Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c9.2

Language: English

c9.2.1

Numismatics, as you are all aware, is a science which treats of coins. The study of coinage is supposed to be of comparatively recent origin, but in ancient India it seems to have been cultivated by different classes of people with different objects in view. Thus in the Mahāvagga of the Southern Buddhist Canon we are told a story about a boy named Upāli.¹ There was in Rājagṛiha a group of seventeen boys, friends of each other and all under twenty years of age. The most pre-eminent of them was Upāli. Now, Upāli's father and mother thought: "How will Upāli after our death live a life of ease and without pain? If he learns *Lekha*, his fingers will become sore. If he learns *Gaṇanā*, his breast will become diseased. If, again, he learns *Rūpa*, his eyes will suffer. Now here are the Śākyaputra Śramaṇas who live a commodious life; they have good meals and lie down on beds protected from the wind. If Upāli," thought his father and mother, "could be ordained with the Śākyaputra Śramaṇas, he would after our death live a life of ease and without pain.” It is not necessary to tell you the whole story. Suffice it to say that Upāli and his companions got themselves ordained one day, and in the night at dawn set up such a fearful howl for rice-milk and hard and soft food that Buddha is aroused from his sleep who promptly ascertains the cause of that noise and forbids in future to confer ordination on any person under twenty years of age. But what do we learn from the story?

c9.2.2

We have here seventeen boys on this side of twenty and not far removed from it, and the parents of one of them, *viz.* Upāli, seriously thinking of introducing him to an avocation which will enable him to live a life of ease and comfort. Evidently, therefore, *Lekha*, *Gaṇanā* and *Rūpa* must be so interpreted as to denote each a profession. It is no use, therefore, taking them to be merely the “three R’s” as Bühler¹ and Rhys Davids have done. *Lekha* thus cannot here signify learning to write A, B, C, but rather ‘the art of writing,’ which constitutes the profession of a Lekhaka. This ‘art of writing’ included not only the niceties of diction and style but also the different forms of correspondence, as will be seen from Chapter X of the *Adhyaksha-prachāra* of Kauṭilya’s *Arthaśāstra*, which in its concluding verse tells us that there were not one but many treatises on the subject. The word gaṇanā for similar reasons cannot mean ‘arithmetic’ but rather ‘accounts’ corresponding to gāṇanikya of Kauṭilya. Even in later times this word had this meaning, and we thus find the term Gaṇanā-pati used by Kalhaṇa in his Rāja-taraṅgiṇī¹ and understood correctly by Sir Aurel Stein to denote ‘Head of Account Office.’ Study of Gaṇanā would thus make a candidate qualified to hold a post in the Akshapaṭala Department.

c9.2.3

The third word Rūpa is taken by Rhys Davids to mean ‘money-changing’ and by Bühler ‘commercial and agricultural arithmetic.’ Even this meaning is not quite correct, though these scholars are here not far wide of the mark, because they were careful enough to avail themselves of Buddhaghosha’s commentary which says that he who learns the Rūpa-sutta must “turn over and over many Kārshāpaṇas and look at them.” But anybody who has read Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra knows that the word rūpa has been employed in this work to denote “coins.” Thus in Chapter XII of the Adhyaksha-prachāra Kauṭilya speaks of rūpya-rūpa and tāmra-rūpa, which cannot but signify ‘silver and copper coins’ respectively. He also specifies an officer called Rūpadarśaka, whose duty was to examine the coins in actual circulation or received as revenue into the royal treasury. No doubt can, therefore, be entertained as to the term *rūpa* meaning ‘a coin.’ so that when the parents of Upāli once thought of training him in *Rūpa* for his profession, especially as he was not far removed from twenty, we can only understand that the boy was intended to study the science of coinage only, to fit him to be either a Rūpadarśaka or Sauvarṇika.