Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c6.8.1

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.