COINAGE OF THE INDO-GREEKS CHALLENGES OF THE ANCIENTS AND THE SOLUTIONS IN THE MODERN WORLD

Abstract

When Alexander had to leave his conquest of India midway, some of his generals stayed back to rule the conquered north-west India the part which was known as Bactria. These Kings and generals held sway and minted their coins with pure Hellenistic motifs, scripts/legends, and styles. By the middle of the 2nd century BCE, by the inclusion of the Indian script Kharoshthi, Indian elements started appearing and became mainstream. Not only the legend but the weight standard was changed and the Indian standard was adopted. This was the most important change. Problems: The vast sum of Indo-Greek coinage has been unearthed so far but had remained under-studied for more than one reason. As it remains, the problem areas have remained unaddressed and unanswered. This has mainly happened due to the study of coinage in isolation far away from the find spots and devoid of stratigraphy and ignoring local knowledge of the subject. This situation has been aggravated by political turmoil and insulating archaeological finds and records by limiting the access combined with poor local scholarly work or absence of scientific approach due to poor economic conditions and access to modern methods and technology to approach, enhance, and understand the historically very important Indo-Greek coinage. Unfortunately, Indo-Greek coinage study is clubbed with Hellenistic outlook and mostly aggravated by vogue historicity. Scope of Study: This paper highlights challenges in studying Indo-Greek coinage and other factors that have not been addressed and difficulties in the way of scholarly pursuit. A modern tech-driven approach is recommended for addressing the challenges. Scientific Evaluation: A more technology-driven approach to study the Indo- Greek coinage will unravel the mysteries and remove the historical blind spots. Exclusively treating the subject of Indo-Greek coinage and thus providing recognition it deserves as unique, de-bracketed from Hellenistic coinage. Conclusions: The modern technology-driven data management scientifically adopted archaeological exploration and excavation paired with the latest Information Technology tools including the use of social media platforms can be networked effectively to build up a fresh modern repository of findings that will help historians, archaeologists, scholars, students, and numismatists/collectors.