Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c9.61

Language: English

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We have just seen that it was the duty of the Rūpadarśaka and his Assistants such as Hiraṇyika to distinguish between genuine and counterfeit coins. For the facilitation of monetary transactions it was essential that coins of fixed weight or value should be in circulation. No wonder if we find Kauṭilya laying down that the manufacturer of counterfeit coins shall be banished, as also those who deal in such coins or try to lower their quality by mixing them with alloys. Those who have read Yājñavalkya need not be told how this law-giver prescribes the highest fine for those who falsify a nāṇaka or coin or knowingly use such a one. This is just as it should be. But although it was necessary for a state to take such drastic steps for the prevention of the manufacture of counterfeit coins or of the tampering with the currency, sometimes the Government was itself compelled to take just that sort of action which it wanted to suppress in others. Of course, I am not here referring to the cases in which in consequence of economic circumstances there is an increase in the price of a particular metal out of which coins are made and in which the state is therefore forced to reduce the usual fixed weight of any denomination of its coins. I hope you remember what I said in my last lecture about a species of copper coinage prevalent in Aurangzeb’s time.

c9.61.2

Owing to the enhancement of the price of copper, the weight of these copper Dāms, as I told you, had to be curtailed by as much as seven Māshas. A similar cause may have operated, as I also then told you, in reducing the weight of copper Kārshāpaṇa and its tokens at some periods in the ancient town of Vidiśā and may thus explain in one way the discrepancy of weight in that class of coinage. Such also must have been the case in the time of Kauṭilya. I told you a short while ago that Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra allowed as much as 31·25 p.c. of alloy in silver coins, whereas the silver Kārṣāpaṇas assayed by Cunningham contained only 20 p.c. of it. This means that during the period when Kauṭilya lived, silver had become so expensive that economic exigencies necessitated a higher percentage of alloy being mixed with it in order that the original standard of value might be maintained. This admixture of a larger percentage of alloy is perfectly intelligible and justifiable, and this can hardly be called debasement of coinage. But I am not here referring to such cases, but rather to those cases where deterioration or sophistication of the currency was deliberate and was necessitated by the exhausted condition of the state treasury or by the disturbed political condition of the country. Thus if Kauṭilya prescribes that silver coins shall comprise 31·25 p.c. of alloy, one can only infer that in his time silver had augmented in value.

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But if Kauṭilya is credited or rather discredited, as in some Buddhist works, with having converted (by recoining) each Kārṣāpaṇa into eight for the purpose of raising resources and thus having amassed 80 crores of Kārṣāpaṇas,¹ the motive could have been purely political and the step surreptitiously taken to avoid any confidence of the people being shaken in the supposed purity and value of the currency in circulation. How Kauṭilya recoined one Kārshāpaṇa into eight we do not know, but it would be interesting to find out what were some of the methods practised in ancient days. This is not impossible to find out, because we have only to separate true coins from those which are of a suspicious character, and subject the latter to a rigorous examination. Such a thing has not yet been systematically attempted; nor is it my object to do so here, because there are not yet enough materials for it. My object here is to draw your attention to certain old Kārshāpaṇas which have been admitted to be adulterated in order that some young numismatist here may in the near future devote his special attention to this subject. One of the commonest methods of debasing coinage is undoubtedly by increasing the admixture of alloy. But in what quantity this alloy was mixed in different periods and in different parts of the country it is not possible to know unless coins of various types are actually subjected to a chemical analysis.

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The tabulation of the results of such an analysis must enable us to arrive at important conclusions. Now that the Archæological Chemist has been given by Government to the Archæological Department, let us hope that before long such a tabulation will be made ready for the study of those interested in Indian numismatics. Another method of adulterating the currency is that well described by Theobald. "Some coins," says he, "are formed of a copper blank thickly covered with silver, before receiving the impression of the punches, and this contemporary (if not time-honoured) sophistication of the currency is found to occur subsequently in various Indian coinages, in the Græco-Bactrian of the Punjab, the Hindu kings of Kabul, and later still in various Muhammadan dynasties of the peninsula. The plating is extremely well executed and of the most durable character, covering the edge of the coin as well as its surface. I was for sometime at a loss to know by what means this was effected, so long ago as 500 B.C. perhaps, but I am told that a bright copper 'blank' dipped into melted silver would become coated with that metal, and this I have little doubt was the plan followed.

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By this means a number of copper 'blanks' thrown into a ladle of melted silver and well stirred about, would all come out ready for the impression of the die or punch and it is possible that 'blanks' thus surreptitiously prepared may have been introduced into the royal mint, and there struck with genuine dies, and the coins thus prepared substituted for an equal number of genuine pieces."¹ This is indeed a very cunning mode of multiplying currency in times of political stress when treasury is depleted but more money urgently required. This again is a method which cannot arouse suspicion, for plated coins, until thoroughly worn, are, certainly in look and finish, exact equals of those composed entirely of silver. Specimens of plated coinage are by no means unfrequent. They were detected, e.g., by Mr. E. H. C. Walsh in a find of punch-marked coins in Patna City. He has found many coins in this hoard which were however sophisticated by a different method. He says that when these coins were found thickly coated with verdigris deposit which accounted for as much as 13 per cent. of the weight of the coins after they were cleaned. “The reason for this large amount of copper,” says he, “is due to the faet that, apart from any proportion of alloy in the coin, several of the coins have been debased by the addition of molten copper to the original silver coin, presumably to make up for weight. That this was subsequently added is shown by the fact that it remains over the punch marks.” ¹