Coinage of India
The Coinage of India began anywhere between early 1st millennium BCE to the 6th century BCE, and consisted mainly of copper and silver coins in its initial stage. The coins of this period were Karshapanas or Pana. A variety of earliest Indian coins, however, unlike those circulated in West Asia, were stamped bars of metal, suggesting that the innovation of stamped currency was added to a pre-existing form of token currency which had already been present in the Janapadas and Mahajanapada kingdoms of the Early historic India. The kingdoms that minted their own coins included Gandhara, Kuntala, Kuru, Magadha, Panchala, Shakya, Surasena, Surashtra and Vidarbha etc.
The tradition of Indian coinage in the 2nd millennium evolved with Indo Islamic rule in India. and the British Raj in the 19th century.
Origin of currency in Indian subcontinent
Prehistoric and Bronze Age origins
s were first used in India as commodity money. The Indus Valley Civilisation may have used metals of fixed weights such as silver for trade activities which is evident from the DK area of Mohenjo Daro from the late Harappan period. D.D Kosambi proposed a connection between Mohenjodaro class IV silver pieces and class D pieces with the Punch marked coins based on their remarkable similarity and identity between D-class weights. The remarkable similarities between Punch marked coin symbols with those appearing in the Indus seals have also been highlighted. Chalcolithic unmarked gold disc discovered from Eran have been dated to 1000 BC and due to their lack of ornamental use, it has been proposed that it was utilized as an object of money A similar gold token piece from Pandu Rajar Dhibi has also been interpreted as a coin, it is hammered on the edges and bears parallel marks, although weighing 14 grams, a quarter of the piece is missing hence its full weight of 21 grams would conform to the ancient coinage weight standards of India and confirm the vedic literary references of circulation of gold tokens in that period. Similar interpretations have been made regarding the use of silver circular objects from the Gungeria hoard.Weight standard
Since the Bronze Age, ratti or the weight of the Gunja seeds have been used as a base unit for the measurement of mass in the Indus Valley civilization, the smallest weight of Indus was equal to 8 rattis and the binary system was used for the multiple of weights for instance 1:2:4:8:16:32, the 16th ratio being the standard regular weight, etc. This weight system seems to have been replicated in the earliest Indian coins. The Masha coins were quarter Karshapanas, karshapanas themselves being the quarter value of Karsha or 32 ratti which is the same as the regular weight used in the Indus Valley civilization. This standard has been declared as Purana or Dharana by Kautilya. The Karsha weight differed based on the differing values of mashas, for instance arthashastra mentions a masha equal to 5 ratti as opposed to 8 ratti mashas which is described as the prevalent standard during Kautilya's time. The Gandharan quarter svarna coins conform to a different 5 ratti mashas system mentioned in the Arthashastra as do the copper punch marked coins. A shatamana weight system has been first mentioned in Satapatha Brahmana which is equal to 100 krishnalas, each krishnala being equal to one ratti. The weight of the ancient Indian silver Karshapana and satamana coin is given below;1 Satamana = 100 Rattis / 11 grams of pure silver
1 Karshapana = 32 Rattis/ 3.3 grams of pure silver
½ Karshapana = 16 Rattis
¼ Karshapana = 8 Rattis
1/8 Karshapana = 4 Rattis
Early literary references
There is evidence of countable units of precious metal being used for exchange from the Vedic period onwards. A term Nishka appears in this sense in the Rigveda. Later texts speak of cows given as gifts being adorned with pandas of gold. A pāda, literally a quarter, would have been a quarter of some standard weight. A unit called Stamina, literally a 'hundred standard', representing 100th krishnadas is mentioned in Satapatha Brahmana. A later commentary on Katyayana Suryaputra explains that a Stamina could also be a 100 rattis. All these units referred to gold currency in some form but they were later adopted to silver currency.Panini's grammar text indicates that these terms continued to be used into the historical period. He mentions that something worth a nishka is called naishka and something worth a Śatamāna is called a Śatamānam etc. The units were also used to represent the assets of individuals, naishka‐śatika or naishka‐sahasrika.
Panini uses the term rūpa to mean a piece of precious metal used as a coin, and a rūpya to mean a stamped piece of metal, a coin in the modern sense. The term rūpya continues into the modern usage as the rupee.
Ratti based measurement is the oldest measurement system in the Indian subcontinent. The smallest weight in the Indus Valley civilization was equal to 8 rattis and were the bases for the weight standards for the first Indian coins in the seventh century BC. Ratti and is still used in India as Jewellers weight.
Theory of West Asian influences
Scholars remain divided over the origins of Indian punch-marked coinage. What is known, however, is that the earliest extant evidence, of silver currency, are bent silver bars, in the North West of the sub-continent, and consistent with those found in Iran, from the 7th century BCE Nush-i-jan hoard, and the 4th Century BCE, Chaman Huzuri hoard. Extant evidence of the earliest Metal currency in the South and East of India is later than the North West, and coeval with the Northern Black Polished Ware culture, minted before the Maurya Empire, with radio carbon dating indicating post 5th century BCE dates. According to some scholars minted coins spread to the Indo-Gangetic Plain from West Asia.According to Joe Cribb, a "marriage between Greek coinage and Iranian bar currency" was at the origin of Indian punch-marked coins, which used minting technology derived from Greek coinage. Daniel Schlumberger also considers that punch-marked bars, similar to the many punch-marked bars found in northwestern India, initially originated in the Achaemenid Empire, rather than in the Indian heartland:
The Western origins hypothesis had previously been proposed before any serious attempts were made in the study of PMC coins such as:
- John Allan, asserted "the idea of a coinage came to India in the late fifth or early fourth century B. C. from Achaemenid territory, conjecturing that the bent bar or wheel-marked coins "were struck on a Persian standard and represented double sigloi or staters....". Arguing no evidence coinage, in India, exists before the Nanda period, with the earliest finds from: Golakpur, Paila, and Set Mahet indicating the region in which local punch-marked coins originated.
- James Kennedy, the PMC were copied form Babylonian originals as a result of trade between India and Babylon in the 6th century BC.
- James Princep, who proposed the Greo-Bactrian origin of the PMC coins, this was also supported by C.W King. Princep later admitted that due to the archaic nature of PMC, they were older than the Greo-Bactrian coinage.
Cunningham asserts that ancient India had an abundance of gold but little silver. The gold to silver ratio in India was 10 to 1 or 8 to 1. In contrast, in the neighbouring Persia, it was 13 to 1. This value differential would have incentivised the exchange of gold for silver, resulting in an increasing supply of silver in India.
Achaemenid coinage in northwestern India
Coin finds in the Chaman Hazouri hoard in Kabul or the Shaikhan Dehri hoard in Pushkalavati have revealed numerous Achaemenid coins as well as many Greek coins from the 5th and 4th centuries BCE were circulating in the area, at least as far as the Indus during the reign of the Achaemenids, who were in control of the areas as far as Gandhara. In 2007 a small coin hoard was discovered at the site of ancient Pushkalavati in Pakistan. The hoard contained a tetradrachm minted in Athens /490-485/0 BCE, together with a number of local types as well as silver cast ingots. The Athens coin is the earliest known example of its type to be found so far to the east.Early historic period (early 1st millennium BCE – 300 BCE)
Indian Punched mark Karshapana coins
Sometime around 600BC in the lower Ganges valley in eastern India a coin called a punchmarked Karshapana was created. According to Hardaker, T.R. the origin of Indian coins can be placed at 575 BCE and according to P.L. Gupta in the seventh century BCE, proposals for its origins range from 1000 BCE to 500 BCE. According to Page. E, Kasi, Kosala and Magadha coins can be the oldest ones from the Indian Subcontinent dating back to 7th century BC and kosambi findings indicate coin circulation towards the end of 7th century BC. It is also noted that some of the Janapadas like shakiya during Buddha's time were minting coins both made of silver and copper with their own marks on them.The study of the relative chronology of these coins has successfully established that the first punch-marked coins initially only had one or two punches, with the number of punches increasing over time.The first PMC coins in India may have been minted around the 6th century BCE by the Mahajanapadas of the Indo-Gangetic Plain, The coins of this period were punch-marked coins called Puranas, old Karshapanas or Pana. Several of these coins had a single symbol, for example, Saurashtra had a humped bull, and Dakshin Panchala had a Swastika; Others, like Magadha had several symbols. These coins were made of silver of a standard weight but with an irregular shape. This was gained by cutting up silver bars and then making the correct weight by cutting the edges of the coin.
They are mentioned in the Manu, Panini, and Buddhist Jataka stories and lasted three centuries longer in the south than the north.