II follow three weight standards of 121, 124 a 127 grains. On the other hand, in the reign o Kumaragupta I the standard of 127 grains acqui the greatest popularity.

In Chandragupta ti 121 was the most popular. Skandagupta gave all these standards and adopted the standard 11 grains for his so-called King-and-Lakshmi type a variety A of the Archer type. For the variety B the latter he adopted the suvarna standard of I grains though usually the coins of this type weight in the vicinity of 141.5 grains only. His succes generally followed the national standard (1 grains), though with the passage of time, their coi became heavier.

Further, the coins of the later imperial Gup are more heavily adulterated with alloy than tht coins of the early rulers. The coins of Chandragu I have less than 9% of alloy and those Samudragupta and Chandragupta II 10% to 15%.

But the Archer-type coins of Kumaragupta I and the coinage of subsequent rulers contain an alloy ranging nearly between 20% to 30% while some coin attributed to Narasimhagupta and Kumaragupta Kramaditya have as much as 46% of alloy. The metal became still more debased during the reign of Vishnugupta who was probably the last emperor of the dynasty. His coins have only 43% of pure gold.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

Till now twenty-four hoards of Gupta coins have been discovered. Fourteen of them are located in eastern UP, two each in Bengal and Bihar, three in MP and one each in Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat.

In the realm of literary sources we have a large number of legal and dharmashastric texts, epics and many puranas which were composed or given final form during the Gupta period. Dramas, works on Astrology, astronomy, medicine, lexicography, grammar etc. were composed during this period and form a suitable source material for the study of imperial Guptas. All these have been dealt with greater detail in subsequent pages.

The foreign Buddhist pilgrims and their accounts are major source of information for the upta period. Fa-hien, Hiuan-tsang and I-tsing were such pilgrims. Although, they all wrote with uddhist bias but ultimately they proved to be important source materials. The other sources include the monumental structures and reports of archaeological excavations.