The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c19.s9.352

v1.c19.s9.352

Of substitutes for money, such as instruments of credit, we read of signet rings used as deposit or security⁵, of wife or children pledged or sold for debt⁶, and of IOU’s or debt-sheets (*iṇa-paṇṇāni*)⁷. The bankrupt who, in the Jātaka tale, invites his creditors to bring their debt-sheets for settlement, only to drown himself before their eyes⁸, appears in a Milinda simile anticipating the crisis by making a public statement of his liabilities and assets⁹. The entanglement and anxieties of debt as well as the corporate liability belonging to communistic life in a religious order rendered it necessary to debar any candidate from admission to the *Saṅgha* who was a debtor¹⁰. And the sight of a deposited security recalling the past circumstances of the pledging is instanced in the Milinda as a case of the psychical process of recollection (*sati*)¹¹.