Journey

Coinage & mint networks — karshāpaṇa to the rupee

Twenty-five stops of the coinage of the subcontinent across twenty-five centuries. Punch-marked silver karshāpaṇa of the Mahājanapadas and Mauryas, Indo-Greek bilingual drachms of the north-west, the dense Śaka-era Western Kṣatrapa series, the Kushan gold dīnāra and the Gupta gold that inherited it, Sātavāhana lead of the Deccan, Chola copper and gold in the south — the Delhi Sultanate tanka, Muhammad bin Tughluq's failed token currency at Daulatabad, Sher Shāh Sūrī's rupiya from Sasaram that the Mughals, Company and RBI all inherited unchanged, the imperial Mughal mints at Agra, Lahore and Burhanpur, Jahāngīr's zodiac issues — Vijayanagara varāhas, Śivājī's Nāgarī-legend Shiv Shāhī hon, Tipu Sultan's Mauludi-era Mysore pagoda, the Portuguese xerafim of Goa that outlasted every other European mint in India, the Kutch kori that struck for four centuries at Bhuj — ending at Fort William's Company rupee and the RBI headquarters that still mints to Sher Shāh's 11.66-g weight.

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Coinage of India as a thread through its political history across 2,500 years — mints, metals, legends, portraits.

Stops (25)

Punch-marked karshāpaṇa · Mahājanapadas - early historic silver, c. 600-200 BCE
India's first true coinage: silver kārshāpaṇa clipped to a 3.4-gram standard and struck with five or more symbols, in circulation across the sixteen Mahājanapadas and continuing under the Mauryas. The coins carry no legend; the symbols are the issuing authority. Finds from Taxila, Pataliputra, Mathura and Kaushambi show the system was in use across the Ganges plain and the north-west.
Takshashilā / Taxila · Takṣaśīlā - the north-west mint
Takṣaśīlā minted its own distinctive 'bent-bar' silver śatamāna from the 5th century BCE — among the earliest coins of India — and then became the principal Indo-Greek mint under Menander I (155-130 BCE) and his successors. Excavations at Bhir Mound and Sirkap recovered large hoards that chart the handoff from punch-marked to die-struck coinage.
Indo-Greek bilingual drachms · Indo-Greek bilingual drachms, c. 180 BCE - 10 CE
Silver drachms of Bactria and north-west India carrying a Greek legend and royal portrait on the obverse and a Kharoṣṭhī legend on the reverse — the earliest attested Indian royal coin portraiture, and the earliest datable use of Kharoṣṭhī on currency. Menander, Demetrius, Antialcidas, Agathokleian issues. Taxila and Pushkalavati were the mints.
Pātaliputra · Pātaliputra - the Mauryan mint, c. 320-180 BCE
The capital at Pātaliputra ran the imperial Mauryan mint. The Arthaśāstra of Kauṭilya describes the office of the lakṣaṇādhyakṣa (overseer of the coinage) in detail: assay standards, allowable debasement, counterfeit-detection, workshop organisation. Punch-marked silver kārshāpaṇas issued under the Mauryas carry a denser set of symbols than earlier Mahājanapada issues, and Mauryan hoards reach as far south as Mysore.
Sātavāhana lead and potin coinage · Sātavāhana lead & potin, 1st c. BCE - 2nd c. CE
The Sātavāhanas of the Deccan struck a predominantly base-metal coinage — lead, potin and copper — rather than the silver of their northern contemporaries, because the Deccan had abundant lead and no close silver source. Punchmarks and dynastic emblems (humped bull, elephant, horse, ship) identify the issuer. The ship coinage of Yajña Śrī Sātakarṇi commemorates the Sātavāhana maritime reach to the Indian Ocean.
Western Kṣatrapa silver drachm · Western Kṣatrapa drachm - the first dated Indian series
The Western Kṣatrapas of Ujjain and Saurashtra struck a continuous silver drachm series from the 1st to the 4th century CE on the inherited Indo-Greek weight standard (2.2 g), with the ruler's bust and a Greek-letter legend on the obverse and the Ujjain crescent-and-arches symbol with a Brāhmī legend on the reverse. Every coin carries a Śaka-era regnal year — the most densely dated numismatic sequence of early historic India. Suppressed by Chandragupta II of the Guptas in 409 CE.
Purushapura / Peshawar · Puruṣapura / Peshawar - the Kushan capital
Kaniṣka's capital at Puruṣapura (modern Peshawar) was the chief mint of the Kuṣāṇa gold dīnāra. The city's great stūpa was Kaniṣka's own foundation; his reliquary (the Kaniṣka casket, Peshawar Museum) carried bone relics of the Buddha and is signed by its maker Agesilaos.
Kushan gold dīnāra · Kuṣāṇa gold dīnāra, 1st-3rd c. CE
The 8-gram gold dīnāra matched to the Roman aureus, struck under Vima Kadphises and his successors — the earliest sustained gold coinage of India and the most religiously eclectic ever struck. Reverses carry Oesho (Śiva), Buddha, Ardoxsho, Nana, Mithra, Mao and Pharro, with Greek-letter legends. Kaniṣka's two Buddha-reverse coins are the earliest surviving dated images of the Buddha in metal.
Gupta gold dīnāra · Gupta gold dīnāra, 320-550 CE
The Guptas took over the Kuṣāṇa 8-gram standard and made the series a visual history of the dynasty: Samudragupta on his horse, Chandragupta II hunting a lion, Kumāragupta with a peacock, Skandagupta visibly debasing the metal as Hun pressure took hold. Reverses carry Lakṣmī, Durgā on her lion, Gaṅgā, and Garuḍa. Brāhmī legends; 95% metal purity under Chandragupta II.
Qutb complex, Delhi · Qutb complex - the Sultanate tanka, 1206-1526
The Delhi Sultanate introduced the silver tanka (11 g) and the gold tanka from the mint at Mehrauli, with Arabic calligraphic reverses carrying the ruler's name and the kalima. Iltutmish's tanka of 1226 is the earliest fully Islamic Indian issue; Alā al-Dīn Khaljī's billon jital circulated across the Deccan after his southern campaigns.
Daulatabad · Daulatabad - Muhammad bin Tughluq's token currency, 1329-32
Muhammad bin Tughluq moved his capital to Daulatabad and in 1329 issued a copper-brass token currency valued at parity with silver — the earliest attempt at a representative fiat money anywhere in Asia. It failed within three years because the mint was unable to prevent widespread counterfeiting; the treasury had to redeem the tokens at face value and the experiment left the state nearly bankrupt. The episode is reported in detail by Ibn Baṭṭūta, who was in Delhi at the time.
Sasaram · Sasaram - Sher Shāh's Sūr capital
Sher Shāh Sūrī's mausoleum stands in a tank at Sasaram, in the Rohtas district of Bihar. His five-year reign (1540-45) was long enough to reform the coinage, the land revenue (zabṭī), and the great trunk road from Chittagong to Peshawar — all of which the Mughals adopted on their return and continued largely unchanged for three centuries.
Sher Shāh's silver rupiya · Sher Shāh's silver rupiya, 1540-45
The silver rupiya struck at Agra and Delhi, fixed at 178 grains (11.53 g) of 97.5% silver — a standard then adopted unchanged by the Mughals from 1577, by the East India Company in Bombay (1672) and Bengal (1757), and by the Reserve Bank of India in 1935. The copper dām and gold mohur rounded out the system. The word rupiya derives from Sanskrit rūpya, 'wrought silver'. Few royal reforms have outlived their creator by so much.
Agra Fort · Agra Fort - the Mughal imperial mint
Agra Fort was Akbar's capital from 1556 and the imperial mint for most of the Mughal silver coinage. The ilāhī gold mohur was struck here under Akbar from 1577 onwards; Jahāngīr's silver rupees — including the zodiac series — bear Agra and Āgra Dār-ul-Khilāfat mint-marks. Mughal mints also operated at Lahore, Delhi, Burhanpur, Surat, Patna and (after Aurangzeb) at Hyderabad; all struck to the Sher Shāh weight.
Lahore mint · Lahore - the north-western Mughal mint
Lahore was one of Akbar's three principal silver-rupee mints (with Agra and Burhanpur). Jahāngīr's zodiac rupees were also struck here. Nādir Shāh's 1739 invasion closed it; Ahmad Shāh Abdalī and the Durrānīs reopened it; Ranjit Singh's Sikh empire ran it from 1799 and struck the Nanak Shāhī rupee carrying the Guru Nanak legend. The East India Company continued it after annexation in 1849. The historic mint building stood in the Lahore Fort precinct.
Burhānpūr mint · Burhānpūr - the Mughal Deccan mint
The Burhānpūr mint in Khandesh — one of Akbar's three imperial silver-rupee mints after the 1601 annexation, continuing under Jahāngīr, Shāh Jahān and Aurangzeb. Burhānpūr sat on the Deccan road between the Mughal heartland and the campaigns against Ahmadnagar, Bijāpur and Golconda; its silver rupee funded the fifty-year Mughal Deccan war. Coins carry the Dar-ul-Sultanate mint-mark.
Jahāngīr's zodiac rupees · Jahāngīr's zodiac rupees, 1618-24
Mughal silver rupees issued by Jahāngīr bearing the twelve zodiac signs on the reverse. The reasons given by Jahāngīr himself in the Tuzuk-i-Jahāngīrī: his horoscope-mindedness and the aesthetic pleasure of twelve different reverses. Aurangzeb later had the issue called in and melted on religious grounds, which is why complete sets are so rare today.
Hampi / Vijayanagara · Hampi / Vijayanagara - the gold varāha, 14th-16th c.
Vijayanagara struck a gold coinage second to none in medieval India — the varāha (3.4 g, named after the boar emblem on the obverse) and its half (pratāpa) and quarter (fanam). Krishnadevarāya's issues carry the double-headed Gaṇḍabheruṇḍa and the Nandi bull. The Vijayanagara varāha became the Deccan reference coin and was still being imitated by the Mysore and Keladi houses two centuries after Talikota (1565).
Chola copper and gold coinage · Chola copper and gold, 9th-13th c. CE
Imperial Chola coinage: the copper māsha and the gold kalañju with the standing-king-and-seated-king obverse — the king upright with a trident on one side, enthroned on the other — and Tamil-Grantha or Nāgarī legends naming Rājarāja, Rājendra or Kulottunga. Rājendra's Śrī-Laṅkeśvara coinage, struck after his Sri Lankan campaign, carries the title in both Tamil and Sinhala.
Shiv Shāhī hon — Śivājī's gold coinage · Shiv Shāhī hon - Śivājī's Nāgarī-legend gold
The Shiv Shāhī hon, a gold coinage struck from Śivājī's coronation at Raigad in 1674. The obverse carries 'Śrī Rājā Śiva' and the reverse 'Chatrapati' in Nāgarī — the first explicitly Marāṭhā royal coinage in Nāgarī legend, breaking with the Persian-legend convention of the Deccan sultanates. The weight followed the hon-paṇam standard (c. 3.4 g). Also issued in copper (śivarāī paisa), which circulated across the Maratha confederacy well into the 19th century.
Mysore pagoda — Tipu Sultan's coinage · Mysore pagoda - Tipu Sultan's Mauludi-era coinage
Tipu Sultan's gold pagoda and silver double rupee issued from the Patna, Seringapatam and Nagar mints between 1782 and 1799. Tipu replaced the standard Islamic coin-legend with a solar-calendar date in his own 'Mauludi' era (counted from the birth of the Prophet, 572 CE) and gave each denomination a Persian-alphabet dynastic name — the gold pagoda is Āhmadī, the silver double rupee Haidarī, the single rupee Imāmī. The Mysore tiger emblem appears on the reverses. After Seringapatam fell in 1799 the EIC declared the coinage demonetised.
Portuguese Estado da Índia xerafim · Portuguese xerafim - Goa, 1510-1958
The xerafim (also xerafin or ashrafi), a silver coinage struck at the Portuguese Goa mint from 1510 until decimalisation in 1958, with the pardao gold piece and the tanga copper rounding out the system. The obverse carried the arms of Portugal; the reverse the legend 'S. Thomas' and later João of Portugal in Roman letters. The Goa mint ran continuously from Afonso de Albuquerque's capture of the city until the Indian liberation of 1961 — the longest-running European mint in India.
Kutch kori — the longest-struck Indian silver · Kutch kori - four centuries at Bhuj
The Kutch kori, a silver coinage struck at Bhuj from the 16th century until 1947 — one of the longest continuous Indian silver series. The Jadeja Rao rulers kept the Mughal-style trident-and-dagger (katar) emblem on the obverse and a bilingual Persian-Gujarati legend on the reverse. Under the paramountcy the kori was still legal tender in Kutch alongside the British Indian rupee; the half-kori (dhingla), five-kori and tri-kori rounded out the system.
Kolkata: Fort William & the Maidan · Fort William - the Company rupee, 1757-1835
The Bengal mint at Fort William (Calcutta) struck the Company's silver rupee from 1757 under the Mughal pretext — the coinage carried Shāh Alam II's name in Persian and the Fort William mint-mark on the reverse — until the Coinage Act of 1835 standardised the issue across all three Presidencies and placed Victoria's portrait on the rupee. Bombay and Madras mints struck to the same weight.
Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai · Reserve Bank of India - the modern Indian rupee, 1935 onwards
The Reserve Bank of India at Mint Road, Fort, Mumbai, took over currency issue on 1 April 1935 under the Reserve Bank of India Act 1934. It kept the Sher Shāh-Mughal 11.66-gram silver rupee weight as the reference until decimalisation in 1957, and after 1950 became the sole issuer of Indian banknotes. The adjacent India Government Mint (Mumbai, 1829) still strikes coinage.

Sources

Wikipedia