Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c6.8

Language: English

c6.8.1

Let us now turn to the Administrative History of India and see whether the study of coins has ever proved to be of any use there. I hope you have not forgotten the two lectures on Administrative History which I delivered here two years ago. I had then occasion to bring into requisition the various items of information supplied on this point by Indian numismatics. Especially in the second of these lectures, which was concerned with the Saṃgha form of government I drew your prominent attention to three types of Collegiate Sovereignty denoted by the terms Gaṇa, Naigama and Janapada. Gaṇa, I then told you, was an oligarchy and was thus a distinct political form of government. This conclusion was in the main based upon Chapter 107 of the Śāntiparvan of the Mahābhārata, but received corroboration from what we knew from numismatics. At least three types of coins have been brought to light which were issued by three different Gaṇas, viz., the Mālavas, Yaudheyas and Vṛṣṇis.¹ That all of them were Gaṇas was already known to us from inscriptions and Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra. And it may, therefore, perhaps be argued that these coins teach us nothing new. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that they possess great corroborative value, which cannot be ignored in a subject connected with Administrative History, which is still in its infancy.

c6.8.2

Although in respect of Gaṇa numismatics does not thus furnish us with new information, its value in respect of the other forms of Saṃgha government cannot be denied. In that second lecture of mine on Administrative History, I have clearly shown that side by side with oligarchy, democracy of a two-fold kind was flourishing in ancient India, one styled Naigama which was confined to a town, and the other Janapada which extended over a province. Of course, I am not here referring to the power which the people of towns and provinces, called Paura and Jānapada respectively, sometimes wielded in the administration of a country, and which is often alluded to in the epics and sometimes in works on law, but which was never of a political character. I am here referring to those cities and countries which enjoyed political autonomy and whose existence has been attested by coins alone. I hope you remember I mentioned one type of coins found in the Punjab on the obverse of which you find the word Negamā, i.e., Naigamāḥ, and on the reverse such names as Dojaka, Tālimata, Atakatakā and so forth, and told you that they were really the civic coins struck by the peoples of these cities.¹ This, no doubt, reminds us of similar coinages of Phocæa, Cyzicus and other Greek cities,² and further points to the fact that the Naigama or civic autonomy was as conspicuous among the Hindus of the old Punjab as among the Greeks on the Western coast of Asia Minor.

c6.8.3

That a country autonomy, or Janapada as it was called, was not unknown to India is similarly clear from a study of coins only. Thus we have two types of coins, one of which was issued by the Rājanya Janapada and the other by the Śibi Janapada of the Mādhyamikā country.¹ A few other interesting facts connected with Administrative History are also revealed by numismatics, but it will take me long to mention them. Two administrative puzzles furnished by it I will, however, mention here by way of curiosity. Those of you who have critically examined the coins of the Indo-Scythian dynasty must have already been faced with one of these puzzles. Four kings of this family are Spalirises, Azes I, Azilises and Azes II. Now, the peculiarity of the coins of these princes is that over and above those each issues in his name alone, he strikes coins conjointly with his predecessor and his successor, but with this difference that in the first case his name appears on the Kharoshṭhī reverse and that of his predecessor on the Greek obverse, and in the second case his name on the Greek obverse and that of his successor on the Kharoshṭhī reverse. What is, however, puzzling is that the titles of the prince on the Greek obverse are of exactly the same political rank as those of the prince on the Kharoshṭhī reverse. Thus to take one instance, *viz.*, that of Azes I and Azilises, the former is styled *Basileōs Basileōn Megalou Azou* and the latter *Maharajasa rajarajasa mahatasa Ayilisasa*.

c6.8.4

Here the titles *Maharaja rajaraja mahata*, which have been coupled with the name of Ayilisa, *i. e.*, Azilises, are the exact translation in Prākṛit of the Greek titles *Basileōs Basileōn Megalou* associated with the name of Azes. The titles are thus exactly identical, showing apparently that the two rulers wielded the same degree of political power. But how is this possible? because Azilises is the heir-apparent and Azes the real king. According to Hindu polity a Yuvarāja cannot possibly be assigned to the same political rank as his father the Mahārāja. Such was also not the case with the many foreign tribes who established a kingdom in India. Take, *e. g.*, the Kshatrapa dynasty which held sway over Kāṭhiāwāṛ and Mālwā and to which I have already referred in connection with the light which numismatics throws on political history. Here on their coins and in their inscriptions the actual ruler is invariably designated Mahākshatrapa and the heir-apparent merely Kshatrapa. Hence it becomes inexplicable how in the case of the Imperial Indo-Scythian dynasty the king and the prince-royal come to assume titles of precisely the same political grade. This knotty point I hope some one of you will be able to solve one day.