# Punch-marked coins

Punch-marked coins were a type of karshapana or Ancient Indian coinage, also known as Aahat (stamped) coins, dating to between about the 6th and 2nd centuries BC. It was of irregular shape. These coins are found over most parts of subcontinent and remained in circulation till the early centuries CE.

## History
### Janapada Coins

The study of the relative chronology of these coins has successfully established that the first punch-marked coins initially only had one or two punches, with the number of punches increasing over time. 19th-century proposals which suggested an origin from as early as 1000 BC, independent of the introduction of coins in Asia Minor, are "no longer given any credence".
According to Osmund Bopearachchi, the first punch-marked coins in the Indian Subcontinent may have been minted around the 6th century BC by the Mahajanapadas of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. These coins were produced by impressing single punches individually. According to E. J. Rapson, the earliest punch-marked coins were karshapana produced by early Indian kingdoms and tribes before foreign influence. The earlies coins in the subcontinent were bent bar coins with impressions punched into them. Mahajanpadas were issuing coins called satamana.
The Kuru kingdom in present day Haryana minted punched coins as excavated in the Babyal Hoard near Sugh Ancient Mound in present day Haryana. The coins of the Babyal Hoard had a triskelion-like design punched into them.
The Gandhara Janapada issued stamped bent bar coins prior to the Achaemenid Era. These coins were found mixed along with standard Persian and Greek coins in the Bhir Mound which were likely still circulating during Achaemenid rule.
As mentioned by Pāṇini in his work Aṣṭādhyāyī (350 BCE), Panini categorized ancient Indian coins as Karshapanas, either marked or unmarked (punched). The coins of this period were punch-marked coins called Aahat. Several of these coins had a single symbol, for example, Saurashtra had a humped bull, and Dakshin Panchala had a Swastika, others, like Magadha, had several symbols. These coins were made of silver of a standard weight but with an irregular shape. This was gained by cutting up silver bars and then making the correct weight by cutting the edges of the coin.

### Achaemenid and Greek coinage (6th century onward)

Silver coins were certainly being produced in the Achaemenid Satrapy of Gandāra, by the mid-4th century BC. As mentioned by Plutarch noted Taxiles (Ambhi) of Taxila exchanged coined tribute with Alexander the Great.
Coin finds in the Kabul hoard (c. 380 BC), Mir Zakah hoards (c. 100 AD), Taxila Bhir Mound (c. 300 BC), or the Shaikhan Dehri hoard near Pushkalavati have revealed numerous Achaemenid coins as well as many Greek coins from the 5th and 4th centuries BC were circulating in the area, at least as far as the Indus during the reign of the Achaemenids (549 - 330 BCE), who were in control of the areas as far as Gandhara. In 2007 a small coin hoard was discovered at the site of ancient Pushkalavati (Shaikhan Dehri) in Pakistan. The hoard contained a tetradrachm minted in Athens c. 500-480 BC, together with a number of local types as well as silver cast ingots. The Athens coin is the earliest known example of its type to be found so far to the east. The Mir Zakah hoards offered hundreds of thousands of examples, punched and stamped bars and coins, manufactured between the late 5th century BC, and late 1st century AD.
Daniel Schlumberger also considers that punch-marked bars, similar to the many punch-marked bars found in northwestern India, initially originated in the Achaemenid Empire, rather than in the Indian heartland:
   “The punch-marked bars were up to now considered to be Indian (...) However the weight standard is considered by some expert to be Persian, and now that we see them also being uncovered in the soil of Afghanistan, we must take into account the possibility that their country of origin should not be sought beyond the Indus, but rather in the oriental provinces of the Achaemenid Empire"
According to Joe Cribb, Indian punch-marked coins go back to the mid-4th century BC or slightly earlier, and actually started with the punch-marked coinage of the Achaemenids in the Kabul/ Gandhara area.

### Mauryan Period (322–185 BC) and Post Mauryan periods

During the Mauryan period, punch-marked coins continued to be issued in large quantities. Similarly, the coinage of the Mauryan Empire was an example of the punch-marked coinage of Magadha. Each coin contained on average 50–54 grains of silver depending on wear and 32 rattis in weight, and earlier coins are flatter than later coins. Punches on these coins count to 450 different types with the most common the sun and six-armed symbols, and various forms of geometrical patterns, circles, wheels, human figures, various animals, bows and arrows, hills and trees etc.
In the North, following the fall of the Maurya Empire and the increased influence of the Greco-Bactrians and Indo-Greeks, punch-marked coins were replaced by cast die-struck coins, as visible in the Post-Mauryan coinage of Gandhara.
Punch marked coins are mentioned in the Manu Smriti (c. 200 BC - 200 AD), and Buddhist Jataka (c. 300 BC - 400 AD), circulating in the North until approximately the beginning of the first century AD, but lasted three centuries longer in the South, i.e. until about 300 AD.
* Shurasena
* Surashtra
** Early coins of India (400 BC – 100 AD) were made of silver and copper, and bore animal and plant symbols on them.