Ancient ‘Rising Sun’ coins show connections from Bangladesh to Vietnam

Archaeologists have analyzed more than 200 coins from the first millennium AD mainland Southeast Asia, revealing long-distance economic connections across the region which facilitated extensive trade and cultural interaction.

As far back as the second century AD, Chinese chronicles record the importance of Southeast Asian polities in trade networks stretching from the Near East to China.

Archaeological evidence supports this, with excavations in Southeast Asia uncovering trade goods such as Roman glassware, Indian jewelry, and Persian, Southwest Asian, and Chinese ceramics.

Often associated with these finds are silver coins, commonly depicting a rising sun on one side and the Srivatsa (an early symbol in Indian religious traditions) on the other.

They were made using dies: molds in which a blank metal disk is pressed to imprint a design onto both sides.

These coins have been found from Bangladesh to Vietnam, encompassing the entirety of Indianized Southeast Asia, but, in comparison to Roman, Indian or Central Asian coins, they remain understudied.

“No other early Southeast Asian coinage exhibits as widespread a distribution as those bearing Rising Sun/Srivatsa motifs,” states lead author of the research, Dr. Andrew Harris from the National University of Singapore. “However, the coins have rarely been analyzed as an integrated artefactual dataset, with scholars often associating them with specific cultural-historical groups aligned with modern nation-state boundaries.”

To correct this knowledge gap, a multi-institutional project team led by researchers from the National University of Singapore collated 245 accurately-provenanced coins from across Southeast Asia in order to examine them as part of a broader economic and cultural network, independent of modern borders. Their results are published in the journal Antiquity.

They found many links between the coins across the whole region, indicating that currency-based economies, and the political connections that facilitated them, changed extensively over time.

Perhaps most interestingly, the obverse sides of one coin from Bangladesh and one coin from Vietnam are believed to have been produced using the same die, indicating they may have been minted by the same individual or polity despite their distance from each other.

“This offers compelling evidence of extensive long-distance circulation,” says Dr. Harris.

Importantly, this means that ancient coinage was instrumental in shaping trade and cultural connections in Southeast Asia, just as in other ancient civilizations with currency economies such as Rome, India and Central Asia.

“The die study presented here has considerable implications for understanding early Southeast Asian trade networks, providing insights into key ports and settlements, further assessing the role of weighted silver in ancient trade, and mapping the expansion and contraction of currency-based economies in mainland Southeast Asia along with the polities that minted them,” adds co-author and project Primary Investigator Professor Maria De Iorio, also of the National University of Singapore.

Furthermore, it will also help prevent looting and preserve the region’s cultural heritage in the face of ongoing conflicts such as the Myanmar civil war.

Many early Southeast Asian coins are looted and traded illicitly, ending up melted down or hidden in private collections. Implementing die studies to provenance coins will help identify forgeries, exposing unethical practices.

“Die studies will assist in better tracing the provenance of coins from Myanmar, advancing our understanding of historical coin usage and minting practices while helping to curtail the illicit facilitation of antique-coin collection in this region,” concludes Dr. Harris.