The art of deception: perspectives on the problem of fakery in Gandhāran numismatics

Abstract

Studies in Gandhāran (Graeco-Bactrian, Indo-Greek, and Kushan) coinages, particularly as a subset of the wider discourse on Gandhāran art, have remained largely preoccupied with the tropes of style, iconography, and chronology, much as the contributions on numismatics in the previous ‘Gandhāra Connections’ volumes show. However, coins are not mere objects; they are ‘things’. Antique coins have long lost their primary function as medium of exchange or store of value. They have ‘moved’ away from their common function and thus qualify to be ‘things’ taking Heidegger’s conceptualization of ‘things’ as a basis of human-object interactions and cultures of object consumptions (Heidegger 1971). As such, they can be studied from the critical viewpoint of ‘Thing Theory’, which has been articulated and developed by Bill Brown. Coins possess inherent material properties that contribute to their ‘thingness’, and the preoccupation of historians, art historians and numismatists to focus on themes outlined above tends to obliterate how coins can be fully understood as ‘things’. As Knappett has shown in his work on the role of ‘meaning’ in material culture (Knappett 2005), objects cannot be understood exclusively by representation and by a ‘mentalist’ understanding. Their meaning needs to be comprehended by treating them as ‘things’. Appadurai’s seminal contribution on the social life of ‘things’ (Appadurai 1986) presents an outlay of how issues like commoditization are closely related to the materiality of objects. Coins, in particular ancient coins, could well be included within its remits. Coins are no exception to these critical views; as ‘things’, the physical properties of the coins, the processes by which they were produced and the interactions they did and continue to have, all contribute to understanding of their ‘meaning’.