Coinage of India

[2] A variety of earliest Indian coins, however, unlike those circulated in West Asia, were stamped bars of metal, suggesting that the innovation of stamped currency was added to a pre-existing form of token currency which had already been present in the Janapadas and Mahajanapada kingdoms of the Early historic India.

The kingdoms that minted their own coins included Gandhara, Kuntala, Kuru, Magadha, Panchala, Shakya, Surasena, Surashtra and Vidarbha etc.

[9] Chalcolithic unmarked gold disc discovered from Eran have been dated to 1000 BC and due to their lack of ornamental use, it has been proposed that it was utilized as an object of money[10] A similar gold token piece from Pandu Rajar Dhibi has also been interpreted as a coin, it is hammered on the edges and bears parallel marks, although weighing 14 grams, a quarter of the piece is missing hence its full weight of 21 grams would conform to the ancient coinage weight standards of India and confirm the vedic literary references of circulation of gold tokens in that period.

[21] Extant evidence of the earliest Metal currency in the South and East of India is later than the North West,[21] and coeval with the Northern Black Polished Ware culture, minted before the Maurya Empire (322–185 BCE),[23] with radio carbon dating indicating post 5th century BCE dates.

[25] Daniel Schlumberger also considers that punch-marked bars, similar to the many punch-marked bars found in northwestern India, initially originated in the Achaemenid Empire, rather than in the Indian heartland: “The punch-marked bars were up to now considered to be Indian (...) However the weight standard is considered by some expert to be Persian, and now that we see them also being uncovered in the soil of Afghanistan, we must take into account the possibility that their country of origin should not be sought beyond the Indus, but rather in the oriental provinces of the Achaemenid Empire"The Western origins hypothesis had previously been proposed before any serious attempts were made in the study of PMC coins such as: The weight standard of the Gandharan, Shatamana, Bent Bar coins is asserted, by like of Cribb, Allan, and Schlumberger, as twice the Sigloi weight and hence represent the Persian weight standards.

[36] The hoard contained a tetradrachm minted in Athens c. 500/490-485/0 BCE, together with a number of local types as well as silver cast ingots.

They are mentioned in the Manu, Panini, and Buddhist Jataka stories and lasted three centuries longer in the south than the north (600 BCE – 300 CE).

[55] The Arthashastra, written by Kautilya, mentions minting of coins but also indicates that the violation of the Imperial Maurya standards by private enterprises may have been an offence.

[60] Demetrios was the first Bactrian king to strike square copper coins of the Indian type, with a legend in Greek on the obverse, and in Kharoshthi on the reverse.

With the exception of certain square hemidrachms of Apollodotos and Philoxenos, they are all round, are struck to the Persian (or Indian) standard, and all have inscriptions in both Greek and Kharoshthi characters.

In the 1st century CE, the Roman writer Pliny the Elder complained about the vast sums of money leaving the Roman empire for India: India, China and the Arabian peninsula take one hundred million sesterces from our empire per annum at a conservative estimate: that is what our luxuries and women cost us.

- Pliny, Historia Naturalis 12.41.84.The trade was particularly focused around the regions of Gujarat, ruled by the Western Satraps, and the tip of the Indian peninsular in Southern India.

[62] The South Indian kings reissued Roman-like coinage in their own name, either producing their own copies or defacing real ones in order to signify their sovereignty.

[63] During the Indo-Scythians period whose era begins from 200 BCE to 400 CE, a new kind of the coins of two dynasties were very popular in circulation in various parts of the then India and parts of central and northern South Asia (Sogdiana, Bactria, Arachosia, Gandhara, Sindh, Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar).

After the conquest of Bactria by the Sakas in 135 BCE there must have been considerable intercourse sometimes of a friendly, sometimes of a hostile character, between them and the Parthians, who occupied the neighboring territory.

[68] The splendid gold coinage of Guptas, with its many types and infinite varieties and its inscriptions in Sanskrit, are the finest examples of the purely Indian art that we possess.

The gradual deterioration in design and execution of the gold coins and the disappearance of silver money, bear ample evidence to their curtailed territory.

[73] The coins of various Rajput princess's ruling in Hindustan and Central India were usually of gold, copper or billon, very rarely silver.

But the Eastern Ganga coins were written using the symbols for the single digits, with the position of the number indicating the value such as tens or hundreds, thus effectively using the Zero-place holder system.

Historian Ziauddin Barani felt that this step was taken by Tughluq as he wanted to annex all the inhabited areas of the world for which a treasury was required to pay the army.

[77] The Mughal Emperor Babur issued standard Timurid currency coins known as the shahrukhi, named after Shahrukh Mirza, Timur's eldest son.

The Shahrukhis were essentially thin broad-flanned coins imprinted with the Sunni kalima or credo on its obverse at the center with the names of the first four caliphs around it.

Political orders in Medieval India were based on a relationship and association of power by which the supreme ruler, especially a monarch was able to influence the actions of the subjects.

[78] An examination was done of a series of coins officially issued and circulated by the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) to illustrate and project a particular view of time, religion, and political supremacy being fundamental and co-existing in nature.

Coins constitute part of the evidence that project the transmission of religious and political ideas in the last quarter of the 16th century.

[78] Akbar's courtier and critic, Abdul Badani, presents and explains in brevity the motive for these unconventional decisions while describing the events that took place in 990 AH (1582 CE): And having thus convinced himself that the thousand years from the prophethood of the apostle (B'isat I Paighambar) the duration for which Islam [lit.

religion] would last was now over, and nothing prevented him from articulating the desires he so secretly held in his heart, and the space became empty of the theologians (ulema) and mystics (mashaikh) who had carried awe and dignity and no need was felt for them: he [Akbar] felt himself at liberty to refute the principles of Islam and to institute new regulations, obsolete and corrupt but considered precious by his pernicious beliefs.

[78]The evidence, both textual and numismatic, actually makes it clear that Akbar's decisions to mint the Alf coins and commission the Tarikh-i-Alfi were based on a new communication and interpretation of the terminal dates of the Islamic millennium.

What the evidence doesn't explain is the source of the idea as well as the reason for persisting with the same date on the imperial coinage even after the critical year had passed.

[78] Jahangir issued coins with the images of various zodiac signs to illustrate the date as well as portraits of himself with a cup of wine in his hand.