Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c9.45

c9.45

Now, a few words about the manufacture of coins or rather the mode of evolution in the technique of the Indian indigenous coinage. The Indians seem to have begun with "a hammered sheet, which was then cut into strips, and subdivided into lengths of approximately the desired weight, which was adjusted by clipping the corners when necessary."¹ Nobody can examine any lot of punch-marked coins without perceiving that this was the mode of manufacture. There was, however, one small difference in regard to punching. In a few cases punches were applied to the surface of the hammered sheet before it was cut into strips. This is clear from the fact that sometimes some of the symbols punched are not to be seen in full on these coins. In a good many cases, however, the strips seem to have been cut out first and then punched. On all the coins belonging to this initial stage we find symbols impressed on them irregularly and by separate punches. The first stage of progress is marked where a group of these symbols forms a distinct type, and is impressed not each by a separate punch but is struck by a single die, which, however, covers not the whole, but about two-thirds, of the piece. But the reverse face here remains blank.¹ “The next advance may be traced in the adaptation of the anvil to the first crude idea of a reverse, in a sunk-die or catch of small dimensions cut into the anvil itself.”² The third stage is thus represented by coins where the obverse die covers the whole face but the reverse die is smaller than the blank.³ The last stage is of course indicated by the full double-die system where the whole face is covered by a die whether on the obverse or the reverse. “The final adoption of the ‘double-die’ system,” says V. A. Smith, “was undoubtedly due to Greek and Roman example.”⁴ What Smith’s remark comes to is that the Indians were, of course, capable of introducing improvement into and thus developing the technic manufacture of coins before the advent of the Greeks, but their last step, although it was the natural culmination of their gradual advance in the indigenous numismatic art, they could effect only when the Macedonians came to teach them!!!