Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c10.25

c10.25

We have now to consider the case of Kārshāpaṇa, and find out how long this kind of money lasted in ancient India. Let me here recapitulate a little of what I told you in Lecture III. Kārshāpaṇa, I hope you remember, was a class of coins, usually of silver and copper and weighing one Karsha. And as Kārshāpaṇas have been mentioned and described both in the Manu and Yājñavalkya Smṛitis, we may take it that this type of coinage continued till at least the fourth century A.D. Quite in keeping with this inference is the fact that references to it are traceable in the West India cave inscriptions of the Sātavāhana period. Again, at Besnagar or ancient Vidiśā, I found punch-marked coins on all early sites containing strata reaching down to the fourth century A. D. But then, what about Kārshāpaṇa thereafter? Here the Bṛihaspati and Kātyāyana Smṛitis come to our aid.¹ Both these Smṛitis give Aṇḍikā as another name for Kārshāpaṇa, and a doubt is apt to arise in our mind as to whether this Kārshāpaṇa, which has such strange another name as Aṇḍikā, can really be the Kārshāpaṇa of Manu and Yājñavalkya. But be it noted that Bṛihaspati describes a Kārshāpaṇa as a stamped piece of copper which is one Karsha in weight. I am afraid it is not possible here to doubt that, by Kārshāpaṇa, Bṛihaspati understands precisely what Manu does. Again, look to the sub-divisions of the Kārshāpaṇa as detailed by Kātyāyana. A Kārshāpaṇa, says he, is equal to 20 Māshas, and a Māsha, which is also called Paṇa, is equal to 4 Kākaṇīs. In the first place, the terms Māsha and Kākaṇī employed by Kātyāyana to denote the sub-multiples of Kārshāpaṇa are precisely the terms used in the Jātakas and for the same purpose. Secondly, the table also is practically the same. That 4 Kākaṇīs make 1