Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c10.11

c10.11

Let me, at this stage, remind you of what I told you in my last lecture about the *Rūpa* and *Rūpya* classes of coinage, which must have come into existence soon after, if not about the time when, metal came to be employed as money material. The words *rūpa* and *rūpya* both signify coins. As *rūpa* means ‘a symbol, a figure,’ *rūpya* must denote an object bearing this symbol or figure. One can, therefore, easily understand how Rūpya can stand for coins, because coins are objects on which symbols or figures are impressed or imprinted. But why should Rūpa denote coins at all? Were there any coins which were actual figures so that they could with propriety be called Rūpa? I hope you remember the instance which I gave from Greek archæology. There were two Greek colonies, where the tunny fish was the measure of value. And when metallic currency replaced this staple commodity as medium of exchange, while one colony had for its coins metallic pieces imprinted with the figure of this fish, the other had these not imprinted but actually shaped like the tunny fish. The former certainly represented the Rūpya and the latter the Rūpa class of coinage. This example is from Greek Archæology of the proto-historic epoch, but I also gave another example from India though of the historic period. Copper plate charters of the Sena Dynasty of Bengal constantly speak of Kapardaka-Purāṇa. But what does this phrase mean? It cannot possibly mean a Purāṇa which was equal to one Kapardaka or cowrie. For a Purāṇa is a silver coin weighing about 58 grains, and no silver coin, weighing so much as 58 grains, can possibly be equivalent to one shell cowrie in value. The only possible sense here is that Kapardaka-Purāṇa is a silver coin weighing 58 grains and shaped like a cowrie. There is also another instance similar to this, known not from Indian epigraphy, but from Sanskrit literature. The word *hiraṇya* occurs in one of the aphorisms of Vātsyāyana’s *Kāmasūtra*.¹ The commentator Śaṃkarārya explains this *hiraṇya* by *kapardaka*. Nay, the Sanskrit lexicon Medinī gives two senses of *hiraṇya*, one of which is *śātakumbha* or gold, and the other, *varāṭa* or cowrie. How can a word, which primarily signified ‘gold,’ come to signify also a ‘cowrie’? This cannot be taken to be an instance of the degradation of a word, for when a word is once degraded, it cannot express its original good sense side by side with its new derogatory meaning. The word *hiraṇya*, on the other hand, denotes both the senses, ‘gold’ and ‘cowrie’ in the period when Śaṃkarārya wrote or the lexicon Medinī was composed. We have, therefore, perforce to admit that when *kapardaka* is given as another word for *hiraṇya*, the former must be taken to signify a ‘gold cowrie,’ *i.e.* a gold coin shaped like a shell cowrie. *Hiraṇya* thus, according to the Medinī, signifies *śātakumbha*, *i.e.* gold (bullion) and *kapardaka*, *i.e.* (gold) cowries. In my last lecture, I had occasion to tell you in this connection that both the Egyptians and the Chinese had metallic representations of cowries as coins, and that there were actually gold cowries in the case of the former. Here then we have got two clear examples from India of metallic money being fashioned like a mineral product, *viz.* shell cowrie, which was the medium of exchange, and this could have taken place originally only when metallic currency first sprung into existence and was replacing as far as possible all the previous measures of value. It is true that the instances I have adduced are from the mediæval history of ancient India, but as I have already said, forms of money originating in the early stages of civilisation are preserved down to the historical periods. There can, therefore, be nothing unreasonable in supposing that gold and silver cowries came originally to be employed only when metallic currency was introduced but survived down to much later times in some parts of India at least.