Certain things age gracefully with time. No, I am not talking about my grandmother. I am referring to my collection of old Indian coins. With every passing year, they seemingly become more precious. You will be surprised to know how many centuries these beautiful coins of India have lived through after which they have fallen into my hands. I consider myself to be lucky that way. It truly becomes your responsibility to take care of these pieces of history and pass on your hobby to the next generation. It is sometimes difficult to make kids realize the importance of history, especially when they are sucked into their video games and cartoon series. But you must not give up. Find other interesting ways in which kids can be taught about coins in India along with the interesting stories hidden in them.
Stories are something kids would always be interested in. We as parents have to be as creative as possible so that they learn certain important aspects about our history from time to time. You can then show them an interesting Indian coin from your collection. This way, they would be able to relate to what they are studying. Mugging up answers from history textbooks can be taxing not just for kids but for adults as well. Introduce them to the hobby of coin collecting and motivate them to start building their own collection of Indian coins. Once they add a new Indian coin to their collection, you can discuss in detail about the emperor or dynasty who issued them. For example, if they get to see a Gupta Era coin, then you can teach them about Samudra Gupta, Art and Architecture of that era, Literature and scholars from that time period etc.
People generally do not assess the seriousness of this problem carefully. As Indians are quickly adopting western cultures, our rich heritage and tradition face a real big danger of getting extinct one day. It is very important to revive the history of our land so that the present generation starts valuing it. By studying coins of India, children would start taking keen interest in history which will indirectly help us achieve this goal.
