Title: Ashvamedha
Content:  One type of the gold coins of the Gupta Empire kings Samudragupta (reigned c. 350-370 CE) and Kumaragupta (reigned c. 415-455 CE) commemorates their Ashvamedha sacrifices. The obverse shows the horse anointed and decorated for sacrifice, standing in front of a Yūpa sacrificial post, and is inscribed "The king of kings who has performed the Vajimedha sacrifice wins heaven after protecting the earth". The reverse shows a standing figure of the queen, holding a fan and a towel, and is inscribed "Powerful enough to perform the Ashvamedha sacrifice".
Title: Ashvamedha
Content:  The Ashvamedha (Sanskrit: अश्वमेध aśvamedhá) was a horse sacrifice ritual followed by the Śrauta tradition of Vedic religion. It was used by ancient Indian kings to prove their imperial sovereignty: a horse accompanied by the king's warriors would be released to wander for a year. In the territory traversed by the horse, any rival could dispute the king's authority by challenging the warriors accompanying it. After one year, if no enemy had managed to kill or capture the horse, the animal would be guided back to the king's capital. It would be then sacrificed, and the king would be declared as an undisputed 
Title: Ashvamedha
Content:   The Ashvamedha could only be conducted by a powerful victorious king (rājā). Its object was the acquisition of power and glory, the sovereignty over neighbouring provinces, seeking progeny and general prosperity of the kingdom. It was enormously expensive, requiring the participation of hundreds of individuals, many with specialized skills, and hundreds of animals, and involving many precisely prescribed rituals at every stage. The horse to be sacrificed must be a white stallion with black spots. The preparations included the construction of a special "sacrificial house" and a fire altar. Before the horse began its travels, at a moment chosen by astrologers, there was a ceremony and 
Title: Samudragupta
Content:  Samudragupta performed the Ashvamedha ritual, which was used by the ancient Indian kings to prove their imperial sovereignty, and issued gold coins (see Coinage section) to mark this performance. The copper-plate inscriptions of Samudragupta's granddaughter Prabhavati-Gupta, who was a Vakataka queen, describe him as the performer of multiple horse sacrifices. According to one theory, Samudragupta indeed performed more than one horse sacrifices, as attested by the presence of two different legends on his Ashvamedha coins. Another theory dismisses the claim on Prabhavati-Gupta's inscriptions as an exaggeration or a scribal error since this claim does not appear on the inscriptions of Samudragupta or his successors. The Mathura stone inscription of Chandragupta II describes Samudragupta as "the restorer of the Ashvamedha 
Title: Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa
Content:  Rick F. Talbott states that the 'total ceremony of the Ashvamedha [meaning 'Horse-Sacrifice'] lasted over a year with the actual rites surrounding the sacrifice of the chosen horse taking only three days. The Ashvamedha was one of three royal sacrifices in Ancient India. Performance of this great sacrifice required a victorious king, his three wives, hundreds of attendants, a swift steed with special markings, the special sacrificial grounds near a large quantity of water [and being] supplied with a myriad of ritual utensils and materials. The Hose Sacrifice also required [four] types of priests... Only the victorious king could perform the Ashvamedha [itself]... like all of the new or full moon ceremonies this rite had a special significance for the events that followed'.
Title: Ashvamedha
Content:  The best-known text describing the sacrifice is the Ashvamedhika Parva (अश्वमेध पर्व), or the "Book of Horse Sacrifice," the fourteenth of eighteen books of the Indian epic poem Mahabharata. Krishna and Vyasa advise King Yudhishthira to perform the sacrifice, which is described at great length. The book traditionally comprises 2 sections and 96 chapters. The critical edition has one sub-book and 92 chapters. The ritual is recorded as being held by many ancient rulers, but apparently only by two in the last thousand years. The most recent ritual was in 1741, the second one held by Maharajah Jai Singh II of Jaipur.
Title: Ashvamedha
Content:  Atirātra was a Soma sacrifice in which there was a nocturnal session where soma was drunk. Afterwards an Avabhṛtha takes place. However, in the Ashvamedha sinners and criminals also take part in the purificatory bathing. Afterwards twenty-one sterile cows are sacrificed, and the dakshina was distributed to the priests. The main dakshina forms either the four wives of the king or their four hundred attendants. The Laws of Manu refer to the Ashvamedha (V.53): "The man who offers a horse-sacrifice every day for a hundred years, and the man who does not eat meat, the two of them reap the same fruit of good deeds."
Title: Animal sacrifice in Hinduism
Content:  The Ashvamedha, a ritual in which a horse was allowed to roam freely for a year, then finally sacrificed, is mentioned in the Vedic texts such as the Yajurveda. In the epic Mahabharata, Yudhishtra performs the Ashwamedha after winning the Kurukshetra war to become the Chakravartin emperor. The Mahabharata also contains a description of an Ashvamedha performed by the Chedi king Uparichara Vasu, however. The rulers of the Gupta empire, the Chalukya dynasty, and the Chola dynasty all performed the Ashvamedha. Agnisomiya was the simplest of all Soma sacrifices in which animal sacrifice played an important part; it required that a goat be sacrificed to Agni and Soma preceding the day of offering of nectar to the gods. In the Savaniya sacrifice, victims were offered throughout the day of offering to Agni. These rituals 
Title: Horse sacrifice
Content:  lay down with the suffocated horse beneath a linen blanket and mimicked sexual intercourse with it, while the other queens perambulated the scene, slapping their thighs and fanning themselves ; 8) the stallion was dissected along the "knife-paths" — with three knives made from gold, copper, and iron — and its portions awarded to various deities, symbolically invoking sky, atmosphere and earth, while other priests started reciting the verses of Vedas, seeking healing and rejuvenation for the horse.  Ashvamedha was a political ritual that was focused on the king's right to rule. The horse had to be a stallion and it would be permitted to wander 
Title: Ashvamedha
Content:  Sanskrit epics and Puranas mention numerous legendary performances of the horse sacrifice. For example, according to the Mahabharata, Emperor Bharata performed a hundred Ashvamedha ceremonies on the banks of Yamuna, three hundred on the banks of Saraswati and four hundred on the banks of the Ganga. He again performed a thousand Ashvamedha on different locations and a hundred Rajasuya. Following the vast empires ruled by the Gupta and Chalukya dynasties, the practice of the sacrifice diminished remarkably. The historical performers of Ashvamedha include: The Udayendiram inscription of the 8th-century Pallava king Nandivarman II (alias Pallavamalla) states that his general Udayachandra defeated the Nishada ruler Prithvivyaghra, who, "desiring to become very powerful, was running after the horse of the Ashvamedha". The inscription does not clarify which king initiated this Ashvamedha campaign. Historian N. Venkataramanayya theorized that Prithvivyaghra was a feudatory ruler, who unsuccessfully tried to challenge Nandivarman's Ashvamedha campaign. However, historian Dineshchandra Sircar notes that no other inscriptions of Nandivarman or his descendants mention his performance of Ashvamedha; therefore, it is more likely that the Ashvamedha campaign was initiated by Prithvivyaghra (or his overlord), and Nandivarman's general foiled it.

Question: who issued ashwamedha coins after performing ashvamedha sacrifice?
Answer: Samudragupta.