Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c9.2.1

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?