Numismatics is the science of coins. You can’t deny that coins are an important way to figure out what happened in the past, especially in old times when very few written records were kept.
Indus Valley Civilization: The most unique thing from the Indus Valley Civilization is the Harappan Seal. It was made of steatite, a type of stone. But people think it “NOT” was used as a coin. It was also used to seal trade packages, as amulets, and for other things.
2. Janapadas and Mahajanapadas: The first record of coins being made is from the 7th and 6th centuries BC. These were silver ‘punched-mark’ coins. They were first given out by groups of merchants, and then later by the government.
3. After the reign of Mauryan, standard Dynastic coins are made for the first time. The Greeks bring their old way of making coins with them. They were the first people (besides those who used silver) to make gold coins.
• The first coins were made of metal and only had one side that was stamped. “Punch Marked” coins had one to five marks or images pressed into a single side. In Panini’s Ashtadhyayi, it says that symbols were stamped on metal bits and used to make “punch marked” coins. The name for each unit was “Ratti,” and it weighed 0.11 grammes. The first signs of this coin were found between 600 BC and 200 BC. There are two ways to classify things:
The first Indian punch-marked coins, called Puranas, Karshapanas, or Panas, were made in the 6th century BC by the Janapadas and Mahajanapadas of the Indo-Gangetic Plain.
o These coins were not all the same size or shape. They were made of silver and had different symbols on them. For example, Saurashtra coins had a bull with a hump, Dakshin Panchala coins had a Swastika, and Magadha coins usually had five symbols. South Asia’s most used coins were those with marks made by a punch.
They were talked about in the Manusmriti and Buddhist Jataka stories. In the South, they lasted three centuries longer than in the North.
During the Mauryan Period (322–185 BC), coins were made with punch marks. Chanakya, the Prime Minister of the first Mauryan ruler Chandragupta Maurya, wrote in the Arthashastra that rupyarupa (silver), suvarnarupa (gold), tamrarupa (copper), and sisarupa (lead) coins were made with punch marks.
o The sun and the six-spoked wheel were used more often than any other symbols. The coin was called a Karshapana and had about 50–54 grains of silver and 32 rattis of weight on it.
Five marks on a Magadha coin. Mauryan Karshapana with a wheel and an elephant as symbols. (300 BC)
Indo-Greek Coins
• The Indo-Greeks were in charge from about 180 BC to about 10 AD. The Indo-Greeks started the trend of putting the ruler’s bustor head on coins. On one side of their Indian coins, the stories were written in Greek, and on the other side, they were written in Kharosthi. Zeus, Hercules, Apollo, and Pallas Athene were some of the Greek gods and women that were often shown on Indo-Greek coins. The first set of coins had pictures of Greek gods on them, but later coins also had pictures of Indian gods on them.
These coins are important because they had information about the ruling king, the year they were made, and sometimes even a picture of the king. Mostly silver, copper, nickel, and lead were used to make coins. The coins of the Greek kings in India were written in both Greek and Pali (in Kharosthi writing) on the front and back, respectively.
Later, Indo-Greek Kushan kings started doing what the Greeks did and putting picture heads on coins. On one side of Kushan coins was a bust of the king wearing a helmet. On the other side was the king’s favourite god. Kanishka only used Greek symbols on the coins he made.
The Kushan Empire made a lot of coins, which inspired a lot of tribes, dynasties, and kingdoms to start making their own coins.
Kanishka’s l gold coin
Satavahanas Coins
• The Satavahanas ruled from after 232 BC until 227 AD.
• Most of the coins made by the Satavahana kings were made of lead. Few people had silver coins.
• They also used “potin,” which is a mix of silver and copper. There were also a lot of metal coins.
• The coins were not beautiful or artistic in any way, but they were very useful for learning about the Satavahanas’ dynastic past.
• Most Satavahana coins had a picture of an elephant, horse, lion, or Chaitya on one side. The Ujjain sign, which was a cross with four circles at the ends of the two lines that crossed, was on the other side.Prakrit was the language that was used.
A Satakarni coin from the past
Cowrie Shell
Cowrie shell was another important form of currency in the early Indian market, along with coins.Cowrie shells were used by the common people for small-scale economic deals in large numbers. It is said that, like coins, cowrie shells had a set value on the market.
Coins of the Western Satraps or the Indo-Scythians
• From 35 to 405 AD, the Western Satraps ruled over Western India, which at the time included Malwa, Gujarat, and Kathiawar.
• They all came from the Saka people. The Western Satraps’ coins are very important to history.
• The dates on them are from the Saka era, which began in 78 AD.
• The coins of the Western Satraps have the head of the king on one side and a Buddhist chaitya or stupa, which was likely taken from the Satavahanas, on the other. • The Prakrit language has been found written in many different forms.
Western Satrap Rudrasimha I’s coin
Coins from the Gupta Age
• The Gupta era (319–550 AD) was a time when Hinduism came back to life in a big way.
• Most Gupta coins were made of gold, but they also made coins out of silver and copper.
After Chandragupta II got rid of the Western Satraps, the first silver coins were made.
• There were many different kinds of gold coins made by the Guptas.
On one side of these coins, the king is shown standing and making offerings at an altar, playing the veena, doing ashvamedha, riding a horse or an elephant, killing a lion, tiger, or rhinoceros with a sword or bow, or sitting on a couch. On the other side, the Goddess Lakshmi is shown sitting on a throne or a lotus seal, or the queen is shown.
• For the first time in the history of coins, all of the writing on the coins was in Sanskrit (Brahmi script).
• The Gupta kings made coins that showed the emperors not only doing military things like hunting lions or tigers, posing with weapons, etc., but also doing fun things like playing the Veena. On the other side of the coin, there were pictures of the goddesses Lakshmi, Durga, Ganga, Garuda, and Kartikeya.
In the sixth century, when the Huns invaded, the Guptas lost power. This led to a time of uncertainty, during which a number of small states arose in different parts of the country and made coins that were low in both metal content and artistic design. So, for a long time, up until the 13th century, these kingdoms in Western, Eastern, Northern, and Central India used a mix of designs taken from the Kushana–Gupta pattern as well as designs from other places.
South India had a different way of thinking about coins. They moved towards a gold standard, which was influenced by Roman gold coins that came to the area in the first three centuries of the first millennium.
• The Hun attackers were driven out of India by the Varadhanas of Taneshwar and Kannauj in the late sixth century.
Harshavardhana was the most powerful of the Vardhana kings, and his empire covered almost all of Northern India. The Vardhanas’ silver coins had a picture of the king on one side and a peacock on the other. The dates on Harshavardhana’s coins are in a new era, which probably began in 606 AD, the year he was crowned king.
Harshavardhana’s coin
Chalukyan kings’ coins
• The Chalukyan kingdom was started by Pulakeshin I in the sixth century AD. Its capital was at Badami in the Indian state of Karnataka.
• Legends and pictures of a palace or a lion were on one side of the coin. The other side was blank. • Coins from the Eastern Chalukyan kingdom (7th–12th century AD) had a boar in the middle, and each letter of the king’s name was made with a separate punch. On the other side, too, nothing was written.
Chalukyas of Kalyana
Rajput Dynasties’ Coins
• Most of the coins made by the Rajput rulers in the 11th and 12th centuries AD were made of gold, copper, or billon, which is a mixture of silver and copper. Silver coins were made very rarely.
• There were two kinds of coins used by the Rajputs.
One type had the name of the king written in Sanskrit on one side and an image of a lady on the other. This type of coin was used by the Kalachuris, Chandelas of Bundelkhand, Tomars of Ajmer and Delhi, and Rathores of Kannauj.
The kings of Gandhara or Sindh made the other kind of silver coins, which had a bull sitting on one side and a man on a horse on the other.
Coins from the Pandyan and Chola Dynasties:
• In the beginning, Pandyan coins were square and had an elephant on them. Fish became a very important sign on coins over time.
• The writing on the gold and silver coins was in Sanskrit. The writing on the copper coins was in Tamil.
On the coins of Chola King Raja Raja I, there was a standing king on one side and a sitting goddess on the other, and the writing was usually in Sanskrit. On the coins of Rajendra I, the words “Sri Rajendra” or “Gangaikonda Chola” were written next to the symbols of a tiger and a fish.
• Lions were on the coins of the Pallava era.
Coins from the Chola and Pandya times
Turkish and Delhi Sultanate Coins:
• The coins had the king’s name, title, and the date based on the Hijri calendar. • There was no picture of the king or queen on the coins because Islam forbids making images of people. For the first time, the coins also had the name of the mint on them.
• Gold, silver, copper, and billon coins were made by the Sultans of Delhi.
Iltutmish came up with the idea of the Silver Tanka and the Copper Jital.
Alauddin Khilji changed the design by taking off the name of the Khalif and putting in titles that praised himself instead.
Muhammad bin Tughlaq tried to use copper and metal coins as token money, but it didn’t work.
Sher Shah Suri (1540–1545) made two weight standards, one for silver coins of 178 grains and one for copper coins of 330 grains. In the end, these were called the rupee and the dam.
Vijayanagara Empire Coins:
• From the 14th to the 17th century, the Vijayanagara Empire made a lot of gold coins. They also used pure silver and copper in their coins.
Gold fanams are fractional units, and they have a figure of a running fighter and a dagger on them.
Silver taras are small amounts of silver.
Copper coins are used in day-to-day business
• The first coins from Vijayanagara were made in different mints and had different names, like Barkur gadyanas, Bhatkal gadyanas, etc.
• The words were written in either Kannada or Sanskrit.
• There are pictures of a two-headed eagle with an elephant in each of its beaks and claws, a bull, an elephant, and different Hindu gods.
• The Krishna Deva Raya gold varahan coin (1509–1529) had a sitting Vishnu on one side and the Sanskrit words Shri Pratap Krishna Raya on the other.
Vijayanagara Empire Coins
Mughal Coinage
• The Mughals’ standard gold coin was the Mohur, which was between 170 and 175 grains.
Abul Fazl wrote in ‘Ain-i-Akbari’ that a Mohur was worth nine rupees. There are also half mohurs and quarter mohurs.
• The most well-known Mughal piece was the silver rupee, which was based on Sher Shah’s money.
The 320–330-grain weight of Sher Shah’s dam was used to make the Mughal copper coin.
• Both round and square coins were made by Akbar. In 1579, he made gold coins called “Ilahi coins” to spread the word about his new religion, “Din-i-Illahi.”
On this coin, the words “God is great, may his glory be praised” were written.
One ilahi coin was worth 10 rupees.
The biggest gold coin was the Sahansah.
The names of the Persian solar months were on these coins.
• Jahangir put a couplet about the story on the coins. He put the name of his beloved wife, Noorjahan, on some of his coins. The Zodiac signs were on the coins that were the most well-known.
Mughal Coins
Important Facts
• The Vedas are the first place in Indian history where coins are talked about. The name for coins made of metal was “nishka.”
• The Rupee was created by Sher Shah Suri, an Afghan king from the 1600s. It was made of silver.
• At that time, one rupee was worth the same as four copper coins.
The name Rupee is still used for the Indian currency.
Rupya was made of silver, which at the time weighed about 11.34 grammes.
• In ancient India, people put their coins in “money trees.”
A money tree was a tree-shaped flat piece of metal with metal stems.
Each branch had a round disc with a hole in the middle at the end.
Each of these discs was an Indian coin from the past. When someone needed money, all they had to do was break a coin off the money tree.
• Gupta kings put their real names on the front of their coins and made up new names that ended with the word “aditya,” which means “sun,” on the back.
• Chhatrapati Shivaji put his names in Nagari writing on gold huns and copper Shivarais.
• King Kanthiraya Narasa’s coins from the Wodeyar kingdom (Mysore, 1399–1947) showed the Narasimha avatar of Vishnu and weighed between six and eight grains.
Haidar Ali, who overthrew the Wodeyar family, kept using their coins for a while, which had pictures of Shiva and Parvati on the gold pagodas. Tipu Sultan’s coins showed two different eras.
The Coinage Act of 1906 was changed by the Coinage Act of 2011.
• The term “coin” refers to any metal or non-metal coin that has been stamped by the government or a government-backed body. It also includes:
• The Coinage Act of 2011 says that the central government can create and make coins with different values.
The RBI’s job is limited to handing out coins that the national government gives them.
• The government chooses how many coins to make based on suggestions from the RBI, which it gets once a year.
• The Indian government owns four mints where coins are made. They are in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Noida.
