Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c7.2

c7.2

I believe, you still remember the words which the President of the last Oriental Conference used in regard to the mentality of the European and the Indian scholar towards Oriental subjects. "The Indian's tendency," said he, "may be towards rejecting foreign influence on the development of his country's civilization and to claim high antiquity for some of the occurrences in its history. On the other hand, the European scholar's tendency is to trace Greek, Roman or Christian influence at work in the evolution of new points and to modernize the Indian historical and literary events." It is not possible to determine how far these words are true of the Indian scholars in regard to the ancient Indian numismatics, because there is hardly any one amongst them yet who has seriously devoted himself to this subject, but it must be admitted that they are true of some of the European scholars who were or are looked upon as authorities on this subject. Their attempt seems to have been unconsciously to prove that the invention of coinage was not indigenous to India and that the Indians learnt the art of stamping money either from the Babylonians or from the Greeks, and that again certainly not prior to B.C. 600 or 700. Thus James Prinsep, to whom must always go the honour of having unravelled the most ancient Indian alphabet, the Brāhmī lipi, thought that the Hindus derived their knowledge of coinage from the Greeks of Bactria. And although afterwards he had to admit that the Hindus had an indigenous currency of precious metals, he persisted in at least maintaining that from the time the Greeks entered India “ may be assumed the adoption of a die-device, or of coined money properly so called, by the Hindus.”¹ And as Prinsep was Assay Master of the Calcutta Mint, his words naturally carried great weight. And it is not strange if we find that H. H. Wilson, the author of the *Ariana Antiqua*, also indulged in surmise, and asserted that it was “likely that the currency of the country consisted chiefly, if not exclusively, of lumps of gold and silver not bearing any impression, until the Hindus had learned the usefulness of money from their Bactrian neighbours, and from their commerce, especially with Rome.”² At the time when Prinsep and Wilson wrote, there were two other numismatists, both of them Englishmen, Alexander Cunningham and Edward Thomas, who, however, held the opposite view, and maintained the existence of an indigenous Indian coinage. But their arguments, forcible and cogent though they were, were left unheeded, and the tendency of assigning a later date and tracing almost everything Indian that is good or original to a foreign source, which is so natural to some European writers, re-asserted itself, probably with greater vigour. Thus James Kennedy holds that the punch-marked coins, or the Kārshāpaṇas as they were known to the ancient Hindus, which form the most ancient money in India, were copied from Babylonian originals after the opening of maritime trade in the sixth century B.C.¹ V. A. Smith’s view is substantially the same. In his article on Numismatics, which he contributed to the *Imperial Gazetteer*, he says as follows: “The introduction into India of the use of coins, that is to say, metallic pieces of definite weight authenticated as currency by marks recognised as a guarantee of value, may be ascribed with much probability to the seventh century B.C., when foreign maritime trade seems to have begun. There is reason to believe that the necessities of commerce with foreign merchants were the immediate occasion for the adoption by the Indian people of a metallic currency as well as of alphabetical writing.”²