Jodhpur, 1996). He has co-edited a number of works with such eminent scholars as Professors G.C. Pande, B. Ch. Chhabra and Jagannath Agrawal which are directly or indirectly concerned with this discipline, including Political History in a Changing World (Jodhpur, 1992), Reappraising Gupta History (New Delhi, 1992) and S.R. Goyal: His Multidimensional Historiography (New Delhi, 1992). He has also-co-edited several other monographs with Shri M.C. Joshi and Dr. Sobhag Maghur which include King Chandra and the Meharauli Pillar (Meerut, 1989), Spectrum of Nehru’s Thought (New Delhi, 1994) and Rajasthan Bharati, in two volumes (Jodhpur, 1995) and authored more than seventy research articles. His research output in a period of less than six years has been stupendous, and its originality and quality superb, as is evident from the reviews of his works appearing in national and international journals. Dr. Shankar Goyal did his graduation from the University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, post-graduation from the Deccan College, Pune, and Doctrate on Main Trends in Indian Historiography Since Independence from the University of Jodhpur, Jodhpur, where he is presently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of History.
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