Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c10.27

c10.27

Māsha can be known also from the Jātakas. But Kātyāyana makes a Kārshāpaṇa equivalent to 20 Māshas, whereas Manu makes it equivalent to 16 Māshas. You may thus imagine a discrepancy here. But in Lecture III I told you that one Jātaka led us practically to infer that a Kārshāpaṇa equalled not 16 but 20 Māshas,¹ and that, what was still more important, a Pāda, according to the commentary on the Vinaya-Piṭaka, was equal to 5 Māshas, that is to say, a Kārshāpaṇa equalled 20 Māshas, at Rājagriha in the time of Bimbisāra. The tradition of the Kārshāpaṇa and its token money prevalent in the early Buddhist period was thus preserved so late as the 6th or 7th century A.D. as we find from Kātyāyana. No reasonable doubt can therefore be entertained as to Kārshāpaṇa having continued to circulate up to the 7th century. But then two points here deserve to be noticed. The first is that the Kārshāpaṇa described by Bṛihaspati and Kātyāyana denotes a copper coin only. This is exactly in consonance with what Manu says. In ancient times, however, Kārshāpaṇa denoted not only copper but also silver money. Is there any evidence, you may now ask, to show whether silver Kārshāpaṇa also was known in the mediæval period? I may, therefore, draw your attention to the statement of Nārada that silver Kārshāpaṇa was current in South India.¹ And we no doubt find that the references to Kārshāpaṇa in the West India cave inscriptions are all to silver Kārshāpaṇa. Secondly, if the Kārshāpaṇa was certainly prevalent till the 7th century A.D., it could not have been represented at all periods by the punch-marked coins alone. There must have been some other types of coins which also were looked upon as Kārshāpaṇas. For no punch-marked coins later than the 4th century A.D., have been found so that between the 4th and the 7th century at any rate there must have been some type or types other than the punch-marked which were known as Kārshāpaṇa. Our history of the Kārshāpaṇa coinage is not yet over, for we have yet to consider the question whether Kārshāpaṇa was in any form known after the seventh century. An inscription originally found at Bijāpur² in the Goḍwāṛ Division of the Jodhpur State and dated 997 A.D., while recording the benefactions to a Jaina temple, speaks of a grant of one Karsha for every ghaḍā at every local oil-mill. As in the specification of similar grants in this connection the words Rūpaka and Vimśopaka occur which denote coined money, it is difficult to avoid the inference that here Karsha stands for a copper Kārshāpaṇa. Similarly, the Gayā stone inscription of the Pāla king, Govindapāla,¹ dated V.E. 1232 (-1175 A.D.), makes mention of Kārshāpaṇī. It is not quite clear from this inscription whether this was a silver or copper Kārshāpaṇa, though there is greater likelihood in favour of the latter supposition. Of course, as, in the Bijāpur inscription, Kārshāpaṇa is denoted by the term karsha which is primarily the name of a weight, it must be taken as identical with the Kārshāpaṇa of Manu. But from the Gayā inscription itself, it is not possible to definitely assert that Kārshāpaṇī denoted the original Kārshāpaṇa denomination. It deserves, however, to be noted that such a word as Kāhan which is evidently the modern form of the Sanskrit Kārshāpaṇa has been preserved to this day in Bengal,² and that this Kāhan is valued at 16 Paṇas which, as I have already told you, is the same thing as Māshas. Every probability is, therefore, in favour of regarding the Kārshāpaṇī of the Gayā inscription as standing for the Kārshāpaṇa of the old metric system.