Local Government in Ancient India c9.s1.7

c9.s1.7

or guilds of the names¹ given, and were of the nature of ‘mercantile guild-tokens’. The legends on the coins are ‘in beautifully formed Asokan characters, both Gandharian [Kharoṣṭhī] and Indian. Over the word *negamā* there is a single stroke or bar, as if to designate one *negamā*. On the opposite side there is a “steel-yard” very clearly represented.’ These coins are partly punch-marked silver pieces and partly single or double die copper pieces, all of the standard peculiar to India, anterior to the Greek conquest of Alexander, or, more correctly, ‘the Greek conquest of Demetrius’. The inscriptions are partly in Brāhmī characters of the oldest type and partly both in Brāhmī and in Kharoṣṭhī letters, which fact points to the conclusion that they are not later than the third century B. C.²