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 formule 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 
astill 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 P4nini 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 Sitra, v. 2, 119, 
ripad ahata. . . . where he says, ‘the word rzépya is in the sense of “ struck” 
(Ghata), derived from répa, ‘form, shape,” with the taddhita affix ya, here 
implying possession ; when riipya would literally mean “ struck (money), having 
