ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on one such issue of fixation in the study of early historical coins with colonial categories, i.e., the ‘imperial’ versus ‘tribal’ coins. Inquiries into the Indian past by antiquarians and scholars had various motivations: they started with individual interest and treasure hunts and ultimately resulted in institutionally organised translation exercises and geographical surveys. The construct of tribe as a category in India, according to Susana Devalle, formed part of the self-legitimising ideology of colonialism. The colonial understanding of Indian communities as tribes was also to have its reflection in the traditional categories from past. Coins constitute a distinctive source for the study of history, as they, like inscriptions, have aspects of an artefact and a text. The cataloguing and categorisation of coins are very important stages of numismatic study, but what needs to be emphasised here is that the process of study has been restricted to these stages.
