Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c10.49

c10.49

So far in regard to the denominations of coins indigenous to India, that is say, those handed down from the Vedic and the pre-Buddhistic period. Let me now say a few words on the new designations of monetary value that sprang up after the Greek domination of North-west India. It is not my object here to give a history of the coinages of these foreign dynasties, or those of even Indian dynasties influenced by theirs. So much has already been written upon the coins of the Indo-Bactrian Greek, Indo-Scythian, and Indo-Parthian dynasties, and their Indian successors, the Guptas and others, that there is hardly anything new for me to tell. I will therefore, confine myself here, briefly of course, to the new denominations that arose, that is to say, the denominations unknown to Manu and Yājñavalkya. It is curious that, in spite of the fact that the Indo-Bactrian Greeks had their own coinage struck according to the Attic Standard, names technical to Hellenic metrology were unknown to India up till the second century A.D., when, as I have told you already, their power must have become extinct. It is when the Kushanas rise to power that we find not one but two new denominations springing up. The first is Kuśana,¹ which occurs in a Nāsik cave inscription, recording a grant of Uṣavadāta, son-in-law of the Kshatrapa Nahapāna, who ruled over South Rājputānā, Gujarāt and North Dekkan, about the close of the first and the beginning of the second century A.D. Uṣavadāta, we are told, deposited a sum of 1000 Kārshāpaṇas, at the monthly rate 3/4 per cent., and yielding, therefore, an annual interest of 90 Kārshāpaṇas. This amount of 90 Kārshāpaṇas, the inscription says, was the Kuśaṇa-mūla, i.e. the value of Kuśaṇas. Looking, however, to the similar phraseology used in other cave inscriptions of this period, I have shown elsewhere that Kuśaṇa of this, must correspond to Paḍika (= Pratika) of other, cave epigraphs, and must denote a specific coin. And I have further ventured to express the view that Kuśaṇa in particular denotes the silver coinage of Nahapāna, and was so called, because he issued it for his Kuśaṇa or Kushana overlord who must have been Kadphises I. I have just told you that Uṣavadāta deposited a sum of 1000 Kārshāpaṇas in a guild which annually yielded 90 Kārshāpaṇas by way of interest. This inscription was engraved in Uṣavadāta’s cave which accommodated 20 monks and where each of them was to be given a Kuśaṇa for every one of the four months of the rainy season. Evidently, therefore, 80 Kuśaṇas were required every year, and had to be obtained with the 90 Kārshāpaṇas, the annual interest just referred to. We thus see that 80 Kuśaṇas were equivalent to 90 Kārshāpaṇas, or, in other words, the rate of exchange between these two classes of coins was 8 : 9.