1. Ceylon and Kashmir are the only parts of India which pretend to possess a continuous native history. That of Ceylon is much the more ancient and complete, and as in it coins are not unfrequently mentioned, even in the earliest periods, it might have been supposed that some specimens of great age would have survived to our own days. Such is not however the case. We have at present only one series of coins of finished form and of a comparatively late date, beginning in the middle of the twelfth and ending at the close of the thirteenth century. Our subject therefore divides itself naturally into two parts: in the first of which will be considered the data regarding coins and measures found in the Buddhist literature of Ceylon; while in the second those medieval coins which have come down to us will be described and illustrated. 2. Mr. Thomas has already pointed out 1 Just as I go to press I learn that there are some coins in the Colombo Museum with illegible inscriptions in square Páli characters. It would be interesting to learn whether they bear any of the signs, such as j or 8, which have only as yet been DAVIDS how frequent are the allusions to money in the found in Ceylon inscriptions. If not, they are probably importations from India. 2 In his introductory essay to the Numismata Orientalia, 'Ancient Indian Weights,' p. 40. sacred literature of the Buddhists; and as these occur in books of very different ages and authenticity, it will be necessary to quote and discuss the most important passages. Without a detailed examination of the passages themselves, we may easily be led to draw conclusions much too wide. Spence Hardy's statement, for instance, that 'in the most ancient laws of the Buddhists the distinction is recognized between coined money and bullion,' is not confirmed by the texts hitherto accessible, unless the word 'coined' be taken in an unusually extended sense. 3. The time has scarcely arrived when anything can be affirmed with certainty as to the age of the different books of the Northern Buddhists: they show a state of belief much later and more developed than that of the Southern Church; but they claim a very high antiquity, and it is well known that amongst these ruder peoples the Buddhist mythology had a much more rapid development than that which took place in Magadha and in Ceylon. Buddhism became the State religion of the Indo-Skythians under Kanishka at about the beginning of our era, but no canon of the Northern Buddhists was settled at the council held under his auspices.2 The books considered sacred by the Northern Church are mostly of much later date; but some of them were certainly translated into Chinese in the first century A.D.—that is, if reliance can be placed on the later native historians of China,3 besides whose statements we have very slight data of any chronological value. Eugène Burnouf has given several instances of the mention of coins in those portions of the Northern Buddhist books he has translated,* and has discussed their values in a special note (p. 597). As all these works are of unknown authorship and date, but probably at least 700 years after our era,5 the only conclusion to be drawn from these references is that they add simply nothing to our knowledge of the dates at which the coins mentioned in them were first used. 4. The canon of the Southern Buddhists was settled two centuries and a half earlier than the time of Kanishka, viz. under the Emperor Aṣoka in Páțaliputra, about 250 B.c.; and it includes separate works by different authors. The following passage occurs in the first chapter of the inedited Mahá Vagga in the Vinaya Pitaka, and also in the first chapter of the Kammavácaṁ, containing the liturgy used at the admission of laymen to the Buddhist order of mendicants, of which several translations and editions have already appeared." (p. 6, line 4, of Mr. Dickson's edition of the Upasampadá-Kammavácá) ' If any mendicant takes a páda (i.e. a quarter), or anything 1 Eastern Monachism, p. 66. 2 Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, 2nd ed. vol. ii. p. 856. My Buddhism,' p. 239. Foe Koue Ki,' p. 248. 3 Beal, Travels of Fa Hian, etc., pp. xx, et seq.; Romantic Legend of Sakya Buddha, p. vi. Thus the suvarna is spoken of in the Kanakavarņa sútra and in the Púrna avadána (Burnouf, Introduction à l'histoire du Bouddhisme, pp. 91, 238, 243, 245); the kárshápana in the Divya avadána (ibid, p. 147; compare Hodgson's Essays, 1874, p. 20) and in the Púrņa avadána (ibid, pp. 236, 243, 258); the purána in the Divya avadána (ibid, p. 146); the másaka in the Párna avadána (ibid, p. 243); the kakani in the Aşoka avadána, which is part of the Divya avadána (ibid, p. 392, and compare on the work itself Hodgson's Essays, 1874, p. 17); and lastly the dinára in this latter work and in the Hiranyapáņi avadána (ibid, p. 432, note). Ibid, pp. 64, 231, 555; Weber's Sanskrit Literature, p. 262. 6 This is clear from internal evidence: compare also James D'Alwis, Buddhist Nirvana, pp. 18, 19. 7 The Padre Maria Percoto, Missionary in Ava and Pegu, translated it into Italian in 1776, and Professor Adler into German for the first volume of Egger's Deutsches gemeinnütziges Magazin, Leipzig, 1787. The Rev. Benj. Clough translated it into English in the second volume of the Miscellaneous Translations from Oriental Languages, London, 1834, and most of it was edited in Páli, with a Latin translation, by Professor Spiegel, Bonn, 1841. The best edition is that by Mr. Dickson in the J.R.A.S. for 1875, with English translation and notes. of the value of a páda or more, he is ipso facto unfrocked.' Mr. Dickson translates páda 'the quarter of a pagoda,"1 the pagoda being a small gold coin lately current in South India and worth 7s. 6d. Mr. Childers says in his Dictionary, 'There is a coin called pádo (Ab. 480): Subhúti quotes poráṇa-kahápaṇassa catuttho bhago púdo, and states it is worth about sevenpence.' The Abhidhánappadípiká, to which the reference is given, was written in the twelfth century, and makes it the fourth part of a weight, apparently of the nikkha, which is made equal to five suvaņņas (§ 23 below). So that we have three modern authorities each giving a different meaning to the word. It is evident that they do not really know in what sense it was originally used, and there is nothing to prove that it meant a coin at all; it may have been a weight, either of gold, silver or copper, recognized as a basis of calculation or a medium of exchange. All that can be said is that it was certainly of small value. 5. In the Dhammapada, a collection of ethical verses from other books of the Three Piṭakas, and one of the latest works included in the canon by Asoka's council, the word kahápaṇa is used in verse 186: Na kahápaṇa-rassena titti kámesu vijjati, 'Not by a rainfall of kahápaņas will there be satisfaction in the midst of lusts.' The exact derivation and meaning of the word kahápana is not quite so clear as one could wish. The corresponding Sanskrit word kárshápaṇa occurs already in Manu and Pániņi, of which the former is certainly, and the latter probably, earlier than the earliest possible date of the Dhammapada. It is clearly derived from karsha, the name of a small weight; but paṇa, which is usually supposed to be the second part of the compound, would not explain the second ά, while the root pan to barter or bet,' is not used with the prefix á except in the nominal derivative ápaṇa 'market,' which does not help us much. In trying to determine the exact meaning from the texts, we are met with an ambiguity of expression which is only the reflexion of an ambiguity in idea; just as even in English the words 'coin' and 'money' are very vaguely used. Coin may, I think, be legitimately used in two senses; firstly, of pieces of metal bearing the stamp or mark of some person in authority as proof of their purity, and of their being of full weight; and secondly, of pieces similarly stamped, but thereby acquiring a value beyond that of an equal weight of metal (by the mark or stamp implying a promise to receive the coin at a higher than its intrinsic value). The latter, like our pennies and shillings, might be more appropriately termed tokens. Now there was a time in India, before coins in either of these senses were struck, when mere pieces of bullion without stamp at all, or merely with some private stamp, were used as money—that is, as a medium of exchange :3 and the word kárshápaņa, as used by the authors mentioned above, may mean either coins proper of the weight of a karsha, or only such pieces of metal of that weight. The latter was almost certainly its original meaning both in Sanskrit and Páli, and is, I think, the meaning in this verse of the Dhammapada. Buddhaghosha mentions1 a gold and silver as well as the ordinary (that is, bronze or copper) kahápaņa; and Professor Childers thinks that only gold pieces can be referred to in our 1 Loc. cit. p. 13. 2 Böhtlingk and Roth refer to a passage in the Satapatha Brahmana where páda means the fourth of a certain gold weight; but to none where it means coin. They explain the change of meaning from 'a foot' to 'a quarter' through the idea of one leg 3 Mr. Thomas, Ancient Indian Weights, p. 57. passage. But copper pieces will satisfy the requirements of every other passage, except one legendary one, where the word occurs;1 and considering the much greater value of copper then than now, it is ⚫ not so certain that we need even here take the word in any other than its ordinary sense. The value of the kahapana changed of course with the varying value of copper, and even its weight may have varied a good deal; as much at least as different specimens of the fruit of the karsha (Terminalia bellerica) vary among themselves. Its size and shape are uncertain; but this at least can be said, that the sculptor of the bas-reliefs at Bárahát3 (who cannot have lived much more than a century later than the compiler of the Dhammapada) makes them square. Lastly, it should be mentioned that, according to Mr. Childers, the word kahápaṇa itself meant primarily a small weight, and that our authorities differ hopelessly about the weight of the karsha: the Sanskrit authorities making it equal to sixteen máshas, each of which=23 másakas=5 ratis; while Moggallána (§ 23) makes the akkha (which, teste Böhtlingk-Roth, is the same as the karsha)=2 másakas=5 ratis (that is=one másha). On the former calculation Mr. Thomas makes the kárshápana to 140 grains, one of our current pennies weighing about 145 grains. M. Léon Féer quotes a form gahápaṇa from the Játakas (Etude sur les Játakas, p. 102). The old form Karisápaņa, mentioned by Moggallána (v. 481), has not yet been found in the texts. '5 = 6. There is a curious expression at Dhammapada, v. 108: 'Whatever sacrifice or offering a man may make here during a whole year in order to get merit, all of it is not worth a quarter.' The commentator explains it 'to mean a quarter of the virtuous mind of one reverencing holy men.' This seems forced, but must be, I think, the real meaning of the words, taken in the connexion in which they stand. 7. The only other portion of the three Piṭakas published is the Khuddaka Páṭha, the shortest book in the Buddhist Bible, a selection of Buddhist hymns edited by Mr. Childers for the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1869. In it no mention is made of coins, but it is said that 'in the other world there will be no trafficking by means of gold.' These two works would scarcely have been looked upon as sacred by the Council of Aṣoka held in B.C. 250, unless they had been composed some time before it. They may therefore be approximately placed at least as early as the end of the fourth century before Christ. 8. I cannot refrain from adding here a reference to a passage occurring in the Párájika of the first Piṭaka, and also in the Raṭṭhapála Sutta of the second Piṭaka, although the texts are not yet accessible. In the former we have an account of the manner in which a certain Sudinna They are all quoted in the following sections. The exception, a doubtful one, is referred to below, § 15. Játaka 94, 23, compared with 93, 22. Compare Thomas, l.c. p. 41, note 6. 2 Mr. Thomas considers that this Myrobalan seed formed the basis upon which the old Karsha of 140 grains was framed. It constituted an article of extended commerce, in its dry state it was little subject to change, it was readily available in the Bázárs as a countercheck of other weights, and finally the ordinary weight accords closely with the required amount. Indeed selected specimens of desiccated seed from Bhilsa, now in the India Museum, weigh as high as 144 grains. 3 Cunningham, Report of the Bengal As. Soc., quoted in Ancient Indian Weights, p. 59, note, compared with § 15 below. 4 So also see Féer, Etude sur les Játakas, p. 102. And Colebrooke, Essays (ed. Cowell), vol. i. p. 531, says, 'A paṇa or kárshápana is a measure of copper as well as of silver.' 5 Fausböll, p. 34, sabbam pi tam na chatubhagam eti. Comp. p. 288 and the passage quoted by Prof. Max Müller in his note to v. 157. • N'atthi hiraññena kayakkayaṁ, p. 11 of the separate edition. Prof. Childers translates 'no trafficking for gold,' but the instrumental case is doubtless used of the medium of exchange. |