Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c8.77.1

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.