page_title: Coinage of India
section_title: Indian Punched mark Karshapana coins
hierarchical_section_title: Coinage of India / Early historic period (early 1st millennium BCE – 300 BCE) / Indian Punched mark Karshapana coins
caption_attribution_description: English: Magadha kingdom Circa 430-320s BC AR Karshapana
context_page_description: Coinage of India began anywhere between early 1st millennium BCE to the 6th century BCE, and consisted mainly of copper and silver coins in its initial stage. The coins of this period were Karshapanas or Pana. A variety of earliest Indian coins, however, unlike those circulated in West Asia, were stamped bars of metal, suggesting that the innovation of stamped currency was added to a pre-existing form of token currency which had already been present in the Janapadas and Mahajanapada kingdoms of the Early historic India. The kingdoms that minted their own coins included Gandhara, Kuntala, Kuru, Panchala, Magadha, Shakya, Surasena and Surashtra etc.
  The tradition of Indian coinage in the 2nd millennium evolved with Indo Islamic rule in India. and the British raj in the 19th century.
context_section_description: India may have developed some of the world's first coins, but scholars debate exactly which coin was first and when. Sometime around 600BC in the lower Ganges valley in eastern India a coin called a punchmarked Karshapana was created. According to Hardaker, T.R. the origin of Indian coins can be placed at 575 BCE and according to P.L. Gupta in the seventh century BCE, proposals for its origins range from 1000 BCE to 500 BCE. According to Page. E, Kasi, Kosala and Magadha coins can be the oldest ones from the Indian Subcontinent dating back to 7th century BC and kosambi findings indicate coin circulation towards the end of 7th century BC. It is also noted that some of the Janapadas like shakiya during Buddha's time were minting coins both made of silver and copper with their own marks on them.
  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.
  The first PMC coins in India may have been minted around the 6th century BCE by the Mahajanapadas of the Indo-Gangetic Plain, The coins of this period were punch-marked coins called Puranas, old Karshapanas or Pana. 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.
  They are mentioned in the Manu, Panini, and Buddhist Jataka stories and lasted three centuries longer in the south than the north (600 BCE – 300 CE).
caption: Magadha kingdom, circa 430–320 BCE, Karshapana.
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