16 Ancient Indian Weights. [No. 1, 



and their proverbial absorption for the construction of domestic utensils. 

 But with all this, the relative proportions of each, which reward modem 

 collectors,* would seem to indicate that, of the joint currencies, the 

 silver issues must have already constituted a large measure of the 

 circulating media of the day ; and this evidence is by no means un- 

 important, as showing that while the standard of value was, from the 

 first, copper, the interchangeable rates of the two metals must have 

 been in a measure recognised, while these imperfect currencies were in 

 the course of formation and reception into the commerce of the 

 country. 



The tenor of the entire text of Manu conclusively demonstrates that 

 the primitive standard of the currencies of the Indians, like that of the 

 geographically less isolated, though equally independent originators of 

 their own proper civilisation, the Egyptians, was based upon copper, a 

 lower metal, which, however it may astound our golden predilections 

 of modern times, was clearly in so far preferable in the early conception 

 of interchangeable metallic equivalents, that it necessarily constituted 

 the most widely distributed and diffused representative of value, brought 

 home to the simplest man's comprehension, and obviously in its very 

 spread the least liable to sudden fluctuation from external causes, such 

 as would more readily affect the comparatively limited available amounts 

 of either of the higher metals. Hence, in remote ages, under an im- 

 perfect philosophy of exchange, copper may be said to have been the 

 safest and most equable basis for the determination of all relative 

 values ; and so well did it seemingly fulfil its mission in India, that as 

 civilisation advanced with no laggard pace, and foreign conquest brought 

 repeated changes of dominant power, and whatever of superior intel- 

 ligence may have accompanied the intrusive dynasties, the copper 

 standard continued so much of a fixed institution in the land, that it 

 was only in Akbar's reign (a. d. 1556 — 1605)f that it even began to 



* Col. Stacey's collection contributes 373 silver coins of this class to 30 

 copper pieces (" Jour. As. Soc. Bengal," vol. xxvii. p 256; 1858). The British 

 Museum cabinets show 227 silver against 2 copper punch coins. Of the former 

 57 are round ; the rest are square, oblong, or irregularly shaped. 



f The revenues of Akbar's magnificent empire were all assessed in Dams ; a 

 copper coin weighing about 321 grains [N. C., xv. pp. 163 — 172]. The total 

 demand of the state in a.d. 1596 is given as 3,62,97,55,246 dams. The payments 

 in kind, in the province of Kashmir, are consistently reduced into equivalents in 

 dams, and the single exceptiou to the copper estimate occurs in the Trans-Indus 

 Sirlcdr, of Kandahar, where the taxes were collected in Persian gold Tomans and 



