Early Historic India Research Articles

Ethnoarchaeology of foreign coins in India: reinterpreting Venetian ducat design, and implications for archaeonumismatics

In 2019, an ethnographic survey of Indian workshops and shops producing and selling putalis (Venetian ducats and their imitations) was conducted in Nashik, Maharashtra. The study, supplemented by information from written and documentary sources, provides observations relevant to archaeologists studying the process of reinterpreting Roman coin design in Early Historic India.

"Indianisation" of a Roman coin design in Early Historic India: a study of an imitation from the British Museum

Roman aurei and solidi in India led to imitations of gold being produced there of these coins, with a gradual infiltration of indigenous elements observed in the iconography of some examples. An imitation of a Roman aureus, now in the British Museum collection, demonstrates how the Roman coin design was renegotiated to fit an Early Historic Indian cultural landscape. Specifically, the design of the reverse of this specimen finds no prototype in Roman coinage of the times. It must have been a local development, with the Indian craftsman reworking a representation of a female deity known from issues of the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius and adding a temple to it. The Indian form of the building suggests that the figure should be interpreted as a Hindu goddess, possibly Lakshmi, shown in the act of blessing her temple.

Before Genealogy? Marking Descent in the Inscriptions of Early Historic India

This paper examines the forms of descent recorded in the Brahmi inscriptions of early historic India (c. 300 bce–300 ce). I will argue that they afford us the possibility of viewing how non-noble groups traced kinship, lineage and ancestry. We see this in the development of kin networks; in the articulation of descent and proprietal control among landed and mercantile groups; in the patriarchal norms laid down for women; and in the use of metronymics and gotras. Finally, by tracing the slow emergence of genealogies in the inscriptional record, I show that they must be linked to changes in socio-economic, literary and political domains.

Technologies of the Self: Courtly Artifice and Monastic Discipline in Early India

AbstractThis paper attempts to link the growth of courtly and monastic practices as related historical phenomena in early historic India. The consolidation of urban courts and monastic communities represented a departure from the Vedic way of life in the context of new social relations and increasing urbanisation. Urban society and Buddhist monasticism, as scholars have pointed out, were linked materially and sociologically. This paper explores this linkage further. At the level of practice, courtly comportment and monastic discipline, centred around artifice and discipline, respectively, can be seen as direct inversions of one another. This opposition, however, was complementary and reveals a number of shared assumptions about “reality” leading to a common “hermeneutics” of phenomena, despite contrary ontological approaches and implications for practice.

The Role of India in the Diffusion of Early Cultures

During the last three decades considerable archaeological evidence has been produced for prehistoric and early historic India which demands the attention of historical geographers?particularly those interested in problems of longterm cultural diffusion. In this paper three episodes in the cultural history of south Asia are examined from a geographical point of view, viz (A) The eastward diffusion of Indus valley urban cultures c.1500 bc (B) The diffusion of Early Iron Age cultures in the first millennium bc (C) The expansion of Gangetic civilization after c.500 bc In each episode the importance of the forest frontier is noted and the function of two corridors of diffusion (the Gangetic corridor and the Deccan corridor) examined. Indian civilization is seen as a product of the interplay of desert and forest environments and south Asia as a notable area for the transformation of cultural complexes by trans-regional adaptations.

The city in early historic India. By A. Ghosh. pp. 98, map. Simla, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1973. Rs. 17.

The city in early historic India. By A. Ghosh. pp. 98, map. Simla, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1973. Rs. 17.