The study of coinage for the economic history of India has not been made properly and the place of coins in the economic life of the people in different periods and places has yet to be determined. Our study has so far been confined to testing the specific gravity of the coins and this would not carry us far unless we could have some idea of the volume of coins in circulation at a particular place in a particular period. The quantity of coins is a problem which has not received serious attention of the scholars so far in India. In this field the first serious effort was made by D. M. Metcalf ) who devised a formula to assess the quantity of the English coinage of the 8th to i ith centuries. Another attempt was made in respect of the mediaeval Islamic coinage in the Near East 2). Though this formula has its own limitations, the method, however, can be applied to assess the quantity of the Indian coinage. Following this method we have first to establish the maximum available varieties of coins issued at a particular time by a particular ruler and then to determine the capacity of a die for turning out the number of gold, silver and copper coins. Although many moulds of different ages have been discovered in various parts of the country which we have described elsewhere 3), no dies have so far been found that could give an idea of the quantity of the metal used for making a particular coin of a particular variety. It has been suggested that if the dies were made of steel which was abundantly available in India from