Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c10.18

Language: English

c10.18.1

Whether these denominations of coins were all prevalent after 350 A.D., the date assigned to the Yājñavalkya Smṛiti, is doubtful. By the word “denomination” I do not simply mean the ‘name,’ but also the ‘weight.’ The mere name of a class of coins may survive down to a very late period, but the original denomination cannot be said to have been preserved, unless the ‘weight’ originally associated with the ‘name’ is also preserved. Let us, therefore, see how long after the middle of the fourth century A.D., the coins prevalent in the Vedic and Jātaka times persisted—how many in reality and how many in name only. Let us first take the Nishka coins. The word Nishka, some of you probably know, is met with in the Amarakosha which, I think, has to be ascribed to the fifth century A.D. But, in this lexicon, we are told that Nishka was another name for Dīnāra. Dīnāra, I have already informed you, was a coin struck by the Kushana kings in imitation of the Roman gold Denarius. Thus, the weight of a Dīnāra as of a Denarius was 124 grains, whereas that of a Nishka, according to Manu, was 560 grains. The Nishka of the Amarakosha could not, therefore, have been the same as the Nishka of the Manusamhitā. It will thus be seen that, in the fifth century A.D., we have merely the name Nishka preserved but not the original denomination. If this is the case with the fifth century, it must necessarily be true of the thirteenth and subsequent centuries.

c10.18.2

Thus we have got a South-Indian inscription of Śaka 1231,¹ where Gaṇḍamāḍa has been called a Nishka. This Gaṇḍamāḍa has in another inscription² been explained as a māḍai or coin of Gaṇḍagopāla which clearly shows that it cannot be identical with the Nishka of Manu. We thus perceive that the Nishka denomination mentioned in the Vedic and the Jātaka literature and detailed in the Manusaṃhitā had really gone out of vogue long before the fifth century A.D., though the mere name Nishka had been preserved up till the 14th century, to denote other coins. Not much different was the case with Śatāmāna which is another gold denomination of the periods just referred to. For, we do not find any trace of this coin in literature or in inscriptions after the beginning of the Christian era. No doubt, that word occurs in the Amarakosha, but there is no evidence that this lexicon is here dealing with a class of coins actually prevalent at the time of its composition. In the case of Nishka, we have seen that the Amarakosha makes it synonymous with Dīnāra which was then in actual use. But there is no such evidence to show that by Śatamāna the Amarakosha is referring to some coin of its period. The mere occurrence of the word Śatamāna in this lexicon is, therefore, of no consequence, for lexicons have to take cognizance of all words whether there are any objects corresponding to them or not. Such was not, however, the case with Suvarṇa which is the third denomination of gold coins.

c10.18.3

For Suvarṇa we find actually referred to in one Nāsik cave inscription and at least one Gupta record.¹ In the case of the Gupta epigraph, it is, no doubt, possible to contend that, by Suvarṇa is probably intended the Dīnāra, which also we find mentioned in it. Just as the Amarakosha gives Nishka as another word for Dīnāra, it may be argued that the Gupta inscriptions may have used Suvarṇa also synonymously with Dīnāra. But it is worthy of note that we have two types of Gupta gold coins, one of which conforms to the weight of the Roman Denarius standard and the other to that of Manu's Suvarṇa.² We must, therefore, suppose that Dīnāra and Suvarṇa, which both occur in Gupta records, do not denote one identical but two different classes of coins. What the state of things was posterior to the Gupta period we do not know. Suvarṇas are no doubt mentioned in epigraphs of later periods such, *e.g.*, as the Cambay copper-plate charter of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa king Govinda IV,¹ dated 930 A.D. But we do not know whether they were of the weight attributed to that denomination by Manu. For, soon after the Gupta period, Suvarṇa certainly came to be identified with Dīnāra, as is clear from both Bṛihaspati and Kātyāyana Smṛitis.² I do not, however, maintain that the Suvarṇas of the Cambay copper-plate charter must denote Dīnāras, for it is very doubtful whether these gold Dīnāras were current so far south and so late as the tenth century.

c10.18.4

It is quite possible that just as Suvarṇa denoted a Dīnāra in the post-Gupta period in North India, it may have denoted some other gold coin in Gujarāt and the Dekkan.