Ancient Bengal numismatic dataset of Vanga Janapada, Gauda, Samatata, and Harikela coinage

Ancient Bengal coinage represents one of the significant pieces of evidence for understanding the political, economic, and cultural development of Eastern South Asia. The study of coin analysis remains challenging because many types are rare, visually complex, dispersed across private collections, and difficult to identify without any specialized numismatics knowledge. Even though interest in applying machine learning and computer vision to numismatics research is growing, the absence of well-structured datasets has limited the computation research on the early coinage of Bengal. This study presents a novel image dataset along with metadata annotations of ancient Bengal coins, which cover a broad historical period from the 5th century BC to the 10th century AD. The dataset includes 2704 annotated coin images across 52 classes of four major numismatic traditions of Bengal: Vanga Janapada, Gauda, Harikela, and Samatata. Our collection captures the evolution of Bengal's monetary system from punch-marked coinage to the regional gold and silver coinage of the post-Gupta and early medieval periods. The images were collected from authenticated private collections and five permission granted auction houses. To ensure reliable class identification, each coin was carefully examined and annotated using historical classification, inscription, motifs, symbols, variety, and coin types. Additionally, all coins were checked and confirmed using numismatic sources, including SK Bose and Noman Nasir's numismatic books and auction house records. The dataset contains a wide range of rare and historically significant collections that provide a valuable resource for machine learning-based coin collection, feature extraction, image retrieval, and archaeological research. Moreover, the combination of modern computational methods with the ancient Bengal numismatics dataset offers a standardized benchmark for future interdisciplinary research in archaeology, numismatics, history, cultural heritage, and artificial intelligence.