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INDIAN
NUMISMATICS
D. D. KOSAMBI
Indian Council for Historical Research, 1981
Introduction
The fascinatingly wide range which the historical studies and generalizations of D. D. Kosambi
cover is known to all his readers and it is indeed a measure of his great versatility that in no other
area was the relationship between his ‘basic’ discipline and history as direct as in the study of
coins. A Professor of Mathematics all through his teaching career and an acknowledged original
contributor to statistical and genetical studies,” Kosambi did not, however, let statistics alone
dominate his numismatic research; his papers on the subject show him to be equipped with not
only the basic rigours of physically handling coins but also his capacity to use, in his attempts to
buttress his statistical findings, an impressive mass of literary data, and his familiarity with the latest
research on coins, Indian and non-Indian.
Despite the fact that Kosambi personally examined more than 12,000 coins of ‘all periods’, his
focus, during the twentysix years that he spent in studying different hoards and also in elaborating
the methods of his study, remained all through on ‘punchmarked’ coins. Reasons for it may be
read through his repeated pleas for scientific numismatics, which require, as is clear from the
following specifications which he laid down, a set of precise data: “The coins must have been cut
with sufficient accuracy at the beginning so that their initial variation is not much greater than the
changes caused by circulation. This excludes copper, pewter, and even billon coins of the ancient
period.... Again, the circulation must be regular enough to have the proper ctlect, which excludes
gold coins in general, almost always hoarded with the minimum handling, but liable also to be
clipped or, in India, rubbed on the touchstone. Finally, the groups must have sufficiently large
members with comparable history, i.e. should be members of the same hoard”.Hoards of punchmarked coins were available for study to many a scholar before Kosambi’s time,
and what primarily distinguishes him from his predecessors is not his use of a statistical method as
such but a set of entirely different assumptions which led him to such a method. In dealing with the
weights of coins, particularly of coin-groups, variations in which have important chronological
implications, Kosambi did not proceed from a theoretical standard: “I submit the opinion that the
rati was not used, even in ancient times, to weigh the coins, but rather the coins determined the
choice of the seed, exactly as at present”. When actual weights in a group are carefully analysed,
variations in them cannot be easily explained away as aberrations from a theoretical standard, and
Kosambi found in statistics—in the method suggested by the ‘homogeneous random process’—
5a way of tackling the problem. The statistical part of Kosambi’s studies may be incomprehensible
to many of us, but the assumptions underlying it will not. In considering the weight-standards
represented by coin-groups Kosambi started by pointing out that, although the possibility that in
antiquity the weight-standard of a group was more homogeneous than the percentage of alloy,
there was an ‘unavoidable variation’ even in coins newly minted; that the rate of such variation,
among individual coins would go up, because of the wear caused by handling, after they had been
put into circulation; and that in the coin-group as a whole “the decrease in the average weight and
the increase in the variation are each strictly proportional to the length of time the coinage has been
in circulation”. A hoard does not necessarily consist of a single group, but the above assumptions
would apply as effectively to disparate groups represented in a hoard as to a single group for the
purpose of determining the chronological history of each group. In fact the hoards studied by
Kosambi were all of composite character, where demarcation between the groups led him at a
subsequent stage to speculate on their absolute chronology.
Once it is possible to establish the relative positioning of the groups in a hoard, the natural concern
of a numismatist would be to speculate on their circulation history as also the history of the
making of a hoard, namely, whether a hoard is deposited at one time or in successive stages or
whether or not the hoard indicates the volume and variety of coins in circulation at a given point of
time. This concern is underlined in Kosambi’s statement: “The main purpose of a coin is not to
carry a legend, portrait or cult marks but to put into circulation a piece of metal cut to a standard
6weight”. Here too the rate of decrease and the range of variation in such decrease would be useful
indicators, but Kosambi added two more dimensions to this approach. The first is based on an
assumption—and the assumption has all his sound reasoning to back it—-that the reverse marks
on punchmarked coins were put by traders or traders’ guilds, and the fact, demonstrated by him,
that the greater the number of reverse marks the less the weight, would be a calculable measure of
the’length of the circulation period of individual coins in a group. Kosambi calculated the interval
between two reverse marks to have been of twelve years’ duration. The second dimension is the
consideration of the absorption rate of coins. Coins tend gradually to disappear in the process of
circulation. Broadly “Speaking, this rate of absorption is proportional to the number of coins in
circulation. In considering the circulation history of coins represented in a hoard this assumption is
important, because, as Kosambi could show, “The number of coins per reverse mark decreased in
a very regular geometric progression”.
But statistics, according to Kosambi’s own admission, “by itself cannot group the coins; it is of
use only in discrimination between the groups”. So from this initial ‘discrimination between the
groups’ he proceeded on to the minting history of each group. It was as such necessary to probe
into the significance of the symbols on the coins, which, because of the regularity in the pattern of
their occurrence, were considered within the range of a sensible explanation. With his characteristic
rneticulousness Kosambi waded through a vast mass of literary texts ranging, in variety, from theBuddhist Aryamanjusriilakalpa to a fifteenth-century Phalajyotisa text, and if the mystery of the
symbols is considered to still remain unresolved, the attempt can be justified in Kosambi’s own
language: “All the foregoing has been written only to point out some neglected possibilities, and to
show that as mere conjecture goes, a novice can compete with veterans”. His attempts to assign
different groups in the Taxila hoards and the Paila hoard to specific rulers and dynasties of Magadha
and Kosala were largely based on his own reading of the meaning of the symbols, but it is needless
to accept that it was all work of 'mere conjecture’, as in all cases specific attributions came only after
rigorous grouping of the coins in the hoards had been made. And secondly, in no such cases did
Kosambi let guesses transcend the limits of his assumed chronological framework—a framework
strengthened by parallels from outside India.
Kosambi did not make use of any data from archaeological stratification in his dating of punchmarked
coins. No such data, apart from those revealed by easily dateable coins in some hoards, were
available when he began his numismatic research, but even in his later articles there is no mention of
dating suggested by stratigraphy. But it would be certainly wrong to accuse him of lack of awareness
in this regard; what he suggested as far back as 1941-42 would show that he viewed archaeology
as potentially of more comprehensive use than mere dating. Something could be done with a chart of
findspots. but not in the accepted dilettantish manner. If the findspots are accurately marked with
groups, and the numbers counted instead of just the occurrence of a single coin of the type, we
would make better conjunctures. Age and distance might be shown by loss of average weight, and
the numbers or at least proportion would increase as one approached the locality of issue. For this,
however, will be needed not only better grouping of information but also far more information from
new excavations and more thorough-going surface collections.... It would have been of value to
know the stratification of the coins of the older Taxila hoard.
What is remarkable is that even without the aid of stratigraphy his method alone brought his dating
close to the possible range within which punchmarked coins were minted and circulated. He may be
said to have gone a bit off the mark when, he suggested that the oldest coins in. the Paila hoard
“represent the last of the real ancient Iksvakus, to be distinguished from successors like Pasenadi”
(the suggestion possibly deriving from his assumption that coinage in India could be as old as the
7eighth century B.C.), or that the cast coins were chronologically-later than the punchmarked series.
But nothing known from archaeology so far seems to contradict his findings that coinage appeared
in. the south in the Mauryan period in the wake of early historical trade or that a hoard, such as the
one at Bodcnayakanur, could contain coins minted much later than the Mauryan period and be
deposited as late as the fourth century A.D.
In.