Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c10.51.2

c10.51.2

It is not difficult to find out the cause of it. Pliny, writing about A.D. 70, laments the wasteful extravagance of the richer classes and their reckless expenditure on spices, pepper, perfumes, ivory, fine muslins, cotton and precious stones, such as the beryl. Most of these exports to Rome, I need scarcely point out, are products of South India. And, in particular, I may draw your attention to the Beryl stone which was most highly prized in Rome. This beryl is found in India in one place only, namely, Padyur in the Coimbatore District. And, curiously enough, it is in the neighbourhood of its mines that the largest number of Roman coins of this period have been found. With the reign of Vespasian, things seem to have changed. For what with his exemplary life and what with enactments he succeeded in largely suppressing the wanton extravagance and profligacy of the age. And the tides probably turned against India. For it was in the period beginning with the death of Nero (A.D. 68) and ending with Caracalla (A.D. 217), that we see not only the issue of gold coinage by the Kushanas, but, above all, their adoption of the Roman standard of weight. Cunningham, V. A. Smith and Professor Rapson concur in the belief that the Kushana kings recoined the Roman *aurei*. This means that they got hold of all Roman gold coins, melted them down in a mass, and issued their own coins of precisely the same weight. This supposition, however, does not commend itself to me.