ShaheerNiazi Posted September 8, 2024 · Member Posted September 8, 2024 https://www.instagram.com/p/C8MG7AAM7II/?img_index=1 The Kashmir smast caves are a huge and ancient cave network in Pakistan which was an autonomous region minting its own coins with designs inspired from the empires surrounding it. Mostly having Alchon hunnish, islamic, kushan and hindu shahi iconography. The region has probably the most diverse types of coinage in the subcontinent or anywhere. This is probably one of the finest kashmir smast types due to the quality of the elephant, as usually other smast coins tend to be very abstract and difficult to look at. There are 5 brahmi aksharas above the elephant, I am currently learning how to read Brahmi legends, any help in the legend above will be appreciated! the reverse depicts a poppy flower? alchon gourd? or a pomegranate? but definitely some kind of fruit. Dr. Waleed Ziad has done a lot of work on kashmir smast coins (I dont have access to his new book, so I am unsure if he has included it there with further details), here is an old reference of his ONS paper to this coin: JONS 187 An example of the coin from Zeno: https://www.zeno.ru/showphoto.php?photo=26467 (interesting discussion in comments) The globe can also be a type of asian gourd which look like this: Let me know what you people think. 2 Quote
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