1865.] " Ancient Indian Weights. 21 



enunciation of weights and values, and demonstrates a practical 

 acceptance of a pre-existing order of things ; precisely as the general 

 tenor of the text exhibits these weights of metal in full and free em- 

 ployment for the settlement of the ordinary dealings of men, in parallel 

 currency with the copper pieces ; whose mention, however, is neces- 

 sarily more frequent, both as the standard and as the money of detail, 

 amid a poor community. Their use in the higher totals would seem 

 to refer to an earlier stage of civilisation, or to a time when the inter- 

 changeable values of the different metals were less understood and even 

 more imperfectly determined. There is no attempt to define these 

 relative values, and the omission may, perchance, have been intentional ; 

 though some such scale would soon settle itself by custom, and the 

 lawgivers may wisely, in their generation, have abstained from attempt- 

 ing, like our own modern statesmen, to fix the price of gold for all time, 

 to give permanency to an ephemeral balance, or otherwise to swerve 

 from the ancient simplicity of their own copper standard. Neither 

 need there be any distrust of the contrasted passages, as representing 

 different stages of national advancement. The collection of a code of 

 human laws would necessarily embrace the progress and practical 

 adaptations of many generations of men, the older formulas being 

 retained in the one case, side by side with the more recent enactments 

 and their modified adjuncts. In a compilation of this kind, the retention 

 of such apparent anomalies would indeed be a negative sign of good 

 faith ; and as we have to admit considerable uncertainty as to the exact 

 epochs of the origin, application, and classification of these laws, and 

 a still greater margin of time to allow for their versification and ultimate 

 embodyment in writing, it would be as well not to lay too much stress 

 upon their internal evidence, when all the legitimate deductions we 

 seek can be established from external testimony. 



The next contribution to the history of coinage in India is derived 

 from the unexpected source of the Grammar of Panini, in the text of 

 which pieces of money in a very complete form are adverted to.* That 



* Professor Goldstiicker has been so obliging as to examine Panini for refer- 

 ences to coins, and to furnish me with the following note on the subject : — 



"That Panini knew coined money is plainly borne out by his Sutra, v. 2, 119, 

 rupad ahata. . . .where he says, 'the word rupya is in the sense of " struck" 

 (dJiata), derived from rupa, "form, shape," with the taddhita affix ya, her e 

 implying possession} when rupya would literally mean " struck (money), havin 



