Bling Bling...The Divine Exchequer

he guesstimates of the treasure trove had shot up from Rs 50,000 crore to Rs 10 lakh crore by last weekend. But the truth is nobody knows how much the gold and jewels are worth—antique value of artefacts dating back to even the 12th century cannot be estimated easily. “We can only comment if we had inspected the objects at first hand,” says Menaka Kumari Shah, head of Christie’s India. Antique dealers say at this point all the estimates are just wild guesses. “To give figures for what the precious stones are worth is absurd,” says Deepak Natesan of Natesan’s Antiquarts in Mumbai. “Antique value varies from piece to piece. For example, if it is a gold coin, you have to see if it was widely circulated or whether it had a limited run—the value would be greater for the latter,” he says.

The Venetian gold coins were probably circulated during the 17th and early 18th century. “They are very thin coins, less than four grams and were very popular in the coastal regions. They were used for pepper trading by the Portuguese, Dutch and the English. There will be markings on them and it will be easy to fix the period once we see the coins,” says archaeologist S. Hemachandran. The price of other bigger items like the gold statues of Mahavishnu, gold staffs, the 18-feet-long gold chain studded with precious stones will be even more difficult to estimate. There are also reports of 10 golden lamps belonging to the early 12th century donated by the Pandyan King Parntaka to the temple. Experts say even international auction houses will find it difficult to put a value to such ancient artefacts.