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 modern 
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. p. 1556—1605)} 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. 
+ The revenues of Akbar’s magnificent empire were all assessed in Déms; a 
copper coin weighing about 324 grains [N. C., xv. pp. 163—172]. The total 
demand of the state in a.p, 1596 is given as 3,62,97,55,246 déms. The payments 
in kind, in the province of Kashmir, are consistently reduced into equivalents in 
dams, and the single exception to the copper estimate occurs in the Trans-Indus 
Sirkdér, of Kandahar, where the taxes were collected in Persian gold Tomans and 

