ABSTRACT
Sharma discussed the ‘problems of quantification’ and, to buttress his views on the paucity of coins, presented a great deal of numerical data on coins dated to this time bracket, as obtained from institutional collections. The understanding of medieval Indian history went through a ‘paradigm shift’ with R. S. Sharma’s Indian Feudalism published in 1965. Sharma marks some particular observations as the ‘diagnostic’ apparatus of his ‘feudalisation’ model. According to him, the catalyst of this social change came mainly in the post-Gupta epoch, although its germ had been visible even in the earlier centuries. The Indo-Sasanian coinage was a major coinage of north India, which remained largely understudied and under-collected until recent times, owing to the fact that the coins are devoid of features which help in their conclusive attribution. The observation that evidence for a gold coinage is ‘lacking’ in India during the post-Gupta period has been made by many numismatists and historians.
