| Summary, etc. |
The history of the two collections of coins, a portion of which is catalogued in this volume, and an account of the manner in which they passed under the control of the Trustees of the Indian Museum will be found in the General Introduction; but a brief explanation of the genesis of this catalogue is required to enable the reader to understand the plan of the work and the necessity for its preparation. The Asiatic Society of Bengal never succeeded in giving effect to a declared intention of printing a catalogue of the coins in the possession of the Society, which have in consequence remained almost unknown to students of numismatics. The Catalogue of the Coins of the Indian Museum', prepared by the late Mr. C. J. Rodgers and printed by order of the Trustees during the years 1893-6, was a rough list rather than a scientific catalogue, and since its appearance large accessions to the collection had been made, which remained unclassified and undescribed. The necessity for a new catalogue being thus apparent, the Trustees, acting on a suggestion made by Sir James Bourdillon, K.C.S.I., resolved to arrange for its preparation, and invited me to undertake the task in November, 1903. The invitation in its original form applied to the whole joint collection of the Asiatic Society and the Indian Museum, which exceeded 20,000 coins in number. On consideration I found that it would be impossible to deal with such a mass, the larger part of which consists of Muhammadan coins to which my studies had not been specially directed. Ultimately it was arranged that the work should be divided, Mr. H. Nelson Wright, L.C.S., undertaking the Muhammadan coins, while my labours should be confined to the classes of coins treated in this volume.<br/><br/>A serious preliminary difficulty arose from the fact that the coins in the Indian Museum collection had never been arranged in classes. They had simply been put into the cabinets in the order of their receipt, and so presented an unmanageable jumble.<br/><br/>This fundamental defect had not been remedied by Mr. Rodgers when he prepared his catalogue, and it is difficult to imagine how he managed to describe the coins. But, during the course of the year 1904, Mr. H. Nelson Wright visited Calcutta, and succeeded in effecting a rough classification of the Indian Museum coins, with sufficient accuracy to allow the separation of the classes assigned to me. I received the first batch of coins on December 14, 1904, and the last batch on May 30, 1906. The coins received number about 5,000, out of which nearly 3,000 are described. The difference is accounted for by a multitude of duplicates, a large mass of worthless defaced specimens, a few forgeries, and some parcels which were not included in my commission, and were consequently returned without detailed examination.<br/><br/>The plan of this volume is as follows. The coins are treated in twenty-four sections, to each of which is prefixed a brief historical introduction with full bibliographical details. The sections have been grouped in three parts. The first part, dealing with the early foreign dynasties and the Guptas, includes almost all the coins which exhibit clear traces of Hellenic influence, and, consequently, with very few exceptions, all the coins possessed of artistic merit; because in Indian coinages the degree of artistic merit is directly proportioned to the amount of Hellenic influence. The aesthetic superiority and general interest of the coins treated in Part I entitle them to eighteen out of the thirty-one plates. Part II is devoted to the ancient coins of Indian types, some of which are earlier in date than the coinage derived from Greek models. All these ancient coins are so rude and inartistic that it has been found possible to give fairly adequate illustrations of them in five plates. Part III comprises all the other classes of coins specified in my instructions, and includes the mediaeval coins of Northern and Central India, the coinage of the south and west, and that of the frontier kingdoms up to the present day. The Sassanian coins of Persia, which served as the prototype of extensive Indian series, have been described in accordance with the wishes of the Trustees. The catalogue concludes with the coinage of Ceylon and a small sot of miscellaneous coins from Arakan and other places. |
