Linking two Bull and Horseman Jitals; From Tye#21 to 35

[THCoins]

The Tye#21 silver bull and horseman jitals stand out because of several design characteristics;
- On the Bull's side there is a visarga ":" after "Samanta Deva" so it reads as "Samanta Devah".
- On the horseman's side the horseman has a fairly naturalistic face, and a medallion on the chest.

The Tye#35 Jital type is a crude copper type. The flan is bigger than the die. Only part of the design is usually visible.
- The bump of the bull is continuous with the body of the animal.
- The Horseman is largely abstracted and has a dot on his chest.

Two typical specimen are shown below. At first sight, they do not seem to have much in common.

[THCoins]

The two specimen above do not seem to have much in common. However, the dot on the chest made me wonder if the latter might be a later derivative of the first. The pictures below are an attempt to fill in the missing links. Judge for yourself if you see a family resemblance.

[Figleaf]

WOW!

This sort of work is promoting insight in a series that is otherwise too opaque for most people to bother with. Congratulations, both with the research and the convincing presentation.

Peter

[SilkroadDilettante]

Hi Anthony,

In the past few days I had the opportunity to sort through a large number (approx 100) of late Tye#35 jitals, and for my own purposes took a photo of those which were off-flan with the goal of reconstructing the die. It was a mixed success (some areas still missing due to how denigraded things had become by then) but largely supports your conclusions here, which I also agree with.

The upwards 'serif' feature beneath the bull's belly is another area of commonality between these types, which after checking #Tye21 specimens I finally realised was a hoof... ! Izi

[THCoins]

Great work ! For this type of die reconstruction you really need a large group. It takes some effort, but your end results are great. It also shows that these later types should not be just considered "degenerated". Great care was taken to produce the abstracted designs and the legends are still well readable.

[SilkroadDilettante]

Great work ! For this type of die reconstruction you really need a large group. It takes some effort, but your end results are great. It also shows that these later types should not be just considered "degenerated". Great care was taken to produce the abstracted designs and the legends are still well readable.

Yep, you are quite right.

 Problems are doubly compounded by the fact that the 'late' 35 types are overwhelmingly mostly narrow central strikes with a great deal purposegully off-flan.

Even with 100 #35 examples to choose from, it was still very hard to get the full picture (and largely came from the one or two that were marginally smaller dies, and presumably a little earlier). 

Frustratingly, none went as far to the right so as to elucidate whether the visarga was present or not, hence why I did not include it.

Using a hundred coins with subtle differences, this is obviously not an exact impression for one specific die- but I do think it is useful in demonstrating a general model for the #35 types, whose direct antecessor is clearly#21 when you use these drawings. It is much easier to visibly show die evolutions with reconstructions like this...

I wonder how you would date this evolution? Ca 1000-1250AD?

This coin is not mine but I recently saw it listed for sale here in China. I assume you have already seen them before, but it is useful for this discussion; an even more archaistic impression of Tye#21, with more detail visible on the horse and the lance, banner etc clearly discernible.The bull is also a much chunkier type, closer to the older Shahi ones.

[THCoins]

That is a very nice early Tye#21.
Making stylistic genealogies is difficult. But i think Tye#21 could be derived from", or fairly closely related with, Tye#14.2 (Which i gave a separate type)

[SilkroadDilettante]

Yes, absolutely! I saw in an early post where you referenced the 'bird face' and this is a great example again connecting the dots, perhaps suggesting how the typical 'pacman' face of 21 came about...

Best, Izi