The early history of Kashmīr as an independent kingdom is obscure;
trustworthy annals do not begin till its conquest by Mihiragula in
the sixth century. From that time down till about 1334, when it was
conquered by the Muhammadans, the country was ruled by four successive
dynasties. The earliest coins are considered to be those with the head
of a king on the obverse and a vase on the reverse, attributed from
the inscription _Khiṅgi_ to a certain Khiṅgila of the fifth century. A
number of coins of the eighth century, struck by princes of the Nāga
dynasty, are known: these are for the most part of very base gold, and
were imitated from the standing king and seated goddess issues of the
Little Yueh-chi, who, as we have seen, conquered Kashmīr about the year
475, and the name of the original leader of that tribe, _Kidāra_, still
appears written vertically under the king’s arm. The workmanship of
these degenerate pieces (Pl. VI, 16) is of the rudest, and the devices
would be quite unintelligible without a knowledge of their antecedents.
Some copper coins give the name Toramāṇa, but the identification of
this prince with the famous Hūṇa chief presents many difficulties.
With the accession of Śaṅkara Varma, the first of the Varma dynasty,
in A.D. 833, gold practically disappears. From the middle of the ninth
century nearly all the kings whose names are recorded in Kalhaṇa’s
great chronicle history of Kashmīr, the _Rājataraṅgiṇī_, of the twelfth
century, are represented by copper coins, but the uniform degradation
of the fabric deprives them of all interest. Among these are the coins
of two queens, Sugandhā and Diddā (980-1003) (Pl. VI, 15), the latter
chiefly remarkable for an adventurous career. The flourishing state
of sculpture and architecture during the eighth and ninth centuries,
and the natural artistic skill of the Kashmīrī people, suggest that
this extreme debasement of the coinage may at least be due as much
to a conservative dislike and suspicion of innovation as to a lack
of cunning in the engravers. Many parallels could be cited, the
classical example being the Attic tetradrachm, the archaic style of
which continued unchanged at Athens even during the brilliant age of
Pheidias.