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. The coins of this period were Karshapanas or Pana. 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.

Quotes

• Tipu also issued a new system of coinage, fashioned again by his fixation with Islam. He engraved the following words on the obverse of these coins: “the faith of Ahmad (Muhammad) is proclaimed to the world by the victories of Haidar struck in Pattan [Srirangapattana] in the year Jalu or 1199 Hijri.” On the reverse were engraved, “He [it is unclear whether it refers to God or Tipu] is the only Sultan, the just one the third of Bahari in the year Jalu, and third of the reign.”.. He gave the names of Muslim saints to coins minted in gold and silver. To copper coins, he gave Arabic and Farsi names, and named them after stars. Pagoda was the name of a coin that was in common circulation during that period. Tipu renamed Pagoda to Ahamadi because it was one of the names of the Prophet. Further, he gave the name Sadiq to a coin whose value was two Pagodas. Tipu’s reasoning? Sadiq was the name of the First Caliph. According to this new numismatic nomenclature, the one-paisa coin was called Zehra,the two-paise, Outmaani, and so on. In several instances, he gave new names for coins that he himself had renamed earlier: Farooqi, Jaffar, and Imami, for instance. There was also a Rupee named Hyder.
  • quoted from Sandeep Balakrishna. 2013. Tipu Sultan : The Tyrant of Mysore. Chennai: Rare Publications.

• Fabri added a comparison of Indus signs with symbols on the punch-marked coins, bringing out striking parallels between the two.... Overall, Fabri’s conclusion was:
  We are able to recognize a large number of Indus script pictograms among the punch-marks published by previous writers—too large a number, indeed, to ascribe it to mere coincidence.
  • Fabri, C.L., ‘The punch-marked coins: a survival of the Indus civilization’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1935, quoted from Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.