Posted:
Abhay,
Sharing something about the confluence of the Indian and Greek cultures - how Indo-Greek coins started being minted and how much the Indian culture was valued by the Greeks.
Based on available evidence, it appears that the notion of money as coins was conceived by three different civilizations independently and almost simultaneously. Coins were introduced as a means to trade things of daily usage in Asia Minor, India and China in the 6th century BC. Most historians agree that the first coins of world were issued by Greeks living in Lydia and Ionia, located on the western coast of modern Turkey. These first coins were made in about 650 BC of Electrum, a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver. They had definite weight and were stamped with punches issued by the local authorities.
Both literary and archaeological evidence confirm that the Indians invented coinage somewhere between the 5th and 6th centuries BC. A hoard of coins discovered at Chaman Huzuri in 1933 AD contained 43 silver punch-marked coins (the earliest coins of India) mixed with Athenian coins and Achaemenid (Persian) coins. The Bhir (Taxila in modern Pakistan) hoard discovered in 1924 AD contained 1,055 punch-marked coins in very worn-out condition and two coins of Alexander in mint condition. This archaeological evidence clearly indicates that the coins were minted in India long before the 4th century BC, i.e. before the Greeks advanced towards India.
Panini wrote his Ashtadhyayi in the 4th or 5th century BC in which he mentioned Satamana, Nishkas, Sana, Vimastika, Karshapana and its various sub-divisions to be used in financial transactions. Thus, coins were known in ancient Indian literature from 500 BC. There is also a strong belief that silver, which was not available in Vedic India (pre 600 BC), became abundantly available by 500-600 BC. Most of the silver came from Afghanistan and Persia as a result of international trade.
The first Greek coins to be minted in India, those of Menander I and Appolodotus I bear the mention "Saviour king" (BASILEOS SOTHROS), a title with high value in the Greek world. Menander and Apollodotus may have been seen as saviours to the Greek populations residing in India. The title was also inscribed in Pali (the Kharohi script) as Tratarasa on the reverse of the coins. Most of the coins of the Greek kings in India were thus bilingual, written in Greek on the front and in Pali on the back, an unprecedented concession to another culture in the Hellenic world!
From the reign of Apollodotus II, around 80 BC, Kharoshthi letters started to be used as mintmarks on coins in combination with Greek monograms and mintmarks. Possibly local technicians started getting involved in the minting process. Incidentally, these Indo-Greek bilingual coins were the key to decipher the Kharohi script by James Prinsep (1799 -1840).
The coinage of the Indo-Greeks remained influential for several centuries throughout the Indian subcontinent:
The Indo-Greek weight and size standard for silver drachms was adopted by the contemporary Buddhist kingdom of the Kunindas in Punjab, the first attempt by an Indian kingdom to produce coins that could compare with those of the Indo-Greeks.
In central India, the Satavahanas (2nd century BC- 2nd century AD) adopted the practice of representing their kings in profile, within circular legends.
The direct successors of the Indo-Greeks in the northwest, the Indo-Scythians and Indo-Parthians, continued displaying their kings within a legend in Greek, and on the obverse, Greek deities.
To the south, the Western Kshatrapas (1st-4th century AD) represented their kings in profile with circular legends in corrupted Greek.
The Kushans (1st-4th century AD) used the Greek language on their coinage until the first few years of the reign of Kanishka, when they adopted the Bactrian language, written with the Greek script.
The Guptas (4th-6th century AD) also showed their rulers in profile, within a legend in corrupted Greek, in the coinage of their western territories.
The latest use of the Greek script on coins corresponds to the rule of the Turkish Shahi of Kabul, around 850 AD.
comment:
p_commentcount