Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c9.20

Language: English

c9.20.1

We thus see that *rūpa* and *rūpya* both mean coined money, and that both the words were prevalent at the same time. If *rūpya* signified any metal piece on which a *rūpa* was stamped, the question naturally arises: how is it that both these words of which one is a derivative of the other were being used in one and the same period? Has this strange phenomenon any foundation in fact? In other words, were there any pieces of coined money which were so shaped that they were the *rūpas*, *i.e.* figures or representations of any real objects, and was there again another kind of coined money in circulation which consisted of metallic pieces, not shaped like, but impressed with, these *rūpas*? If for any unknown reasons evidence of this nature is not forthcoming from India, is it supplied by the pre-historic or historic archæology of countries outside India? This is the question that now confronts us. In fact, this was the question that confronted me when I was engaged upon the study of numismatics for these lectures. As Mr. Panchanan Mitra is the Lecturer of this University on pre-historic archæology, naturally I turned to him for discussion of this subject as I did in the question of the origin of the Brāhmī alphabet on which I lectured to you last year; and he was able to draw my attention to the researches of Prof. Ridgeway who has familiarised the antiquarian world by bringing the anthropological method to bear upon the interpretation of ancient history, especially, of Greece.

c9.20.2

Prof. Ridgeway’s main contention is that while mythological and religious subjects do occur on Greek coins, it can be shown that certain coins, even in historical times, were regarded as the representations of the objects of barter of more primitive times.¹ I will cite one typical instance. It is well known that the tunny fish continually passes in vast shoals through the sea of Marmora from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. This fish must therefore have formed the staple commodity of the communities that lived in those regions, and we know that the article which forms such a staple commodity forms money in the age of barter. Now, the city of Olbia, which lay on the north shore of the Black Sea was a Milesian colony, and was the Greek emporium in that region. There are bronze coins of this city which are shaped like fishes and inscribed with θυ which is taken to be the abbreviation of θύννος, *i.e.* tunny, the fish. When we recall the Chinese bronze cowries, the Burmese silver shells, the silver fish hooks of the Indian Ocean, etc., we are constrained to believe that in these coins of Olbia, shaped like fish, we have a distinct proof of the influence on the Greek mind of the same principle which has impelled other peoples to imitate in metal the older object of barter which a metal currency is replacing. Take now the case of the city of Cyzicus, situated on the coast of Asia Minor.

c9.20.3

Cyzicus, too, like Olbania, was a Greek autonomous city and depended for its wealth on its fisheries and trade. It too had its coins, but of electrum and not of bronze like those of Olbania. The coins of Cyzicus, again, were connected with the tunny fish. They, however, bore a representation of this fish on them and were not shaped like it as was the case with the coins of Olbania. The inhabitants of Olbania, though they were originally a Greek colony, were largely intermixed with the surrounding barbarians, and may, therefore, have felt some difficulty in replacing their barter unit by a round piece of metal bearing merely the imprint of a fish, while the pure-blooded Greek of Cyzicus had no hesitation in mentally bridging the gulf between a real fish and a piece of metal merely stamped with a fish, and did not require the intermediate step of first shaping his metal unit into the form of a tunny. Here then we have two Greek cities of one and the same period, viz. Olbania whose bronze coins were shaped like a tunny fish, and Cyzicus, whose electrum coins merely bore the imprint of the fish, the tunny fish being in both cases their medium of barter which their metallic currency afterwards superseded. The coins of Olbania were thus the *rūpas*, *i.e.* coins which were the figures or images of the fish, whereas those of Cyzicus were the *rūpyas*, *i.e.* coins on which the *rūpa*, *i.e.* figure or representation, of a fish was impressed.

c9.20.4

A similar thing must have happened in the pre-historic or proto-historic period of India : that is to say, while the system of barter was being replaced by metallic currency, in some parts of India the metal unit must have been shaped like the article of barter, and in some parts the former merely contained the imprint of the latter. There could thus be some coins which were *rūpas*, and some, *rūpyas*. Unless some such explanation is adduced, it is impossible to understand how both the words *rūpa* and *rūpya* in the sense of ‘coined money’ were current side by side.