Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c10.18.3

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.