Who issued the ‘Chitreshwar’ type of coins in Uttarakhand?
- (a)Katyuri
- (b)Kunind
- (c)Chand
- (d)Parmar
Correct — B, Kunind.
The Kunind (Kuninda) were an ancient people of the Shivalik belt, the tract that today covers western Uttarakhand and neighbouring Himachal Pradesh. They are known above all through their coins.
Their later copper issues, dated to about the second century CE, carry a Brahmi legend read as 'Bhagavata Chitreshvara Mahatmanah'. The obverse shows a standing Shiva-form deity holding a trident-battleaxe; the reverse carries a deer with symbols.
That legend is what gives the series its name. Chitreshwar is the deity honoured in the legend, not a ruler — so the stem is asking which power struck money in a god's name.
The better-known Kuninda series is the earlier one, of about the first century BCE, issued in the name of King Amoghabhuti. Both series belong to the same people, which is the link the option demands.
- (a)Katyuri — The Katyuris belong to a much later layer of Uttarakhand's history — the early-medieval centuries, roughly the seventh or eighth to the eleventh CE — while the Chitreshvara legend sits in about the second century CE.
Katyuri is the right answer to the dynasty seated at Kartikeyapura in the Katyur valley, known from the Pandukeshwar copper-plate grants and the temple building at Baijnath.
- (c)Chand — The Chands ruled Kumaon in the medieval and early-modern centuries, a horizon far removed from an early-historic coin legend written in Brahmi.
Chand is the right answer to the Kumaon dynasty that ruled first from Champawat and later from Almora, and held the region until the Gorkha conquest of 1790.
- (d)Parmar — The Parmars (Panwars) ruled Garhwal in the medieval and early-modern centuries, again long after the Kuninda coinage.
Parmar is the right answer to the Garhwal line seated at Chandpur Garhi and later at Srinagar on the Alaknanda, whose ruler Ajay Pal consolidated the garhs and whose successor Sudarshan Shah founded Tehri in 1815.
A coin legend is dated evidence of authority: it records who claimed the right to strike money, and in whose name that claim was made.
Among the hill and plains communities of north-west India in the centuries around the turn of the era, the name on the legend is not always a king's. Some issues name the community itself, some name a presiding deity.
That is why a coin type can end up labelled by a god's epithet rather than by a ruler, as the Chitreshwar series is.
Uttarakhand's political past is taught as a sequence of layers — the ancient Kuninda, then the Katyuri of Kartikeyapura, then the Chand in Kumaon and the Parmar in Garhwal, then the Gorkhas and the British.
Kuninda coinage is the principal material evidence for the earliest of those layers, which is why its coin types carry names at all. Fixing a name onto that timeline is usually what settles an option like this one.
- The later Kuninda copper coins carry a Brahmi legend read as 'Bhagavata Chitreshvara Mahatmanah', which is why the series is called the Chitreshwar type.
- Those Chitreshvara-legend coins are dated to about the second century CE.
- Their obverse shows a standing Shiva-form deity holding a trident-battleaxe; the reverse carries a deer with symbols.
- The earlier and more numerous Kuninda series names King Amoghabhuti and is dated to about the first century BCE.
- Amoghabhuti's silver coins show a deer crowned by two cobras and attended by Lakshmi holding a lotus.
- That series is bilingual in script: the Brahmi legend reads 'Rajnah Kunindasya Amoghabhutisya maharajasya', the Kharoshthi 'Rana Kunidasa Amoghabhutisa Maharajasa'.
- Kuninda territory lay in the Shivalik belt of present-day Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.
- The people appear as Kulinda in the Mahabharata and as Kulindrine in Ptolemy's Geography.
- Ashoka's rock edict at Kalsi, in Dehradun district, stands within the same tract.
Both series are Kuninda. The Chitreshwar type is the later of the two, and its legend names a deity rather than a king.
- 'Chitreshwar' reads like a personal name, which pulls you towards looking for a ruler; on the coin it is the deity named in the legend.
- The other three options are early-medieval to early-modern Uttarakhand dynasties, so dating the coin to about the second century CE separates them from the Kuninda in one step.
- Kuninda coinage runs in two series, and a candidate who has met only the Amoghabhuti name may not connect the Chitreshvara issues to the same people.
- Kartikeyapura, Champawat and Almora, and Srinagar in Garhwal belong to the Katyuri, the Chand and the Parmar respectively; swapping those capitals is the neighbouring error.
The idea shows up as a straight attribution: a coin type, a legend or a piece of coin iconography is given and you supply the issuing power — or the direction is reversed, with the dynasty given and the coin's name asked for.
It also appears folded into Uttarakhand's dynastic sequence, where the work is chronological rather than numismatic: an option falls because it belongs to a different century, not because you know its coinage.
NDA_GAT_2024_I_Q932024Same hinge — what a coin legend actually names. That item asks who first put rulers' names and images on Indian coins (the Indo-Greeks); this one turns on a legend that names a deity, Chitreshvara, rather than a ruler. The NDA item is a pan-Indian 'first', while this is a regional attribution in the Uttarakhand hills.
MPPSC_2023_PRE_PaperI_Q702023Same task of tying a coin series to the power that issued it. That question tests the metal of Chandragupta II's post-Shaka issues (silver) within an imperial Gupta context; this one tests the issuing people behind a named legend, and the discriminator is the century rather than the metal.
UPSC_1997_GS1_Q901997Same coin-name-to-dynasty pairing, run in the opposite direction: it gives the Guptas and asks for the coin's name (rupaka), where this stem gives the coin type and asks for the issuer. It is also imperial rather than regional.
UPSC_1998_GS1_Q771998Shares the dating skill this question rewards — knowing roughly when a class of coin appears in India. That item sequences punch-marked silver and gold coinage against iron ploughs and urban culture across the subcontinent; it carries no dynastic attribution, which is exactly what this stem demands.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The coin legend 'Bhagavata Chitreshvara Mahatmanah' is associated with the coinage of which ancient people?
- (a)Yaudheya
- (b)Kuninda
- (c)Audumbara
- (d)Arjunayana
Answerb — The Chitreshvara legend belongs to the later Kuninda copper series of about the second century CE, struck in the Shivalik tract of present-day Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.Yaudheya coins are inscribed for the Yaudheya gana and carry Karttikeya; Audumbara issues are known in rulers' names such as Dharaghosha; Arjunayana coins proclaim the victory of the Arjunayanas.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Kuninda coins issued in the name of King Amoghabhuti carry their legends in which pair of scripts?
- (a)Brahmi and Kharoshthi
- (b)Brahmi and Greek
- (c)Kharoshthi and Greek
- (d)Brahmi and Devanagari
Answera — The Amoghabhuti issues are bilingual in script, the Brahmi reading 'Rajnah Kunindasya Amoghabhutisya maharajasya' and the Kharoshthi 'Rana Kunidasa Amoghabhutisa Maharajasa'.Greek legends belong to the Indo-Greek and Kushan coinages, not to this series, which rules out the two options that pair Greek with an Indian script. Devanagari took shape centuries after these coins were struck.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The obverse of the later Kuninda copper coins bearing the Chitreshvara legend carries:
- (a)A seated Buddha
- (b)A standing deity holding a trident-battleaxe
- (c)Karttikeya with a peacock
- (d)A horseman with a lance
Answerb — The Chitreshvara issues show a standing Shiva-form deity with a trident-battleaxe on the obverse, with the deer moved to the reverse.A seated Buddha figure is known from Kanishka's coinage; Karttikeya with his peacock is the Yaudheya device; the horseman belongs to the later 'bull and horseman' coins of the Shahis and their medieval successors.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Kartikeyapura, in the Katyur valley, was the seat of which dynasty of Uttarakhand?
- (a)Kuninda
- (b)Katyuri
- (c)Chand
- (d)Parmar
Answerb — Kartikeyapura in the Katyur valley is the Katyuri capital, and the dynasty's name is itself taken from that valley.The Chands ruled Kumaon from Champawat and later Almora; the Parmars ruled Garhwal from Chandpur Garhi and later Srinagar; the Kuninda belong to a far earlier, pre-medieval layer and are known chiefly through their coinage.