1865. J Ancient Indian Weights, 17 



lose its position as the general arbiter of all fiscal and mercantile 

 transactions. With the accumulated increase of wealth, its cumbrous 

 volume made an opening for the silver Rupee, which established itself 

 permanently in its place, and as time went on, gold Muhars had an 

 exceptional and temporary acceptance ; but, like the rupees of that mon- 

 arch, they were left to find their own level in the market, as certain 

 inexperienced servants of the East India Company discovered, to their 

 astonishment, to be still the ruling idea of the community at large, 

 when, in subsequent times, they incautiously declared gold a legal 

 tender.* 



I have already extracted from the ancient Sanskrit code the contem- 

 poraneous definition of the weights of metal in use " for the purpose 

 of worldly business." I will now examine how much of an approxi- 

 mation to the conventional notion of a money currency had been reach- 

 ed, at the period of the composition of the Vedas and other archaic 

 writings. 



Professor Wilson was under the impression that he had discovered a 

 reference to coined money in the Vedas, where, in the enumeration of 

 the gifts bestowed upon the Rishi G-arga, mention is made of " ten 

 purses" of gold ;f unfortunately, the contents of these "purses, bags, 

 or chests," or whatever may have been the intentional meaning of 

 kosayih in this place, do not figure in the original text of the hymn, 

 but form part of the conjectural additions of the commentator 

 Say ana. % As such, it is useless to speculate further on the passage ; 

 but the words dasa hiranya pinddn, "ten lumps of gold," in the suc- 

 ceeding verse, seem to have a much more direct bearing on the general 

 question, and would almost in themselves establish a reckoning by 

 tale. Had the text merely confined itself to the expression " lumps 

 of gold" in the generic sense, crude and undefined fragments of metal 



Dinars [Gladwin's " Ayin Akbari," ii. pp. 3, 107, 110. See also i. pp. 2, 3, 4, 

 35, 37, 39], I do not lose sight of the fact of the long-continued use of an 

 intermediate mixed silver and copper currency, which filled in the divisions 

 between, and co-existed with higher and lower coinage of unalloyed metals |~N. 

 C, xv. pp. 153, 163; Prinsep's " Essays," Useful Tables, p. 71]. Dams, like 

 the old Kdrsha, were also occasionally used as weights (See Ayin-Akbari 

 i. 307). 



* Sir James Steuart, " The Principles of Money, &c, in Bengal." Calcutta, 

 1772, p. 26 ; Prinsep's " Essays," Useful Tables, pp, 73, 76, 77. 



t " Rig Veda Sanhita," iii. pp. xvi. and 474. 



X " Rig Veda," text, vol. i. p. 699 ; Max Miiller. See also Wilson, "R. V, 

 S.," i. p. xlix. and iii ; and note 4, page 474. 



