CONTENTS:

A Letter from Your Secretary General
Pankaj Tandon

Note from Your New Editor
Paula Turner

Audumbara Coins with New Features and Disposition of Legends
Devendra Handa

A Hoard Parcel of Late Kushan Gold Dinars
Joe Cribb and K. K. Maheshwari

New Gold Coins of the Paramara King Jagadeva
Deme Raja Reddy

A Preliminary and Metallurgical Study on the Chola, Chineseand Venad coins from Thankasseri, Kollam
Hari Sankar B. and Sarath Chandra Babu

ONS News
North America Meeting 15 January 2022
Europe Meeting 7 May 2022

Book reviews

Zhong guo xi zang qian bi tu lu
[Illustrated catalogue of the currencyof Tibet, China]
by Yin Zhengmin

Hunnic Peoples in Central and South Asia: Sources for their originand history, edited by Da´niel Balogh

The Alkhan: A Hunnic people in South Asia
by Hans T. Bakker

Rivalling Rome: Parthian coins and culture
by V. Curtis and A. Magub

Guqian jipin [Exceptional Rarities among the Ancient Coins
by Huo Hongwei [in Chinese]

A Letter from Your Secretary General

Dear ONS members,

In mid-March, I sent out a message to all members for whom we had an email address. This message will repeat some of the same information, so that I can reach all members, but it will also update my earlier message. Before I continue, however, I would like to appeal to those of you who have not yet furnished your regional secretary with your email address to please do so without delay. Not only can the Society communicate quickly and easily with you via email, but we will also be able to inform you of upcoming meetings, many if not all of which will be accessible to you by Zoom.

My first very pleasant task is to welcome the new editor of the journal, Dr Paula Turner. Paula has been a member of the Society for over forty years and has had a lifelong fascination with ancient history and archaeology, which led to her PhD research into the Roman trade with India. She published part of this research in her book, Roman Coins from India, published jointly by the Institute of Archaeology and the Royal Numismatic Society in 1989 and she is currently preparing an updated edition of this. She has spent her working career in academic publishing and, in addition, has taught Latin and Classical Greek for many years. Please join me in welcoming Paula to her new role.

I would like to invite you to submit articles for possible publication in JONS. Articles can be full-length research papers or shorter contributions pointing to new discoveries or to interesting coins. We are also looking for book reviews; if you would like to see a book reviewed, please recommend it. Finally, we are thinking of starting a Letters to the Editor section in the journal. Send your contributions, letters or queries to Paula at onseditor@gmail.com. Also, if you submitted a paper earlier and it has not yet been published, please re-submit it to Paula in case it has been misplaced or lost.

With Paula's assumption of the editorship, we can expect the journal to return to regular publication every three months and to expand again closer to the size it had attained under Stan Goron. You will find Paula to be responsive to your communications and can look forward to a much improved journal.

The Society plans to embark on a major new initiative: the creation of a website that would have the long-term goal of cataloguing all the coins and paper currency within the purview of the ONS. The site would afford members the opportunity to upload images and details of coins in their collections (whether anonymously or not, at the member's discretion) and would display the coins in a logical, pleasing manner for the visitor. The site could become not only a catalogue but also a database for researchers. I would also love to see it use pattern recognition technology to permit a visitor to upload images of a coin and request its identification. Finally, I envision a site which will also be a virtual museum, where visitors can browse the catalogue the way they might wander through a museum.

Initial response to this idea has been enthusiastic. Many of you wrote to me pointing out that the website Zeno.ru already does much of this. Of course, I am very aware of Zeno and use it regularly for my own research. I spoke to Vladimir Belyaev in February and we have agreed to work together. But this is not a project that can be accomplished in a couple of months. So stay tuned and be patient. I will try to keep you informed of our progress. If you have specific thoughts about and ideas on how to implement this vision, please write to me at secgen.ons@gmail.com.

I would also like to invite you to write to me at the same email address (secgen.ons@gmail.com) any time with your ideas on ways in which the Society can better serve your needs.

With warm regards,
Pankaj Tandon