Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c7.73

c7.73

Thus, according to Prof. Winternitz, the Vedic period in all probability extends from 2500 to 800 B.C. If this is so, coined money must be considered to be existing in India as early as the middle of the third millennium before Christ. Is it not therefore absurd to say, as Kennedy and Smith have done, that India did not know of any coined money before 400 or 700 B.C.? What is strange is that they have expressed this sweeping view even when they had E. Thomas’ book before them and especially the passage from the Rig-veda quoted above. This, I believe, has to be attributed to the tendency of some European scholars to regard everything Indian that is good or original as having been adopted from the foreigners and as being of a comparatively late date. This tendency, I am afraid, even a savant like Max Müller was not able to shake off from his mind. Last year while lecturing on the ancient alphabet of India I had occasion to show how far he had exhibited it. This year it is my misfortune to point out how far he has manifested it in regard to the subject we have been considering here to-night. Max Müller emphatically maintains that "the Hindus derived their knowledge of coined money from foreign nations."¹ But then what becomes of the word Nishka which occurs in the sense of a gold coin and which was certainly known to him, he being a pre-eminent Vedic scholar? This is what he says: "Nothing seems to be more likely than that it should be derived from Kanishka, the Sanskrit name of Kanerki, as we speak of a "Sovereign," the French of a "Louis." The First syllable Ka may be taken as the usual royal prefix, particularly as Fahian calls the same king Kanika and Nika. Yet nobody would draw from this the conclusion that the Veda was written after the time of Kanishka. If Nishka be really derived from Ka-Nishka, Kanishka must have been the name or title of more ancient kings, whose money became known in India." In other words, what Max Müller means is that there must have been foreign kings of the name or title of Kanishka before the Veda was written. And why this preposterous supposition? Because the word Nishka in the sense of ‘a coin’ occurs in the Ṛig-veda, and certainly the Hindus derived their knowledge of coined money from the foreign nations!! In justice to Prof. Max Müller it must be said that he does admit that “Nishka may have a very different etymology” to the one that he has proposed. But he makes this remark so incidentally and covertly as to make very little impression on the mind of the student who reads his view about the derivation of Nishka from Kanishka, and it leaves absolutely no doubt in the mind of an impartial and dispassionate scholar as to the kind of bias which has impelled Prof. Max Müller to his view. A far better judicial frame of mind has been displayed by E. Thomas, who traces the Sanskrit word nishka to the Semitic root miskāl, ‘to be weighed,’ but he admits that the Aryans of India “do not appear to have imported or had any knowledge of the Hebrew shekel of 220 grains. So that the integrity of the Indian system of weights remains altogether unaffected.”¹