Encyclopaedia of Indian Coins- Ancient Coins of Northern India, Up to Circa 650 AD (Set of 2 Volumes)

Coins form an important source of the history of ancient India; in fact, for certain periods, like those of the Indo Creeks, the Saka-Pahlavas, and the Western Kshatrapas, monetary issues are almost the only source of our information. In the Preface of his magnum opus, The Indo-Greeks, A K Narain very aptly remarks. For certain periods of Indian history the historian has to be a numismatist".

Several years back, the Numismatic Society of India launched an ambitious scheme of publishing corpuses of Indian coins, from the earliest times to the modern period, in ten volumes. Unfortunately, only Volume IV, that is A S Altekar's The Coinage of the Gupta Empire (Varanasi, 1957), saw the light of day. A N Lahiri, in his individual capacity, published a Corpus of Indo Greek Coins (Calcutta, 1965). Tribal coins were dealt with, first by K K Dasgupta, in his A Tribal History of Ancient India: A Numismatic Approach (Calcutta, 1974), and, recently, by Devendra Handa, in Tribal Coins of Ancient India (New Delhi, 2007). R C Senior produced the masterly work. Indo-Scythian Coins and History (Lancaster, Pennsylvania, London, 2001), in three volumes. However, a concise A-Z encyclopaedia of the coins of ancient India remains a desideratum. Hence, the present Encyclopaedia of India Coins.

Dr Prashant Srivastava, BA Honours, MA, Ph D, D Litt, is Associate Professor of Ancient Indian History and Archaeology, University of Lucknow, Lucknow. He has been awarded four gold medals (BA Honours one, MA two, D Litt one). He is the author of 12 books, including Joint Coin-types of Ancient India (Varanasi, 1990). Aspects of Ancient Indian Numismatics (Delhi, 1996). Coins of Ancient India (Lucknow, 1997, jointly with Professor K K Thaplyal); Art Motifs on Ancient Indian Coins (New Delhi, 2004); and The Apracharajas (Delhi, 2007). He is an assistant editor of Aitihya, a research journal brought out by the Department of Ancient History and Culture, MJP Rohilkhand University, Bareilly. He has also contributed over 45 research papers in reputed journals, and about two dozen popular articles on ancient Indian history in magazines and newspapers. In 2006, he was awarded a major research project by the University Grants Commission, New Delhi, for a period of three years, and the present work has evolved out of the same project report submitted to the University Grants Commission.

Coins form one of the important sources of the history of ancient India; in fact, for certain periods, like those of the Indo-Greeks, the Saka-Pahlavas, and the Western Kshatrapas, monetary issues are almost the only source of our information. In the Preface of his magnum opus, The Indo-Greeks (Oxford, 1957), AK Narain very aptly remarks, 'For certain periods of Indian history the historian has to be a numismatist".

Several years back, the Numismatic Society of India launched an ambitious scheme of publishing corpuses of Indian coins, from the earliest times to the modern period, in ten volumes, each volume being of between four hundred and five hundred pages, and having illustrations of coins arranged in twenty to twenty-five plates. Unfortunately, only Volume IV, that is A S Altekar's The Coinage of the Gupta Empire (Varanasi, 1957), saw the light of day. AN Lahiri, in his individual capacity, published a Corpus of Indo-Greek Coins (Calcutta, 1965). Tribal coins were dealt with, first by KK Dasgupta, in his A Tribal History of Ancient India-A Numismatic Approach (Calcutta, 1974), and, recently, by Devendra Handa, in Tribal Coins of Ancient India (New Delhi, 2007). R C Senior produced the masterly work, Indo-Scythian Coins and History (Lancaster, Pennsylvania, London, 2001), in three volumes. However, a concise A-Z encyclopaedia of the coins of ancient India remains a desideratum. Hence, the present Encyclopaedia of India Coins.

I am well aware that, as early as nineteenth century, while preparing the work, The Coins of the Mohammadan States of India (London, 1885), Stanley Lane-Poole had realized, 'To be a general numismatist is beyond the powers of one man'. That is why, for the present work, I have confined myself to the ancient coins of northern India, up to circa 650 AD, and further encyclopaediae of the ancient coins of southern India, and the early mediaeval coins of northern India, might be prepared some time in the future.

In the primitive stages, the needs of human beings were simple and were supplied mostly by nature the trees and plants provided fruits and roots, and the animals, meat to feed them; the leaves and barks of trees and animal skins covered their bodies; the natural caves gave them shelter from the elements and enemies. But as man settled down and society came into existence, occupations became specialized. What man could not himself produce, he had to obtain from others. This gave birth to the barter system. But barter system requires a double coincidence. Of the two persons participating in the transaction, what one person requires must be in excess with the second person, and the latter must be desirous of the commodity that is in excess with the former. Also, it was always not easy to determine the relative value of the various commodities. To do away with these difficulties, a certain commodity was adopted as a medium of exchange. In vedic India, cow seems to have served this purpose. Ten cows are mentioned as the cost of [an image of] "Indra. The wealth of a person has been calculated in cows. Battles were often fought to appropriate the animal wealth of other tribes.

But such a medium of exchange cannot have its submultiples. One could not pay half, or one-fourth, or one-eighth of a cow. This difficulty was overcome by the introduction of metal as medium of exchange. Dividing a lump or piece of metal does not adversely affect its intrinsic value. Each transaction, however, required the use of scales and weights to weigh the metal, and also provision had to be made for the testing of the purity of the metal. Gradually, to get rid of these problems, metallic pieces of definite weight, and more or less definite shape and size, came to be issued by recognized authorities, each piece bearing a device, or a legend, or both, identifying the issuing authority, and testifying to the metallic purity and weight of the piece. Such metallic pieces are termed coins. The earliest coins were perhaps manufactured by the Lydians or the Greek settlers of Asia, around 700 BC. These were of electrum, a natural alloy of gold and silver, which was later on replaced by gold.

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