Eternal India Encyclopedia

COINS

Eternal India encyclopedia

COINS

THE MAURYAN AGE Kautilya, the Minister of Chandragupta Maurya, in his Arthasastra, the book on statecraft written in the fourth century B.C , has given a list of the objects that were used in the manufac- ture of coins: crucibles for melting the metal, anvil and hammer for beating the metal into sheets, clippers for cutting the metal into pieces, dies with punches or symbols for stamping the metal. Basically the same process is used today in mints all over the world. Those early silver punch-marked coins have been found in large numbers all over the country. They were issued by the states that existed in the country after the Mahabharata war and some of which became part of the Magadh empire in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.

JETHAVAN MEDALLION : Lord Buddha was once passing through the Jethavan forest. His followers wanted to build a monastery and approached the owner of the land to sell it to them But he refused to do so saying," Even if you cover the entire land with gold coins I will not sell it. "However the devotees treated it as an offer and began covering the ground with gold coins. This incident is depicted on a medallion in the Indian Museum at Calcatta.

INTRODUCTION

The people settled in localities and communities and exchange of products became necessary; this led to the barter system. But soon the disadvantages of the barter system were realised and the emergence for a new unit of value began the evolution of coinage. In ancient India, the Harappan people who extended into the regions of modern Gujarat, Punjab and Delhi seem to be basically agriculturists. They perhaps would have used agricultural products as a medium of exchange in about 3000 B.C. The huge granaries found in the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro could have been maintained by the state like the modern banks. Cows were used as a medium of transaction by the pastoral Vedic people. A passage in the Rig Veda indicates clearly that the price of an image of Indra was ten cows. Another passage indicates that a sage had refused to sell an image of Indra for hundred, a thousand or even ten thousand cows. Yet another passage indi- cates that the Bharat army went out for a war to acquire cows. The Soma plant was exchanged for cows. In the Aitareya Brahmana, wealth is estimated in cows. Many instances in the later Vedic lit- erature show that dakshina (fee) to the ritvika (priest) was paid in cows. period cows were a medium of exchange. The mention of go- puchcha (cow-tail) is of importance as it was the term used for cows in transaction. The term go-dan was used when a cow was presented to the priest. But this system too did not last long because the purchase of small things and long-term savings was not possible. The nishka was then introduced being the most prized ornaments of the Vedic Society. With this began the introduction of a balance and seeds to weigh as units. The seeds were called Krishnala and in later literature as raktika or gunja and today as rati. Yava (barley), tandula (Rice), masha (Pulse), Karsha and Kalanju (big seeds) were also used as units for weighing. But this system was tedious in the Satapatha Brahmana and the Srauta Sutras like the Apastamba, Manava, Katyayana, the word hiranya (money) is used with a term mana (unit) having numerals like 12,24,30,40,70, 100. Satamana (hundred units) is found explicity mentioned as a metallic piece round in shape. The was the beginning of coinage Although gold was popular in the Vedic period and was used for ornaments it was not used for making coins. No coin of India in gold was known prior to the advent of the Indo-Bactrians in the second and first centuries B.C. The early coins are all in silver probably due to the fact that gold was then cheaper in India than elsewhere in the ancient world and was being exported in exchange for silver. The Ashtadhyayi of Panini says that even in the post-Vedic

The silver coins of Asmaka (Fig-1) (the area south of the Godavari in Maharashtra) are thick, circular or oval. The symbol on the obverse of the coins looks like two s mall pulleys attached to a bigger pulley with two separate belts. The reverse is blank. They are known in distinct weights A-99 to 108 grains, 45 to 58 grains and 21 to 23 grains. the form of a long concave shaped bar about 1" to 1.75" in length and about 0.4" in width. The sym- bol at each end is composed of six arms around a circle with a dot. The reverse is blank. The coins in fresh condition would be about 183 grains but generally found to be between 150 to 180 grains. On some coins to the concave side punches have been noticed. The coins of Andhra (Fig-3) (the delta re- gion of the Krishna and Godavari) are of ir- regular shape. An elephant, tree, and a cen- tral solid circle and four circles around it with dots in between are the symbols. The reverse is blank. The coins weigh about 20 grains. The coins of the Magadh era (Fig-4) can be divided into two periods: 1) when it was only a kingdom and 2) when it had become an empire. Silver coins of the first period have four symbols, two big, two small showing sieve patterns. The coins of higher denomi- nation are thin, oval flat pieces, about one and a half inches in length and about one inch in Gandhara (Fig-2)(North-Western region bordering Afghanistan) issued silver coins in

breadth bearing two neat symbols, lotus patterns one smaller than the other. They weigh about 125 grains. The coins of lower denomi- nation weigh 3 grains and have a small lotus symbol on them. These are irregular and have blurred images. In case of higher denominations even four symbols were present.

All the coins of the latter period (Fig-5) uniformly have five symbols: sun, a six armed symbol, a wheel within a square (or three fishes around a circle), a rectangle