Irfan points to a shortcoming that has made Kashmiris poorer in more ways than one
Europeans preserve our heritage, we don’t care
Irfan Naveed (Greater Kashmir)
Some days back I received an e-mail from a friend of mine who lives in UK. His name is David McDowell and is an authority on the Kushan Coinage. The email was about ancient coins of Kashmir he has came across a board of ancient Kashmir coins of Kushana period in a museum of Oxford University. He had written in his mail, “these days I am working on a coin hoard of Oxford Museum which had been purchased by stein during his stay in the summers at Srinagar Kashmir, these are Kushan coins, and if you can help me in establishing their find sports I would be then highly indebted to you”.
Dr. David McDowell has already done tremendous work on world ancient coins, and wrote several monograms on Afghan and Indian coins. He is an authority on Kushan cons, and has documented and deciphered maximum Greek, Scythian, Kushan and Hindu Shahis coins found in Kashmir. Dr. Michael Mitchnar and K Wings are other contemporary numismatists who have deciphered and documented most of the ancient Kashmir cons found in European Museums and coin collections.
The Kashmir coins, which have paved or are paving their way to the museums and markets of Europe, have got better treatment, and stands not only catalogued but interpreted well in historic literatures of the sub-continent.
I have met most of the archeologists and numismatists of contemporary Europe who are very concerned about Kashmir coins and archeology. One can also understand the concern of European experts through the contents of David’s letter. Thousand of Kilometers away and representing quiet a different culture from ours, these Europeans are interested in research and documentation of Kashmir ancient coins, and have written number of monograms on Kashmir finds. Not only the European experts, the general Europeans are familiar with Kashmir coins and have been taking care of this heritage.
These are outsiders and these people have no responsibility to take care of distant heritages, besides their own ones. The entire European heritages stands already explored and documented. And now they have shifted to other Asian and African heritages; because we are the people who never took care of our land and peoples’ heritages. We served our heritage brokers, and we sold it to the Europeans. By heritage we meant business, either by selling heritage relics to Europe or by creating NGOs in the name of culture and heritage to beg for donations.
A century is now over since scientific explorations and excavations extracted heaps of archeological and numismatic materials.
About eighty thousand ancient coins, which include number of highly priced gold cons, are housed only in SPS Museum at Lal Mandi, without any cataloguing and documentation. The entire numismatic and archaeology heritages of this land housed in its local museums and private collections have got no documentation. There are heaps of coins found, but there are no takers.
What is a coin? Perhaps only few people have understood its proper concept, while for most of the people these ancient coins are nothing more than outdated money, which has no value. For general public, these coins are useless, but for copper and gold smiths, these coins have got some metallic value and are re-used in making copper, silver and gold items.
It is only very few people of my land who are aware of their numismatic and historic value, while rest of the Kashmiris are totally unaware of their numismatic heritage.
These people are unable to understand Kashmiri panch marka, dirham, dinar, panchi, sansu dam, rupee, tanka and Mohur. Thousands of coins struck in Kashmir mints, during ancient, mediaeval and early modern periods of history by hundreds of Rajas and Maharajas are not known to Kashmiris. These people are quite unaware of their this rich heritage, and hardly know that ancient coins of Kashmir besides depicting political, economic and socio-cultural picture of olden Kashmir are the main and authentic source to our history.
The general people of this land are not too blamed when your institutions do not work. The institutions and departments who are the either custodians of coins or are related with archeology should learn a lesson from European institutions and experts, and come forward to share their moral responsibility. If these people have technical know-how to deal with ancient coins, they should learn it and work sincerely to preserve the dumped treasures troves of this land.
To decipher and identify an ancient coin no doubt is a very difficult job. It requires certain technical trainings in numismatics and ancient scripts. The departments concerned with archeology and museums may have the expertise to deal with this neglected heritage because this was the main purpose behind the creation of these institutions. If European are so concerned about our heritages, why can’t we?