The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c24.s1: Ancient Persian Coins in India
The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c24.s1
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Ancient Persian Coins in India
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Whatever were the actual limits of Persian power in India, it is certain that within these limits the money of the Persian kings must have been current. At the same time it is not easy to support the general statement by definite facts. Properly authenticated records of finds are virtually unknown. Nor can over-much reliance be placed on deductions drawn from the occurrence of individual specimens in collections that have been formed in North-western India. Before the construction of the Russian railways in Central Asia the waifs and strays of commerce, like gold and silver coins from Bukhāra and Khorāsān, naturally drifted over the mountain-passes of Afghānistān into the Punjab as the nearest profitable market. Once they had arrived there, however, the dealers into whose hands they came were free to assign to them the *provenance* that seemed most likely to enhance their price, a circumstance that renders it difficult to appraise the value of the scanty evidence available. For reasons that will presently appear, the two precious metals can best be considered separately.
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The standard gold coin of Ancient Persia was the daric, which bore upon the obverse a figure of the Great King hastening through his dominions, armed with bow and spear; and upon the reverse an irregular oblong incuse. It weighed about 130 grains (8·42 grammes), and was in all probability first minted by Darius Hystaspes, the monarch who was responsible for adding the valley of the Indus to the empire. From its infancy, therefore, the daric would have ready access to the country beyond the Hindu Kush. At the same time there was an important economic reason which would militate against its extensive circulation in these regions. Gold was abundant there, so abundant that for many centuries its value relatively to silver was extraordinarily low. There are grounds for believing that during the period of the Persian dominion the ratio was no higher than 1:8, as compared with the norm of 1:13·3 maintained by the imperial mint. Such darics as made their way thither would thus constitute an artificially inflated currency, and would tend to be exported again on the earliest possible opportunity. There was no temptation to accumulate them, when they could be exchanged elsewhere for silver at so very substantial a profit. The conclusion here suggested is fully borne out by the actual phenomena. Persian gold has never been discovered in any quantity in India; the hoards of ‘darics’ sometimes said to have been found in the eighteenth century can be shown to have consisted of Gupta coins. Isolated examples have, indeed, been picked up sporadically; the daric reproduced on Pl. I, 1, is from the Cunningham Collection. But it is significant that in no single instance do these bear countermarks or any other indication that could possibly be interpreted as suggestive of a prolonged Indian sojourn.
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The corresponding silver coinage consisted of *sigloi* or shekels, twenty of which were equivalent to a daric. They had a maximum weight of 86·45 grains (5·6 grammes), and had the same types as the gold (Pl. I, 2, 3). *Sigloi* are frequently offered for sale by Indian dealers, and it is a reasonable inference that they are fairly often disinterred from the soil of India itself. That is precisely what might be expected from the working of economic law. The relative cheapness of gold would act like a lodestone. Silver coins from the west would flow into the country freely, and would remain in active circulation. At one time confirmation seemed to be provided by the surviving *sigloi*. Many of them—including, it should be added, a very large proportion that are not directly of Indian *provenance*—are distinguished by the presence of peculiar countermarks which were thought to have their closest analogy on the square-shaped pieces of silver that constitute the oldest native coinage of India¹. The punch-marks on the native Indian coins (Pl. I, 4, 5) appear to have been affixed partly by the local authority of the district in which the money was used, but to a much larger extent by the merchants or money-changers through whose hands it passed. The practice was plainly designed to obviate the necessity for repeated weighing. As this advantage would be as pronounced in the case of the *sigloi* as in the case of the indigenous issues, it would not have been surprising to find that they had been subjected to similar treatment. M. Babelon has, however, expressed the view that the punch-marked sigloi should, as a rule, be associated with Lycia, Pamphylia, Cilicia, and Cyprus. And it must be admitted that the results of the most recent investigation¹ rather tend to bear out his opinion. The resemblance to the Indian punch-marks remains noteworthy, but proof of absolute identity is lacking.
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¹ Rapson, *J.R.A.S.* 1895, pp. 865 ff.
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¹ Hill, *J.H.S.* 1919, pp. 125 ff.
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MAP 3
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THE KĀBUL VALLEY AND THE PUNJAB
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[Figure: THE KĀBUL VALLEY AND THE PUNJAB Ancient Names in Brackets Scale Miles]