Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c10.41

c10.41

So much about the denominations of coins, their weights, and their persistence to the late mediæval period. But what did the coins of the Jātaka, if not of the Vedic period, look like? In other words, how were their obverse and reverse? This is the question that you are sure to ask me now, and I shall therefore attempt to give a reply which appears most likely to me. Of course, we shall first have to turn our attention to the Kārshāpaṇas. I have already told you what sort of devices are to be found on these coins. I have also told you that in the earlier class, these devices occur in a haphazard unconnected manner, but that, in their later development, they appear in definite and constant groups, though each symbol is stamped with a separate punch. A further development on this class is marked by coins where these constant and regular groups are impressed on them with a single die and not with different punches. I have only to refer you to the coins of the Gaṇas, such as Mālava and Yaudheya, of the Janapadas, such as Śibi and Rājanya, of such royal dynasties as the Śātavāhanas, and of such countries as those of Mathurā and Pañchāla. All the coins, native to these provinces and peoples and ranging in date roughly from the third century B.C. to 3rd century A.D., are characterized with a collection of symbols forming one distinct type and struck from a single die. As all the symbols occurring on these coins are such as are commonly found on the Kārshāpaṇas, no reasonable doubt can be entertained as to their constituting indigenous money. Of course, not a few of them are of round shape, but this need not be looked upon as betokening foreign—Greek—influence. For even some Kārshāpaṇas have been found to be of circular form, and, as you will remember, Śatamānas have been called vṛitta or round in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa. It is not, therefore, permissible to have any reasonable doubt in regard to the indigenous character of these coins. Obviously this class of money has been evolved from the Kārshāpaṇa. When exactly this development took place is not known. It is true that the Kārshāpaṇas are traceable to the prehistoric period. But because they have come down from this hoary antiquity, it does not necessarily prove that its latest development represented by the coins just adverted to must also have taken place at that early period. Those coins, I have just informed you, belong to a period ranging from between 300 B.C. and 300 A.D. And we shall not be far from right if we assign this latest evolution of the indigenous money to the 5th or 6th century B.C. The circulation of these coins side by side with the Kārshāpaṇas need not distract us. For, at the beginning of this lecture, I have iterated and re-iterated that forms of currency originating at different stages of civilisation were prevalent side by side in a comparatively modern epoch. We thus get a pretty fair idea of the appearance that must have been presented by indigenous coins in the Jātaka period.