Ever since the existence of civilisations, humans have been trading to facilitate exchange. But trading can happen without coins by recording debt. In fact, it is debt or rinn — the word found in the Rig Veda — that played an important role in the creation of coins.
While we do not have evidence of coinage in Harappa, we find cowrie shells that might have been used by Harappans as currency. Think of the Hindi phrase, “Ek phooti kaudi nahin doonga” (I won’t give a single penny) — four phooti kaudi (broken cowrie shells) make one cowrie shell, and thus, currency.
Even today, you can see women in temples with necklaces of cowries shells. It indicates that similar to gold coins, that some women also wear around their neck, cowrie shells were used as currency for exchange in the past.
Cowrie shells were found in the Maldive islands and were used as currency in both Africa and India until the 16th century when the Portuguese broke the system.
Apart from cowrie shells, people across the world used different things as currency. In South America, for example, some communities used cocoa beans as currency.
However, today, when we talk of coins, we speak of metal coins. Merchants, nomadic people, and armies — all mobile people who used to settle their accounts before moving on — used coins.
Some of the earliest metal coins — silver and copper – used in India came from the Mauryans because of a mercantile boom in the greater Bihar region. These copper and silver coins were also known as Karshapana or punch-marked coins.
The word ‘kosha’ or treasury comes from Karshapana. The English word cash is also derived from Karshapana.
Greece, China, and India were using coinage around the same time after 500 BC. These coins were issued by mercantile guilds and bore the images of natural objects like the sun and moon.
In the Kushan period, gold coins emerged for the first time. Concurrently, the images of Buddha as well as the king were used for the first time on these coins.
In the Gupta period, the gold coins (dinara) have images of the king and queen, along with gods and goddesses such as Lakshmi and the warrior son of Shiva and Parvati – Skanda.
After the Gupta period, there was an apparent decline in gold coins. The kings were no longer issuing it with their faces. Perhaps, they did not find the need for it, because long-distance trade with countries as far flung as Rome was replaced by short-distance trade, where markets opened up.
The need for such gold coins had, thus, gone down. Instead, the old system of recording debt to settle accounts resumed.
Around 700-800 CE, coinage was found in the Northern and Western parts of India where the Pratiharas ruled. The Rashtrakutas in the South and Palas in Bengal, on the other hand, did not feel the need for royal coinage to settle accounts.
However, this was not a decline in trade but a change in trading patterns as more regional economies were emerging. Coins, thus, reveal something important about our culture too.
Devdutt Pattanaik is an Indian physician turned leadership consultant, mythologist, author and communicator whose works focus largely on the areas of myth, religion, mythology, and management.
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