Kuṇinda

A hill polity

The Kuṇindas held the sub-Himalayan country now divided between Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand — a landscape of narrow valleys and passes on the routes between the plains and the Tibetan plateau. The Mahābhārata and the Purāṇas name a Kulinda people in this region, and Ptolemy's geography has a corresponding entry, so the coins can be matched to a name known independently.

Their best-known issues carry the legend of the great king Amoghabhūti of the Kuṇindas, with a deer accompanied by a standing female figure on one side. Later issues, of the second and third centuries CE, are Śaiva in character and name a ruler with the title of Bhagavat, which is a marked change of register.

Salt and the passes

Kuṇinda coins are found along the trade routes through the foothills, and the region's traffic in salt, wool and hill produce is the likeliest basis of whatever prosperity supported a silver coinage. Control of a pass is a durable form of income, and it may explain why so small a polity was issuing money at all.

The Kuṇindas fall out of the record after the third century, as the Guptas and then the Katyūrī and other hill dynasties take over the region.