Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c8.43

c8.43

In Period III iron was regularly used for the first time: barbed and socketed arrowheads, chisels and sickles of this metal are recorded, although copper was retained for antimony rods, nail-parers and a variety of other purposes. Terracotta figurines of animals, especially the elephant, are better modelled than in the preceding period. Money now comes into use in the shape of punch-marked rectangular pieces of silver with symbols which include the 'crescent-on-hill' and the 'sun'; with them were a number of cast copper coins, both rectangular and round, bearing similar symbols. The indication is that of increasing and increasingly systematized trade.