Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c8.77

Language: English

c8.77.1

It would be too irksome for me to exhaust the list of the symbols on Kārshāpaṇas which have a pre-historic origin.⁴ Mr. Panchanan Mitra, who is keen on the prehistoric archæology of India, is, I hear, already engaged on a systematic study of these symbols. This is just as it should be. What we have to note here is that there are not one or two but many pre-historic symbols to be found on the punch-marked coins. Mr. Theobald himself has observed not less than fourteen such, engraved on the sculptured stones of Scotland. There was a time when Fergusson and archæologists of his kidney relegated the rude stone monuments of Great Britain and Scotland to the post-Roman period, but no archæologist of any repute now disputes its pre-historic character or assigns them to any time posterior to 1500 B. C. When therefore we find so many symbols of pre-historic origin occurring on the punch-marked coins, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Kārshāpaṇa coinage must have been handed down to us from pre-historic times.

c8.77.2

If any further evidence is required, it is furnished by the fact, first brought to our attention by Elliot, that these punch-marked coins "have been discovered among the ashes of the men who constructed the primitive tombs known as the Pāṇḍukulis (or Kistvaens) of the South, and unearthed from the ruins of buried cities in excavating the head-waters of the Ganges Canal."[¹] "A large hoard of these coins," says he elsewhere, "was discovered in September, 1807, at the opening of one of the ancient tombs known by the name of Pāṇḍukulis near the village of Chavadi paleiyam in Coimbatore, thus identifying the employment of this kind of money with the aboriginal race whose places of sepulchure are scattered over every part of Southern India."[²] In regard to Pāṇḍu-kulis or Pāṇḍu-kuṛis as they are properly called, Caldwell in his *Dravidian Grammar*¹ says as follows: "It is a remarkable circumstance that no class of Hindus know anything of the race to which these Druidical remains belonged, and that neither in Sanskrit literature nor in that of the Dravidian languages is there any tradition on the subject. The Tamil people generally call the cairns by the name of Pāṇḍu-kuṛis.

c8.77.3

Kuri means a pit or grave, and pāṇḍu denotes anything connected with the Pāṇḍus, to whom all over India ancient mysterious structures are attributed." It will thus be seen that quite in consonance with the indisputable fact that pre-historic signs are found on the Kārshāpaṇas is the other fact, equally indisputable, that they have been picked up also from the pre-historic cairns. I have repeatedly remarked that pre-historic archæology of India is yet in its infancy, but even taking the most unfavourable estimate of the age of these monuments, the Pāṇḍu-kuṛis, I am afraid, cannot possibly be placed later than 1500 B. C. In these circumstances the introduction of the Kārshāpaṇa coinage must be attributed to about the beginning of the second millenium before Christ. Cunningham who had far deeper insight into the age and nature of the ancient monuments of India than any of his successors was disposed to date these coins as early as 1000 B. C., but Smith thought this estimate to be certainly "much in excess of the truth" because his mind was obsessed with the idea that coinage began with the Lydians about 700 B. C. and that consequently there could be no coined money in India prior to that date.

c8.77.4

It is inconceivable how he stuck to this notion when the passage from Elliot regarding the find of punch-marked coins in the pre-historic Pāṇḍukuris was known to him, and has actually been quoted by him in his *Catalogue of the Coins in the Indian Museum*.¹ This is another piece of evidence, over and above that based on references to coins in the Vedic literature, to which I drew your attention in the last lecture,—I say, this is another piece of evidence which points to a much higher antiquity for the coinage of India than numismatists would fain allow. In order that I may not be misunderstood, let me make it clear to you that all that I contend is that the coinage of India must date from the pre-historic period. I do not, however, maintain thereby that the art of coinage originated in India, though the trend of evidence points to that hypothesis, no actual specimens of or even references to coins having yet been found in respect of the pre-historic age of any other country than India.