Sale: Triton IX, Lot: 1199. Estimate $4000.  Closing Date: Monday, 9 January 2006.  Sold For $2800. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

[Ancient] INDIA, Guptas. Kumaragupta I. Circa 414-455 AD. AV Dinar (8.13 g, 12h). Lion-slayer type. Kumaragupta, nimbate, standing left with flexed knee, turning to draw his bow in a "Parthian shot" at a lion which sprawls over backward / The goddess Lakshmi, nimbate, seated facing on rÉcumbent lion right, holding a lotus and an uncertain object (mundamala?); unusual five-point tamgha in left field. BMC Guptas -; Altekar pl. XII, 9; Bayana 1784. Good VF, muddled obverse strike. Rare. ($4000)

The object in Lakshmi's hand is unclear, and described as a "garland" in Altekar's Bayana Hoard catalogue. But when he produced his Corpus a few years later, Altekar offered the suggestion that the object was the mundamala, a necklace of skulls worn by Shiva as a symbol of that god's power over life and death. This conflation of the attributes of Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, and Shiva appears in no other aspect of Gupta or Hindu art. It should also be noted that this form of the "tamgha" or Gupta royal symbol, appears on no other coin type.