History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c14.s3.6

v1.c14.s3.6

6. Kashmir coin was Dinnāra. It is the Roman coin Denaris. It originally must have been the Indo Scythian coin. There were however gold, silver and copper Dinnaras. The word was the same for all and it appears even that the lowest value was also called Dinnāra. European scholars whose indefatigable labours cannot but be always acknowledged have collected many coins of Kashmir kings and tested their metal and weight. The incredible number of coins mentioned by Kalhaṇa as the daily pay of poets like Udbhaṭa or princes like Rudrapāla are well explained by Stein. It appears that the Kashmirians devised lowest divisions of value and introduced a system of counting by hundreds and thousands. The modern words still current in Kashmir viz: Pachisa, Hatha and Sisnu are evidently 25 (sk. Panchavimśati) 100 (sk. Sata) and 1000 (sk. Sahasra). Thus the credit of first introducing a decimal notation in coins belongs to intellegent Kashmir. In this way though rice often may in actuality be given in pay, the amount could be expressed in thousands of the lowest coin value.