The Rashtrakutas and their Times c22.68

c22.68

The coinage, above referred to, was almost all in gold, dramma being the only exception. Silver coins from the southern India, belonging to the first millennium of the Christian Era, are very rare. We shall therefore experience some difficulty in converting the prices in gold of our age into corresponding prices in rupees of the present day, as we do not know the precise ratio of prices of these two metals during our period. Dr. D. R. Bhandarkar has pointed out⁴⁸ how the Nasik cave inscription No, 12 shows that the ratio between the prices of these two metals was 1 : 14. The record expressly equates 35 Kārshāpaṇas to 1 Suvarṇa, and since the ratio of copper to gold was never so high as 1 : 35, we have to conclude that the Kārshāpaṇas of the record were silver and not copper coins each one weighing 32 ratis, i. e. two-fifths of a golden Suvarṇa: the ratio between the prices of the two metals thus becomes 35 × 32 : 1 × 80 i. e. 14 : 1. S'ukranīti, which was probably composed not much later than our period, gives the ratio as 1 : 16. (49) Tavernier, writing in the middle of the 17th century, says that the golden rupee was equal to 14 silver ones. (50) It would thus seem that the relative prices of these two metals were fairly constant from the 1st to the 17th century, and we may, therefore, presume that in our period they were somewhere in the vicinity of 1 : 15. The ratio before the recent rise in the price of gold was about 1 : 30.