The Coinage of the Gupta Empire and its Imitations c11.s10.3

c11.s10.3

The phenomenon of the extreme rarity of the copper coinage clearly shows that ordinary daily small transactions were carried on with the help of barter or cowries. The Chinese piligrim Fa Hian could see only cowries in the bazars of Pātaliputra on the few occasions he passed through or visited them. In the Gupta period things were about seven times cheaper than what they were in 1930, when there was a world-wide slump in prices. The normal Gupta gold coin, weighing about 2/3 of a tola, was thus something like a two hundred rupee note as far as the purchasing power was concerned. It could therefore have hardly ever figured in the ordinary day-to-day financial transactions.