India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c9.s4.2

c9.s4.2

*NATURE OF BARTER TRANSACTIONS*—The range of articles covered by barter mostly concerns simple things of ordinary use, such as food, clothing, and domesticated animals. Pāṇini refers to *vasana* or a piece of cloth as a medium of exchange, the thing purchased in exchange for cloth being called *vāsana* (V. 1. 27). In Hindi *bāsan* (=Skt. *vāsana*) means household utensils. It is thus indicated that the weavers exchanged pieces of cloth with utensils and other articles they needed. There is also reference to articles purchased for one *go-puchchha* (*go-puchchhena krītaṁ*, *gaupuchchhikam*, V. 1. 19). Dr. D. R. Bhandarkar takes *go-puchchha* literally to be the tail of a cow as a circulating medium, (*Anc. Ind. Num.*, p. 169-70), but *go-puchchha* indicated the cow itself as in the analogous English term 'cattle-head'. The idiom had its origin in the ancient custom of transferring the ownership of a cow by holding her tail; the grazing tax levied per head of cattle is still called *puchchhī* or tail-tax in north India. From the Vedic period the cow had formed a medium of exchange and a measure of value (*Vedic Index*, I. 196, 234). The term *gau-puchchhika* should thus be taken to have applied to an object received in exchange for one cow. Patañjali mentions an even bigger transaction negotiated in exchange for five cows (*pañchabhir-gobhiḥ krītaḥ pañchaguḥ*, *Bhāshya*, I. 2. 44; I. 216); and also the purchasing of a chariot for five *kroshṭrīs* (VII.1.96; III. 273). The meaning of *kroshṭrī* in *pañcha-kroshṭrī-krīta-ratha* is not clear; it was perhaps the name of a particular stack of grain like *dhānya-gava* (bull-stack mentioned in *sūtra* VI.2.72. *Dvi-kambalyā*, *tri-kambalyā* cited on IV.1.22 refer to sheep purchased for two or three *kambalya* measures of wool, one *kambalya* being equal to 5 seers (*Kāśikā* on Pāṇini V.1.3). The *Kāśikā* cites *pañchāśvā* and *daśāśvā*, i.e. a female slave purchased for the price of five or ten horses (IV. 1. 22).