History of Technology in India, Vol. I: From Antiquity to c. 1200 A.D. v1.c13.s2.t10.2

v1.c13.s2.t10.2

In latter period with the development of coins instead of barter system of trade (700 B.C.) Silver coins were made from Ag- Cu binary and Au-Ag-Cu ternary alloys. Bharadwaj (1987) has published recently a very comprehensive paper on a large number of these alloys used in Numismatics. Silver coin ‘Rūpa’ has been specified to be made of ‘Sarametal’ containing 11 part Ag, 4 part Cu and 1 part of Fe and Pb etc. This clearly indicates that the alloys were purposely made by mixing the pure metals in a definite proportion. At that time no method of chemical analysis or metallography was available, even then the composition controls in a very narrow limit was maintained as revealed by the chemical analysis off our hoards of silver coins done by Prasad and the study of silver coins from Rajghat and Gupta period done by Saran (1989).