The History of Bengal (Vol. I: Hindu Period; Vol. II: Muslim Period 1200–1757) v1.c19.s9.21

v1.c19.s9.21

It was probably during this period of monetary anarchy that cowries, which might have been in circulation even in earlier times,² established themselves as the only dependable medium of exchange in the province. A people, who had for centuries been accustomed to minted currency, could not be suddenly expected to revert to barter; and as the State failed to discharge its normal functions in the matter of coinage, and as the traditions of private coinage were long forgotten, there was hardly any alternative to the use of cowrie shells, which were known to have been in circulation about the same time in some other parts of India. When political stability was re-established in Bengal under the Pāla kings, an attempt appears to have been made to re-introduce minted currency. This is shown by the discovery of a few copper and silver coins, belonging to the Pāla period. Three copper coins of a “unique type showing a rather clumsily depicted bull on the obverse and three fish on the reverse” have been found at Pāhārpur, and these have been tentatively assigned to the early Pāla empire. Numbers of silver and copper coins of a second type have been found in Bengal and Bihar. From the legend “Śrī Vigra” on the obverse these are attributed to king Vigrahapāla, and are generally called Vigrahapāla-*dramma*, the term *dramma*, as a designation of coins, occurring in the Bodh-Gayā inscription of Dharmapāla (Pāla Ins. No. 1). V. A. Smith attributed the finer specimens of this type to Vigrahapāla I. and the debased ones to the second or third king of that name. K. N. Dikshit, however, thinks that the debased coins “may have been issued after the original by other rulers, not necessarily even of the Pāla dynasty.”³ But whatever view we might take of this, it seems from the extreme scarcity and the generally debased character of these coins that the attempt of the Pāla rulers to introduce a currency of their own was a faint-hearted one and was soon abandoned. When we think of the long rule of the Pāla dynasty and the extent of its kingdom, its lack of currency becomes an intriguing problem, almost a mystery, which cannot be solved at present. The mystery is still more deepened by the fact that gold coins seem to have been profusely used in the neighbouring province of Kāmarūpa (Assam) even during the Pāla period. For, according to the Silimpur inscription, assigned to the eleventh century A.D., a Brāhmaṇa of Varendrī was offered nine hundred gold coins by Jayapāla, a king of Kāmarūpa.¹