Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c9.34

c9.34

As regards the use of nickel for coinage, Cunningham was the first to trace it in the money of the Indo-Grecian kings.² While once he was carefully examining the coins of Euthydemus, Agathokles and Pantaleon which had been described as silver, a suspicion crossed his mind, and he sent some specimens of them to Dr. Walter Flight for analysis. The coins were found to contain a considerable amount of nickel and in proportions differing but little from those of the nickel pieces of Belgium. Dr. Flight’s analysis produced a sensation, because “nickel was first shown to be a metal by Cronstedt in 1751.” Whether nickel was used for coinage in India before the time of these Indo-Grecian princes is not certain. But Cunningham draws our attention to the statement of Quintus Curtius that “near the junction of the Five Punjab Rivers, Alexander received from the Oxydracæ and Malli, a present of 100 talents of ‘white iron’ (*ferri candidi*).” This ‘white iron’ can be either tin or nickel. But tin was a soft metal and therefore unsuitable for coinage. Besides, it was well-known to the Greeks who could not have therefore described it as ‘white iron.’ Nickel, on the other hand, thinks Cunningham, is hard and magnetic as well as white, and as it was not known to the Greeks, they could justly call it ‘white iron.’ Thus in his opinion nickel was employed for the purposes of currency by the Indian tribes Kshaudrakas and Mālavas in the time of Alexander and consequently certainly prior to that of the Indo-Grecian dynasties.