Punch-marked Coins Research Articles

Archaeo-metallurgical study on two early historic punch marked coins

A metallurgical investigation was carried out on two early historic silver and copper punch marked coins. The objective was to study the metal composition, and the methods used in making of the early historic coins in India. The inductively coupled mass spectrometry was used to analyze the elemental composition of the coins. Metal formation and its mechanical properties were studied in physical metallurgical laboratory. The study revealed that the coins were not pure metal but an alloy. The silver coin contained copper as a major alloying element with other elements viz., V, Fe, Zn, Sn, Pb, As, Au in trace level while in copper the coin lead was the main alloying element with Ni, Fe, As, Au and Co in trace.

Symbols on ancient Indian coins uncyphered

Ancient Indian coins from Pre-Mauryan era has been filled with a certain mystery as well as speculation. The coins in reference are punch marked coins. What is stamped in these coins have long since been considered symbols without really a clear meaning. The only ones which can be clearly understood are the ones which are images of animals such as elephants. What has been in front of our eyes all this time, remained obscured, due to erroneous human thinking. What I have found is characters in Brahmi Script and will show and provide the Sanskrit interpretations on not just a single coin but multiple coins in different periods in Ancient Indian history.

Vaishnava Symbols on Punch-Marked Coins

Vaishnava Symbols on Punch-Marked Coins

Analysis of ancient Indian silver punch-marked coins by external PIXE

Seven silver punch-marked coins were analysed using external particle induced X-ray emission technique. The main group of elements like Ag, Cu, Au, Pb and Fe were estimated along with a number of trace/minor elements such as K, Ca, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Co, Ni and Rb in the analysed silver coins. Gold was found in all the coins and varied between 0.7% and 6.2% indicating the better economic condition of that civilisation.

EDXRF study of Indian punch-marked silver coins

Coins are important archaeological objects that can provide valuable information regarding coin minting methodology and provenance as well as politics and economics of the time. Punch-marked coins are the oldest known numismatics used in ancient India. 23 Indian punch-marked silver coins were analysed, for the first time, by using multi-elemental non-destructive energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) technique. Our study reveals that silver, copper, iron, gold and lead are the significant constituents of the Indian punch marked silver coins, with minor/trace of elements like Ti, Cr, Co, Ni, As and Y also seems to indicate the fragmentation as well as the impoverishment of the power for the regimes that had produced the studied coins.

Upon The Contextual Significance of Centain Groups of Ancient Indiān Signs

IT is more than 20 years since Durga Prasad published his ‘ Observations on different types of silver punch marked coins, their periods and locale ’1. In this lengthy paper one section was devoted to demonstrating that certain signs can be regarded as Mauryan royal marks (pp. N 61-7). This conclusion and the many probabilities it raises have long been widely accepted in India, but in Europe acceptance has been more reserved. We are not here concerned with Prasad' main argument but with the section indicated above, our purpose being to restate that part of the evidence and consider its probable meaning. From some points of view Prasad's advocacy was imperfect, for in presenting his case he made certain assumptions which we are unable to accept, and thus weakened the force of his argument.

Notes on the Silver Punch-marked Coins, and the Copper Punch-marked Coins, in the British Museum

In a previous paper notes have been, given on some points in connection with the Silver Punch-marked Coins of the Older Thin Class in the British Museum. Here further notes are given on the Silver Punch-marked Coins of the Later Thick Class of the Mauryan Period, on the Copper Punchmarked Coins, and on the Tribal Coins: for convenience of reference the paragraphs are numbered in continuation of those of the previous notes.

Notes on the Silver Punch-marked Coins in the British Museum

18. The Taurine. On p. xxxiii Mr. Allan gives a group of eighteen symbols “ formed by combinations of taurine symbols. None of them are common, and most of them are characteristic of variations only ”. Three of these require notice. No. 6, No. 18, and No. 7, are shown the wrong way up, No. 6 in its perfect form occurs as one of the four class-marks on 147 of the Bhiṛ Mound coins (Class D), on many of which it is clear, as . The vertical line in symbol 6 is the shaft of a spear, the spear-head of which is in the centre of the mark.

Notes on the Silver Punch-marked Coins in the British Museum

The Catalogue of the Coins of Ancient India in the British Museum, by Mr. J. Allan, published last year, has made the silver punch-marked coins available to all, and the clear system of classification which Mr. Allan has followed and his scholarly and complete Introduction give all the information about these coins that is at present available, while the large number of the coins which are illustrated in the plates enable the conclusions arrived at in the Introduction to be confirmed or questioned. General thanks are due to Mr. Allan for this important work. As this Catalogue will be the standard source of reference for the consideration and classification of these coins, it is important to note any points that arise from its consideration.

Punch-marked Silver Coins Their Standard of Weight, Age, and Minting

In this Journal for January, 1937, Mr. A. F. Hemmy, from an exhaustive examination of the weights of silver punch-marked coins, “570 in the British Museum, 196 in Calcutta, and a single hoard of 108 coins (of which 103 are included) found near Patna, and now in the museum of that place; in all, 869 coins,” shows that (excluding a small number of the coins, 4 per cent only, which Mr. Hemmy considers have a different standard), the standard of weight of these coins is 52 grains, which multiplied by 4 is 208, and that the standard is therefore one-fourth of the revised principal unit of the Indus (Mohenjo-Daro) system of weights, viz. 13·625 gm. = 210·2 gr.

The Punch-Marked Coins: A Survival of the Indus Civilization

In this Journal, ante, pp. 307 f., in an article with the above title, Dr. C. L. Fábri draws attention to the affinity that seemingly exists between symbols found on the Mohenjo-daro and Harappā seals and those on certain punch-marked coins. As the impression might be conveyed by this paper that Dr. Fábri was the first to be struck by this correspondence, it is only fair to note that two Indian scholars had previously called public attention to this similarity, citing several of the identical examples now given by Dr. Fábri. Dr. Pran Nath noticed the resemblance between the signs five years ago, and made a special study of the punch-marked coins in the British Museum in this connection; he referred to the question on more than one occasion, and published specific examples in the Indian Historical Quarterly, vol. vii (1931), Supplement, pp. 11 f. Mr. Durga Prasad also, in pamphlets and lectures and in the thesis submitted to the Numismatic Society of India, which won the gold medal of the Society in 1933 (at Baroda), had dealt with the question.

The Punch-marked Coins: A Survival of the Indus Civilization

“Punch-marked coins are the earliest Indian archæo-logical ‘document’ that exists,” wrote Mr. E. H. C. Walsh in 1923 in a thorough study of these interesting remains of Indian proto-historic times. At the time when he wrote his article, very little, if anything, was known of the freshly discovered prehistoric civilization in the Indus Valley, at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Even in a more recent publication, in Professor Chakrabortty's numismatic handbook,2 no attempt is made to explain the symbols punched upon these primitive coins, and it still holds good what Mr. Walsh said in 1923: “Until our present sources of information are added to, the significance of the marks on punch-marked coins must remain the subject of speculation and surmise.” The late Mr. W. Theobald's study is an excellent collection of materials, but his explanations might fitly be called “archaic”. Mr. D. R. Bhandarkar has given some very ingenious interpretations of a number of these rūpas. But these interpretations concern only a very few of the large number of symbols.

Indian Punch-marked Coins

In the present paper, certain points are submitted for consideration with reference to Indian punch-marked coins. They are the result of an examination of two finds of punchmarked coins found in 1917, the one at Patna and the other at Gorho Ghat, north of the Ganges, in the Bhagalpur District of the Province of Bihar and Orissa. My examination of the Patna coins was published in the Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, 1919, pp. 17–72, and of the Gorho Ghat coins in the same Journal, 1919, pp. 463–94. I have since then examined a number of other punch-marked coins which have agreed with and supported the conclusions that were arrived at from the examination of the above two finds.