[7] According to numismatist Joe Cribb, it suggests that the idea of coinage and the use of punch-marked techniques was introduced to India from the Achaemenid Empire during the 4th century BCE.

[9] The Kabul valley and the region of Gandhara to the west of Indus came under the Achaemenid rule during the reign of Cyrus the Great (600–530 BCE).

It was administered at first from Bactria, but organised into a separate satrapy in c. 508 BCE with a headquarters possibly at Pushkalavati (near present-day Charsadda in Pakistan).

[18] The hoard was discovered by a construction team in 1933 when digging for foundations for a house near the Chaman-i Hazouri park in central Kabul.

According to the then director of Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan (DAFA), the hoard contained about 1,000 silver coins and some jewellery.

Some two decades later, Daniel Schlumberger of DAFA published photographs and details of the finds stored in the Kabul Museum in a book titled Trésors Monétaires d'Afghanistan.

Osmund Bopearachchi and Aman ur Rahman published their details in the book Pre-Kushana Coins in Pakistan (1995).

[1] Generally, Greek coins (both Archaic and early Classical) are comparatively very numerous in the Achaemenid coin hoards discovered in the East of the Achaemenid Empire, much more numerous than sigloi, suggesting that the circulation of Greek coinage was central in the monetary system of those part of the Empire.

These early coins were made using a die on the obverse with an illustrative design, while the back was formed with simple geometric punch-marks.

[21] Bopearachchi and Cribb state that these coins "demonstrate in a tangible way the depth of Greek penetration in the century before Alexander the Great's conquest of the Achaemenid satrapies.

[5] Similar coins have also been found in the Shaikhan Dehri hoard in Pushkalavati in the center of the Gandhara area,[45] but not in Taxila.

[46] Their dispersal in Kabul and Pushakalavati led Bopearachchi to postulate that they were manufactured locally, while the region was under Achaemenid protection, during the 5th century BCE.

[48] Mauryan kings later issued descendants of these very coins in the territories south of the Hindu Kush for local circulation.

[55] The round punch-marked coins have been shown to precede chronologically the "bent bars", also minted under Achaemenid rule from Bactria to the Punjab.

[42][43][44][20] The practice of using unmarked silver bars for currency is known from the Iranian plateau and seems to have been current in Central Asia under the Achaemenid Empire.

[7] However, historian Romila Thapar has stated that the punch-marked coins were in circulation before the Mauryan rule and the general opinion adheres to the 6th century BCE as the date of their introduction.

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