After an absence of several hundred years, die-struck gold coins began to re-appear in North India in the eleventh century, following the introduction of punch-marked gold in South India in the tenth. All these issues had one point of unity: the figure of goddess Lakshmī, seated on a lotus (in the north) or her name, ‘Śrī’ (in the south). They became the dominant gold coins of most Rajput kingdoms, even being adopted by the early Turkish invaders.

This book explores the production, circulation and function of these coins, probes the question of who really minted them, and explores their economic and cultural functions in early medieval society.

A must-have book for collectors and students, this is the first major update of the gold coin listings of Living Without Silver (1990). Retaining the original catalogue numbers, it expands them to accommodate many new discoveries.