Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c10.16

c10.16

I have again and again told you that names of coins are also names of metal weights, and the importance of these Smṛitis consists in the fact that the weight of each one of these denominations can be known in the terms of *kṛṣṇalaka* or *guñjā* berries, and can thus be compared one with the other. Information on this point is to a certain extent supplied by Kauṭilya’s *Arthaśāstra*, but it is almost nothing as compared to the detailed information given us by Manu. Of course, it is not to be expected that the condition of coinage that was prevalent in the Jātaka period or earlier was exactly the same as in the time when the Manusaṃhitā or the Yājñavalkya Smṛti was composed. Thus Manu or Yājñavalkya would make us believe that Kārṣāpaṇa was a copper coin only, whereas, as we have seen, it denoted silver and gold coinage also in the time of the Jātakas. Another point worth noting is that, according to Manu or Yājñavalkya, Śatamāna was a silver coin only, whereas, in the Brāhmaṇa period, it was also a gold coin. The typical silver coin, mentioned by Manu or Yājñavalkya, is Dharaṇa (also called Purāṇa by the former). But this Dharaṇa was equal to thirty Ratis or 90 White Mustard Seeds, whereas the Dharaṇa, mentioned by Kauṭilya, was equal to 88 of these Mustard Seeds. But the curious point here is the name Purāṇa which, as first noted by E. Thomas and Cunningham,¹ was looked upon as *purāṇa* or ‘ancient,’ and must have come down to Manu’s time from a hoary antiquity.