Punch-marked coins, also known as ''Aahat coins'', are a type of early

coinage of India The Coinage of India began anywhere between early 1st millennium BCE to the 6th century BCE, and consisted mainly of copper and silver coins in its initial stage.Allan & Stern (2008) The coins of this period were '' Karshapanas'' or ''Pana''. ...

, dating to between about the 6th and 2nd centuries BC. It was of irregular shape.

History

The study of the relative chronology of these coins has successfully established that the first punch-marked coins initially only had one or two punches, with the number of punches increasing over time. The first coins in India may have been

minted Minted is an online marketplace of premium design goods created by independent artists and designers. The company sources art and design from a community of more than 16,000 independent artists from around the world. Minted offers artists two bus ...

around the 6th century BC by the

Mahajanapadas The Mahājanapadas ( sa, great realm, from ''maha'', "great", and '' janapada'' "foothold of a people") were sixteen kingdoms or oligarchic republics that existed in ancient India from the sixth to fourth centuries BCE during the second ur ...

of the

Indo-Gangetic Plain The Indo-Gangetic Plain, also known as the North Indian River Plain, is a fertile plain encompassing northern regions of the Indian subcontinent, including most of northern and eastern India, around half of Pakistan, virtually all of Bangla ...

. 19th-century proposals which suggested an origin from as early as 1000 BC, independent of the introduction of coins in Asia Minor, are "no longer given any credence". Silver coins were certainly being produced in the

Achaemenid The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Based in Western Asia, it was contemporarily the largest em ...

Satrapy of

Gandāra Gandāra, or Gadāra in Achaemenid inscriptions (Old Persian cuneiform: 𐎥𐎭𐎠𐎼, , also transliterated as since the nasal "n" before consonants was omitted in the Old Persian script, and simplified as or sometimes )Some sounds are o ...

, by the mid-4th century BC, before the

Indian campaign of Alexander the Great The Indian campaign of Alexander the Great began in 327 BC. After conquering the Achaemenid Empire of Persia, the Macedonian king Alexander launched a campaign into the north-western regions of the Indian subcontinent (precisely in present-day ...

, in 327 BC, as Plutarch noted

Taxiles Taxiles (in Greek Tαξίλης or Ταξίλας; lived 4th century BC) was the Greek chroniclers' name for the ruler who reigned over the tract between the Indus and the Jhelum (Hydaspes) Rivers in the Punjab region at the time of Alexander t ...

(Ambhi) of Taxila exchanged coined tribute with Alexander. According to

Joe Cribb Joe Cribb is a numismatist, specialising in Asian coinages, and in particular on coins of the Kushan Empire. His catalogues of Chinese silver currency ingots, and of ritual coins of Southeast Asia were the first detailed works on these subjects i ...

, Indian punch-marked coins go back to the mid-4th century BC or slightly earlier, and actually started with the punch-marked coinage of the Achaemenids in the

Kabul Kabul (; ps, , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into 22 municipal districts. Acc ...

Gandhara Gandhāra is the name of an ancient region located in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent, more precisely in present-day north-west Pakistan and parts of south-east Afghanistan. The region centered around the Peshawar Vall ...

area. The coins of this period were punch-marked coins called ''Puranas'', ''Karshapanas'' or ''Pana''. Several of these coins had a single symbol, for example, Saurashtra had a humped bull, and Dakshin Panchala had a

Swastika The swastika (卐 or 卍) is an ancient religious and cultural symbol, predominantly in various Eurasian, as well as some African and American cultures, now also widely recognized for its appropriation by the Nazi Party and by neo-Nazis. ...

, others, like

Magadha Magadha was a region and one of the sixteen sa, script=Latn, Mahajanapadas, label=none, lit=Great Kingdoms of the Second Urbanization (600–200 BCE) in what is now south Bihar (before expansion) at the eastern Ganges Plain. Magadha was ruled ...

, had several symbols. These coins were made of

silver Silver is a chemical element with the symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical co ...

of a standard weight but with an irregular shape. This was gained by cutting up silver bars and then making the correct weight by cutting the edges of the coin. They are mentioned in the

Manu Manu may refer to: Geography *Manú Province, a province of Peru, in the Madre de Dios Region **Manú National Park, Peru **Manú River, in southeastern Peru *Manu River (Tripura), which originates in India and flows into Bangladesh * Manu Templ ...

(c. 200 BC - 200 AD), Panini (bef. 300 BC), and

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...

Jataka The Jātakas (meaning "Birth Story", "related to a birth") are a voluminous body of literature native to India which mainly concern the previous births of Gautama Buddha in both human and animal form. According to Peter Skilling, this genre is ...

(c. 300 BC - 400 AD), circulating in the North until approximately the beginning of the first century AD, but lasted three centuries longer in the South, i.e. until about 300 AD. *

Shurasena Shurasena ( sa, शूरसेन, ) was an ancient Yadava ruler of Mathura. He was married to a Nāga (or serpent) woman named Marisha. She bore all of his children and was the cause for Vasuki’s boon to Bhima."''Surasena or shoorsaini wa ...

Surashtra Saurashtra, also known as Sorath or Kathiawar, is a peninsular region of Gujarat, India, located on the Arabian Sea coast. It covers about a third of Gujarat state, notably 11 districts of Gujarat, including Rajkot District. It was formerly a ...

** Early coins of India (400 BC – 100 AD) were made of

and copper, and bore animal and plant symbols on them.Allan & Stern (2008)

Greek and Achaemenid coinage in northwestern India (6th century onward)

Coin finds in the

Kabul hoard The Kabul hoard, also called the Chaman Hazouri, Chaman Hazouri or Tchamani-i Hazouri hoard, is a coin hoard discovered in the vicinity of Kabul, Afghanistan in 1933. The collection contained numerous Achaemenid coins as well as many Greek coins f ...

(c. 380 BC), Mir Zakah hoards (c. 100 AD), Taxila

Bhir Mound The Bhir Mound ( ur, ) is an archaeological site in Taxila in the Punjab province of Pakistan. It contains some of the oldest ruins of Ancient Taxila, dated to sometime around the period 800-525 BC as its earliest layers bear "grooved" Red B ...

(c. 300 BC), or the Shaikhan Dehri hoard near

Pushkalavati Pushkalavati ( ps, پشکلاوتي; Urdu: ; Sanskrit: ; Prākrit: ; grc, Πευκελαῶτις ) or Pushkaravati (Sanskrit: ; Pāli: ), and later Shaikhan Dheri ( ps, شېخان ډېرۍ; ur, ), was the capital of the Gandhara kingdom, ...

have revealed numerous Achaemenid coins as well as many

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

coins from the 5th and 4th centuries BC were circulating in the area, at least as far as the

Indus The Indus ( ) is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans-Himalayan river of South and Central Asia. The river rises in mountain springs northeast of Mount Kailash in Western Tibet, flows northwest through the disputed region of Kashmi ...

during the reign of the

Achaemenids The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, wikt:𐎧𐏁𐏂𐎶, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an History of Iran#Classical antiquity, ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Bas ...

(549 - 330 BCE), who were in control of the areas as far as

. In 2007 a small coin hoard was discovered at the site of ancient

(Shaikhan Dehri) in

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...

. The hoard contained a tetradrachm minted in Athens c. 500-480 BC, together with a number of local types as well as silver cast ingots. The Athens coin is the earliest known example of its type to be found so far to the east. While the Mir Zakah hoards offered hundreds of thousands of examples, punched and stamped bars and coins, manufactured between the late 5th century BC, and late 1st century AD. According to

, these early Greek coins were at the origin of Indian punch-marked coins, the earliest coins developed in India, which used minting technology derived from Greek coinage.

Daniel Schlumberger Daniel Théodore Schlumberger (19 December 1904 – 21 October 1972) was a French archaeologist and Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Strasbourg and later Princeton University. Biography After having been invited by ...

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:

Mauryan Period (322–185 BC)

During the

Mauryan The Maurya Empire, or the Mauryan Empire, was a geographically extensive Iron Age historical power in the Indian subcontinent based in Magadha, having been founded by Chandragupta Maurya in 322 BCE, and existing in loose-knit fashion unti ...

period, punch-marked coins continued to be issued in large quantities. Similarly, the coinage of the Mauryan Empire was an example of the punch-marked coinage of Magadha. Each coin contained on average 50–54 grains of silver depending on wear and 32

ratti Ratti (Sanskrit: ) is a traditional Indian unit of measurement for mass. Based on the nominal weight of a Gunja seed (''Abrus precatorius''), it measured approximately 1.8 or 1.75 grains or 0.11339 g as standardized weight. It is still used by t ...

s in weight, and earlier coins are flatter than later coins. Punches on these coins count to 450 different types with the most common the

sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

and six-armed symbols, and various forms of geometrical patterns, circles, wheels, human figures, various animals, bows and arrows, hills and trees etc. In the North, following the fall of the

Maurya Empire The Maurya Empire, or the Mauryan Empire, was a geographically extensive Iron Age historical power in the Indian subcontinent based in Magadha, having been founded by Chandragupta Maurya in 322 BCE, and existing in loose-knit fashion until 1 ...

and the increased influence of the Greco-Bactrians and

Indo-Greeks The Indo-Greek Kingdom, or Graeco-Indian Kingdom, also known historically as the Yavana Kingdom (Yavanarajya), was a Hellenistic-era Greek kingdom covering various parts of Afghanistan and the northwestern regions of the Indian subcontinent ...

, punch-marked coins were replaced by cast die-struck coins, as visible in the

Post-Mauryan coinage of Gandhara The Post-Mauryan coinage of Gandhara refers to the period of coinage production in Gandhara, following the breakup of the Maurya Empire (321-185 BCE). When Mauryan central power disappeared, several small independent entities were formed, which sta ...

References

External links

''The archaic indian punch marked coins – approaches to classification'', by Shailendra Bhandare

India's earliest coinage – punch-marked coins

{{DEFAULTSORT:Punch Marked Coins Ancient currencies Coins of India Ancient India

History

Greek and Achaemenid coinage in northwestern India (6th century onward)

Mauryan Period (322–185 BC)

See also

References

External links