Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c10.43

c10.43

You will thus see in what successive stages the coinage of Ancient India most probably evolved itself and what actual type was prevalent in the fifth or sixth century B.C. This last, as I have told you, is the one perceptible in the indigenous money of the Gaṇas, Janapadas, royal dynasties, and such provinces as Mathurā and Pañchāla. This date does not seem to be too early. For you have only to take into consideration some of the earliest coins of this type. Take, for instance, the coin, which bears the legend Vaṭasvaka and which, according to Cunningham, is anterior to the Greek conquest of Alexander, but which, Bühler thinks it safe to say, is anterior to the Greek conquest of Demetrius.¹ What do we find on the obverse of this coin, which alone is stamped? We find not only the legend in Brāhmī character, but a hill symbol with a standing figure to right, beneath which is a sign called Nandipada. There is also a pile of balls or dots beneath the hill. It is scarcely necessary for me to remark that all these symbols are found on Kārshāpaṇa coins. But the point to note here is that all these devices form one type and have been struck with a single die. And if this Vaṭasvaka coin belongs to the third century B.C., at the latest, there is nothing irrational in pushing the origin of such a type back to the fifth or sixth century.