Archaeological Sources: Exploration, Excavation, Epigraphy, Numismatics and Monuments

Archaeological Sources of Ancient and Early Medieval Indian History: Archaeology, Epigraphy and Numismatics

Alongside literary and religious texts, archaeological sources form one of the most reliable pillars for reconstructing India’s ancient and early medieval past. Broadly, these sources are studied under three heads — archaeology (material remains and excavated sites), epigraphy (the study of inscriptions), and numismatics (the study of coins). Together they provide direct, dateable, and often contemporaneous evidence that helps historians cross-check, supplement, and sometimes correct the narratives found in literary sources. For a UPSC History Optional aspirant, a firm grasp of these archaeological sources — their scope, methodology, and evidentiary value — is essential, since questions on sources of ancient Indian history are a recurring theme in the Mains examination. This article discusses archaeology, epigraphy, and numismatics in turn, examining what each contributes to historical reconstruction and where their limitations lie.

Archaeology

Meaning and Scope of Archaeology

• Archaeology refers to the systematic study of the human past through the material remains that earlier communities produced, used, modified, or discarded.
• These remains are diverse and include:
  • Large architectural structures such as palaces, temples, and fortifications.
  • Everyday discarded objects like fragments of pottery, broken tools, and household refuse.
  • Organic remains — bones, seeds, pollen grains, shells, and wooden pieces — often preserved only under favourable conditions.
  • Cultural artefacts, such as:
    • Seals and coins
    • Sculptures and figurines
    • Inscriptions carved on stone, metal, terracotta, or other materials
• Through the study of these remains, archaeology helps to:
  • Recover physical traces of ancient life.
  • Reconstruct cultural processes, settlement patterns, and technological stages.
  • Offer insights into societies for which written records are absent or limited.

Exploration and Excavation

• The scientific process of locating, studying, and systematically digging ancient mounds forms the core of archaeological work.
• Digging allows archaeologists to trace successive cultural layers and the material life of people living in different chronological phases.

Mounds: The Ancient Habitation Sites

• A mound represents an elevated accumulation of debris left behind by long-term human activity. Mounds are of three types:
  • Single-culture mounds: Display only one cultural phase throughout, for example, Painted Grey Ware (PGW) sites, Satavahana settlements, and Kushana sites.
  • Major-culture mounds: One culture is dominant, while others appear in secondary, limited proportions.
  • Multi-culture mounds: Contain multiple cultural phases, often overlapping or succeeding one another.

Methods of Excavation

A mound may be excavated in two major ways:

• Vertical excavation
  • Involves digging lengthwise, deep into the mound, to uncover the chronological sequence of cultures layer by layer.
  • Usually conducted on a limited portion of the site, but it provides a clear time-wise progression of tools, pottery, housing, and other artefacts.
• Horizontal excavation
  • Entails digging wide areas, sometimes entire mounds, and is useful for studying the settlement layout, the architecture of a specific period, and the spatial distribution of houses, workshops, storage areas, and public spaces.
  • Though extremely informative, it is rarely undertaken because of its high cost and large labour requirements.

Preservation of Archaeological Material Across Regions

Artefacts survive differently depending on climate:

• Dry, arid regions (western Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, north-western India) provide excellent preservation, allowing the recovery of even fragile materials.
• Moist, humid regions (mid-Gangetic plains, delta areas) cause corrosion of iron, decay of mud structures, and poor survival of organic remains — only burnt brick or stone structures survive well here.

Major Discoveries Through Excavations

• Excavations have revealed early agricultural villages in Baluchistan dating to around 6000 BC.
• They have also revealed the material culture of the Gangetic plains from the second millennium BC, providing important information about:
  • Settlement layouts
  • Pottery varieties
  • Types of houses people lived in
  • Crops consumed and cultivated
  • Tools, weapons, and implements used in everyday life
• Megalithic burials in South India:
  • People buried the dead along with tools, weapons, pottery, ornaments, and other possessions.
  • Large stone circles (megaliths) help reconstruct Iron Age Deccan society.

Scientific Methods of Dating and Analysis

Archaeologists use several scientific methods to determine the age of mounds and objects and to extract additional information from them.

Radiocarbon Dating (C-14)

• The most crucial technique for dating organic materials.
• Based on the uniform decay rate of radioactive Carbon-14 present in all living organisms.
  • While alive, living beings constantly absorb C-14 through air and food.
  • After death, absorption stops, but decay continues at a fixed rate, enabling age measurement.
• Key attributes: half-life = 5,568 years; the method is effective up to 70,000 years.

Pollen Analysis (Palynology)

• Examines pollen grains to reconstruct climate conditions and vegetation history.
• Evidence from this method indicates early agriculture in Rajasthan and Kashmir between 7000–6000 BC.

Metallurgical Analysis

• Studies metal objects to determine the composition of alloys, the sources of ores, and the technological stages of metallurgy.

Faunal Analysis (Animal Bone Studies)

• Helps identify domesticated species and their uses — food, traction, dairy, or ritual.

Geological and Biological Studies

These disciplines enrich archaeological understanding as follows:

• Geology studies soils, sediments, and rock layers to reconstruct environmental conditions, habitat changes, and landscape evolution — crucial for understanding the context of prehistoric sites.
• Biology provides insights into the plants and animals that coexisted with humans and their ecosystem interactions through time.
• Combined geological and biological evidence helps interpret human adaptation, mobility, subsistence, and environmental pressures, and is essential for studying nearly 98% of Earth’s historical timeline, especially the period before written records.

Ethno-Archaeology

• Ethno-archaeology studies the behaviour and practices of living communities in order to interpret archaeological evidence relating to communities of the past.
• The Indian subcontinent preserves many traditional features and methods, which makes it particularly valuable for such studies. Traditional practices survive in:
  • Agriculture
  • Animal husbandry
  • House building
  • Clothing
  • Food preparation and consumption
• Modern craftspersons help us understand how ancient craftspersons made objects.
  • Example: A long-standing tradition of carnelian bead manufacturing still survives in Khambhat, Gujarat. Studying modern bead-making provides clues about how Harappan beads were produced and how bead-makers may have been socially organised.
• Ethno-archaeology helps fill silences and gaps in history:
  • It helps archaeologists infer women’s roles in subsistence and craft activities in early times.
  • Studies of modern hunter-gatherers and shifting cultivators help explain the life-ways of people who followed similar subsistence strategies in the past.
• However, such evidence must be used carefully, since similarities between present and past communities exist, but differences in context must always be kept in mind when drawing conclusions.

Archaeology as a Source of History

• Archaeology usually provides an anonymous form of history:
  • It focuses more on cultural processes rather than specific political events.
  • It helps reconstruct broad patterns of life rather than individual personalities.
• It is mainly used to study prehistory and ancient history:
  • Prehistory refers to the period without written sources, while history is traditionally based on written material.
  • Archaeology is the only source for understanding prehistory.
• Its role extends into proto-history and historical periods as well:
  • It remains the only source for periods where writing existed but has not yet been deciphered.
  • It continues to add valuable information even after written records begin.
  • Historians, however, often treat archaeology merely as a secondary corroborative source, which limits its full potential — integrating archaeological evidence effectively into broader historical narratives remains a major current challenge in Indian history.
• It reveals aspects of everyday life not highlighted in texts, such as details of daily life, craft practices, food habits, and settlement patterns. Despite the heavy reliance on Vedic and post-Vedic texts for pre-Ashokan history, archaeology remains a critical and independent source.
• Material remains of ancient Indians: India has countless material remains, from massive stone temples in South India to brick monasteries in eastern India. However, most such remains are buried in mounds across the subcontinent and become accessible only through excavation.
• Information about human settlements and subsistence: Archaeology provides specific details on the food sources people depended on and the methods used to procure and produce food, including the crops grown, the agricultural tools used, and the animals that were hunted or domesticated.
• History of ancient technology: It offers insights into raw materials and their origins, tools and artefact-making processes, and the technological stages across time.
• Reconstruction of routes and networks: Archaeology helps map ancient trade routes, exchange systems, and interaction spheres among diverse communities.
• Religious practices: While texts on religion exist in large numbers, exclusively textual interpretations remain incomplete. Material remains — temples, sculptures, ritual items, inscriptions — provide essential evidence of actual religious practice.
• Problems in translating archaeological cultures into history: An archaeological culture does not necessarily map onto a linguistic group, a political unit, or a clan, tribe, or lineage. A major unresolved issue is understanding why and how material culture changes — especially pottery traditions, which remain poorly understood for ancient India.

Limitations of Archaeology

• Archaeological evidence is incomplete: It represents objects that were thrown away, lost, forgotten, hidden, or left behind unintentionally when people migrated.
• Not all material traits survive: Survival depends heavily on the nature of the object, soil conditions, climate, and the surrounding environment.
• Durability differences:
  • Inorganic materials are the most durable — stone, clay, and metal.
  • Organic materials rarely survive — wood, bone, leather, and fibres. For instance, Stone Age people used many wooden and bone tools, but only stone tools survived in abundance.
• Tropical climatic challenges: Heavy rains, acidic soils, warm temperatures, and dense vegetation destroy many artefacts, making reconstruction difficult.

Epigraphy

• Inscriptions and coins come under the general umbrella of archaeology and archaeological sources.
• The study of inscriptions is known as epigraphy, while the study of the old writing used in inscriptions and other old records is called palaeography.
• Inscriptions were carved on seals, stone pillars, rocks, copperplates, temple walls, wooden tablets, bricks, and images.
• In India, the earliest inscriptions were recorded on stone. However, in the early centuries of the Christian era, copperplate began to be used for this purpose. Even then, the practice of engraving inscriptions on stone continued on a large scale in south India, where a large number of inscriptions were also recorded on temple walls to serve as permanent records.

Early Evidence of Inscriptions and Scripts

• The Harappan inscriptions, which await decipherment, seem to have been written in a pictographic script, in which ideas and objects were expressed in the form of pictures.
• The oldest deciphered inscriptions belong to the late 4th century BCE, and are in Brahmi and Kharoshthi.
  • These include the inscriptions of the Maurya emperor Ashoka, which are in a number of different languages and scripts, but mostly in the Prakrit language and Brahmi script (written left to right); some were also incised in the Kharoshthi script, which was written right to left.
  • In the fourteenth century AD, two Ashokan pillar inscriptions were found by Firoz Shah Tughlaq — one at Meerut and another at a place called Topra in Haryana. He brought them to Delhi and asked the pandits of his empire to decipher the inscriptions, but they failed to do so.
  • These epigraphs were first deciphered in 1837 by James Prinsep, a civil servant in the employ of the East India Company in Bengal.
  • The Brahmi script prevailed virtually all over India except in the north-western part, where Greek and Aramaic scripts were employed for writing Ashokan inscriptions in present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan. Brahmi remained the main script until the end of the Gupta period, after which strong regional variations appear from the seventh century onwards.
  • As there are no obvious links between the Harappan script and Brahmi or Kharoshthi, what happened to writing in the intervening period remains a mystery.
• Evidence of writing in texts:
  • There is no direct mention of writing in Vedic literature, but references in later Vedic texts to poetic metres, grammatical and phonetic terms, very large numbers, and complex arithmetical calculations are taken by some historians to indicate that writing may have been known at the time.
  • The first definite literary references to writing and written documents occur in the Buddhist Pali texts, especially the Jatakas and the Vinaya Pitaka.
  • Panini’s Ashtadhyayi refers to the word lipi (script).
  • The Brahmi of Ashoka’s inscriptions appears to be a fairly developed script and must have had a prior history of at least a few centuries. Important direct evidence that Brahmi existed in pre-Maurya times has recently come from Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, where excavations unearthed potsherds with short inscriptions datable to at least the early 4th century BCE.
  • Both the Brahmi and Kharoshthi scripts stand midway between alphabetic and syllabic scripts, and can be described as semi-syllabic or semi-alphabetic.

Kharoshthi Script

• Its core area lay in the north-west, in the land known as Gandhara in ancient times; Ashoka’s Shahbazgarhi and Mansehra inscriptions are in this script.
• It was later used in north India under the Indo-Greek, Indo-Parthian, and Kushana kings, and was also used in certain records outside the Gandhara area, including parts of central Asia.
• Written from right to left, Kharoshthi seems to have been derived from the north Semitic Aramaic script, and it declined and died out by about the 3rd century CE.

Brahmi Script

• A script written from left to right.
• Origin: Some scholars have suggested an indigenous origin, others an Aramaic origin. A problem with the latter theory is that the direction of writing and the letter forms in Brahmi and Kharoshthi are different, making it unlikely that they were derived from the same script.
• Unlike Kharoshthi, Brahmi became the parent of all the indigenous scripts of South Asia, and also of scripts used in parts of central and Southeast Asia.
• The different stages of the Brahmi script are often labelled on the basis of dynasties — for example, Ashokan Brahmi, Kushana Brahmi, and Gupta Brahmi.
  • In the late 6th century, Gupta Brahmi evolved into a script known as Siddhamatrika or Kutila, which had sharp angles at the lower right-hand corner of each letter. Regional differences became sharper after this point.
  • The modern north Indian scripts gradually emerged out of Siddhamatrika: Nagari (Devanagari) was standardised by about 1000 CE, and an eastern script (known as proto-Bengali or Gaudi) took shape between the 10th and 14th centuries.
  • From here, the Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, and Maithili scripts emerged in the 14th–15th centuries. This was also the period when the Sharada script emerged in Kashmir and adjoining areas.

Tamil Script

• The earliest inscriptions in the Tamil language are engraved in rock shelters and caves, especially in the area near Madurai, in a script known as Tamil–Brahmi, an adaptation of Brahmi for writing Tamil.
• Three southern scripts emerged in the early medieval period — Grantha, Tamil, and Vatteluttu. Grantha was used for writing Sanskrit, while Tamil and Vatteluttu were used for writing Tamil.
• The Tamil script first appeared in Pallava territory in the 7th century CE.
• Scripts similar to modern Telugu and Kannada took shape in the 14th–15th centuries, while the Malayalam script developed out of Grantha around the same time.

Bi-Script Inscriptions

• Ancient Indian inscriptions include a few bi-script documents, in which the same text is written in the same language but in two different scripts.
• Most such instances come from the north-west and consist of short bi-script Brahmi–Kharoshthi inscriptions.
• A longer example is the 8th-century Pattadakal pillar inscription of the Chalukya king Kirttivarman II, where the Sanskrit text is written both in the north Indian Siddhamatrika script and in the local southern proto-Telugu–Kannada script.

Languages Used in Inscriptions

• The earliest Brahmi inscriptions, including those of Ashoka, are in dialects of Prakrit.
• Between the 1st and 4th centuries CE, many inscriptions were written in a mixture of Sanskrit and Prakrit.
• The first pure Sanskrit inscriptions appeared in the 1st century BCE; the first long Sanskrit inscription is the Junagadh rock inscription of the western Kshatrapa king Rudradaman.
• By about the end of the 3rd century CE, Sanskrit had gradually replaced Prakrit as the language of inscriptions in northern India.
• In the Deccan and South India, Sanskrit inscriptions appeared alongside Prakrit ones in the late 3rd/early 4th century CE — for instance, at Nagarjunakonda in Andhra Pradesh — and the Sanskrit element gradually increased.
  • In the transitional phase of the 4th and 5th centuries, there were bilingual Sanskrit–Prakrit inscriptions as well as those in a mixture of the two languages. Thereafter, Prakrit fell into disuse.
• Between the 4th and 6th centuries, Sanskrit emerged as the premier language of royal inscriptions all over India, and thereafter attained the status of a language associated with high culture, religious authority, and political power, not only in the subcontinent but also in areas such as Southeast Asia.
• In the post-Gupta period, however, there was also an important parallel trend towards the evolution of regional languages and scripts. Inscriptions began to be composed in regional languages in the 9th and 10th centuries, and even Sanskrit inscriptions show the influence of local dialects in spellings and words of non-Sanskrit origin.

Tamil and Bilingual Tamil-Sanskrit Inscriptions

• In South India, inscriptions in the old Tamil language (and the Tamil–Brahmi script) appeared in the 2nd century BCE and the early centuries CE.
• Tamil became an important language of South Indian inscriptions under the Pallava dynasty, with bilingual Tamil–Sanskrit Pallava inscriptions appearing from the 7th century onwards — typically with the invocation, genealogical portion, and concluding verses in Sanskrit, and the details of the grant in Tamil.
• Kings of the Chola and Pandya dynasties also issued Tamil and bilingual Sanskrit–Tamil inscriptions. Hundreds of donative Tamil inscriptions were inscribed on temple walls in various parts of South India in early medieval times.

Kannada and Bilingual Kannada-Sanskrit Inscriptions

• The earliest Kannada inscriptions belong to the late 6th/early 7th century CE; from this period onwards, many private donative records appear in Kannada, and this language was also used in some royal grants.
• Some bilingual Sanskrit–Kannada inscriptions exist, and a 12th-century inscription found at Kurgod in Karnataka is in three languages — Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Kannada.

Telugu and Malayalam Inscriptions

• The late 6th-century epigraphs of the early Telugu Chola kings mark the beginnings of Telugu as a language of inscriptions, followed by many private donative records in this language.
• Malayalam inscriptions appeared around the 15th century.

Marathi, Oriya, Hindi and Gujarati Inscriptions

• Marathi and Oriya inscriptions can be identified from the 11th century.
• Inscriptions in dialects similar to modern Hindi appear in Madhya Pradesh from the 13th century onwards, and Gujarati can be identified in epigraphs from the 15th century.

Classification of Inscriptions

Inscriptions may be classified in two ways — by who they were issued for, and by their content and purpose.

Official and Private Records

• Official records convey royal orders and decisions on social, religious, and administrative matters to officials and the people in general — for example, Ashoka’s edicts and royal land grants.
• Private records include inscriptions recording grants made by private individuals or guilds to temples, or to Buddhist or Jaina establishments.

By content and purpose, inscriptions may be classified as donative, dedicative, and commemorative, among other types.

Commemorative Inscriptions

• The Lumbini pillar inscription of Ashoka is a royal commemorative inscription, recording a specific event — the king’s visit to the Buddha’s birthplace.
• There is evidence of an ancient practice of erecting memorials to dead people. Thousands of memorial stones are found all over the country, not always connected with burials; some carry only sculpted scenes (realistic or symbolic), while others also carry inscriptions.
  • The most common memorial stones were erected in memory of dead heroes or of women who committed sati.
  • Stones were also set up in honour of Jaina men and women who gave up their lives in the exemplary Jaina fashion of death by starvation.
  • On the Konkan coast, many stones were erected in memory of sailors who lost their lives in sea battles.
  • Some memorial stones were themselves objects of worship.

Donative Inscriptions

• These refer especially to gifts of money, cattle, land, and the like, made mainly for religious purposes — not only by kings and princes, but also by artisans and merchants.
• Inscriptions in favour of religious establishments were inscribed on shrine walls, railings, and gateways; the excavation and donation of caves to ascetics was recorded in inscriptions within the caves.
• Donative inscriptions also include records of the installation of religious images, often inscribed on the images themselves, as well as records of monetary investments, the interest from which was to fund lamps, flowers, and incense for the worship of a deity.

Royal Land Grants

• Inscriptions recording land grants, made mainly by chiefs and princes, are very important for the study of the land system and administration in ancient India.
• There are thousands of such inscriptions — some on stone, but mostly inscribed on one or more copper plates — recording grants of lands, revenues, and villages to monks, priests, temples, monasteries, vassals, and officials. They were written in various languages, including Prakrit, Sanskrit, Tamil, and Telugu.
• The earliest stone inscriptions recording land grants with tax exemptions are the Satavahana and Kshatrapa epigraphs found at Nashik.
• The mid-4th-century Pallava and Shalankayana grants are the earliest surviving copper plate grants. One of the oldest copper plate grants from north India is the late 4th-century Kalachala grant of king Ishvararata. Copper plate grants increased in number and frequency in the early medieval period.

Prashastis

• Royal inscriptions include prashastis, which eulogise the attributes and achievements of kings and conquerors while ignoring their defeats or weaknesses. Most royal inscriptions (and some private ones) usually begin with a prashasti, while some inscriptions are devoted entirely to eulogy.
  • Examples: The Hathigumpha inscription of Kharavela (a 1st-century BCE/1st-century CE king of Kalinga in Orissa), and the Allahabad prashasti of the 4th-century Gupta emperor Samudragupta.
• Certain inscriptions record the building of waterworks, wells, and charitable feeding houses by private individuals. A unique series of records of royal initiatives of this kind is inscribed on a granite rock at Junagadh (Girnar) in Gujarat, which — apart from a set of Ashokan edicts — bears two other important inscriptions:
  • A 150 CE inscription of the Shaka ruler Rudradaman, recording the beginning of construction of a water reservoir known as the Sudarshana lake in the 4th century BCE under the Maurya emperor Chandragupta, its completion during Ashoka’s reign, and its repair in the 2nd century CE.
  • A 5th-century inscription on the same rock, from the time of the Gupta king Skandagupta, describing how the lake burst its banks due to excessive rains and was repaired after two years of work.
• Other inscriptions are votive records of followers of Buddhism, Jainism, Vaishnavism, and Shaivism, appearing on pillars, tablets, temples, or images as marks of devotion.

Miscellaneous Inscriptions

• Other miscellaneous types include labels, graffiti left by pilgrims and travellers, religious formulae, and writing on seals.
• Certain inscriptions from Madhya Pradesh give a condensed summary of the basics of Sanskrit grammar.
• “Footprint inscriptions” are found in many parts of the country, accompanying a pair of engraved footprints of a holy man, king, or other noteworthy person.

Inscriptions as a Source of History

Advantages:

• Compared with manuscripts of texts, inscriptions have the advantage of durability.
• They are usually contemporaneous with the events they describe, and their information can be connected to a specific time and place; changes and additions made to them can usually be detected without great difficulty.
• Compared to literary sources, which tend to offer a theoretical perspective, inscriptions often reflect what people were actually doing.

Value for political history:

• Inscriptions are a valuable source of information on political history. The geographical spread of a king’s inscriptions is often taken as an indicator of the area under his political control.
  • However, the discovery of inscriptions depends on chance, and not all inscriptions issued during a king’s reign need necessarily be found. Movable inscriptions, moreover, are not always found in situ (in their original place).
• The earliest royal inscriptions do not contain much geographical material, but later ones generally do. Their prashastis give details about the history of dynasties and the reigns of kings — though this evidence has certain problems:
  • Royal inscriptions naturally tend to exaggerate the achievements of the ruling king.
  • Confusion is sometimes created when a genealogy mentions kings with the same name, or when different inscriptions contradict each other on particular details.
  • Genealogies sometimes skip names — for instance, Skandagupta and Ramagupta are ignored in Gupta genealogies because they did not fall within the direct line of succession recognised by later rulers.
  • Inscriptions of different dynasties sometimes make conflicting claims. For instance, a Gurjara-Pratihara inscription claims that king Vatsaraja conquered all of Karnataka, while a contemporary Rashtrakuta inscription claims that the Rashtrakuta king defeated Vatsaraja and ruled over Karnataka himself. Wherever possible, such political details given in inscriptions have to be cross-checked.

Value for administrative and economic history:

• Inscriptions are a major source of information on political structures and administrative and revenue systems. There are very few ancient records of secular land transactions and land disputes, and some inscriptions provide precisely this kind of evidence, also shedding light on social and economic issues.
  • For example, an inscription of the time of the Chola king Rajaraja III (1231 CE) states that farmers of a certain village found the burden of arbitrary levies in money and paddy, and the demand for compulsory labour made on various pretexts by several agencies, so unbearable that they could no longer carry on cultivation. A meeting of the Brahmana assembly and the leading men of the locality was held in the village temple, and decisions were taken fixing the dues that farmers were to give to the Brahmanas and royal tax collectors, and the labour services they were expected to perform.
• Inscriptions shed light on the history of settlement patterns, agrarian relations, and class and caste structures.

Value for religious, cultural, and art history:

• Inscriptions provide dateable information on the history of religious sects, institutions, and practices; donative records help identify the sources of patronage enjoyed by ancient religious establishments.
  • They also offer glimpses into sects and cults that were once important but left no literature of their own, such as the Ajivika sect and the yaksha and naga cults.
• Inscriptions can help identify and date sculptures and structures, throwing light on the history of iconography, art, and architecture.
• They are a rich source of information on historical geography — for instance, the location of several ancient Buddhist monastic sites, such as Kapilvastu (identified with Piprahwa in Basti district, UP), has been fixed on the basis of inscribed monastic seals.
• Inscriptions also reflect the history of languages and literature, and a few refer to the performing arts.
  • For example, the 7th-century Kudumiyamalai inscription gives the musical notes used in seven classical ragas.
  • Inscriptions from Tamil Nadu refer to the performance of various kinds of dances. The pillars of the eastern and western gateways of the Nataraja temple at Chidambaram carry label inscriptions describing the dance poses of 108 sculpted figures, quoting verses from the Natyashastra of Bharata.

Numismatics

• The study of coins is called numismatics.
• Ancient Indian currency was not issued as paper money but as metal coins, made of copper, silver, gold, and lead.
• Coin moulds made of burnt clay have been discovered in large numbers, most of them relating to the Kushan period; the use of such moulds virtually disappeared in the post-Gupta period.
• As there was nothing like a modern banking system in ancient times, people stored money in earthenware and brass vessels and maintained them as precious hoards to fall back on in times of need. Many such hoards, containing not only Indian coins but also coins minted abroad (such as in the Roman empire), have been discovered in different parts of India.
• Our earliest coins carry a few symbols, but later coins depict the figures of kings and divinities, and also mention their names and dates.

History of Indian Coinage

• Stone Age people had neither currency nor coinage and conducted exchange via barter. The Harappans, for instance, had a very extensive trade network based on barter.
• The Rig Veda mentions words such as nishka and nishkagriva (gold ornaments) and hiranyapinda (gold globules), but these cannot be understood as coins. Later Vedic texts use terms such as nishka, suvarna, shatamana, and pada, which may have been metal pieces of definite weight, not necessarily full-fledged coins.
• The earliest definite literary and archaeological evidence of coinage in the Indian subcontinent dates from the 6th–5th centuries BCE, in the context of the emergence of states, urbanisation, and expanding trade.
  • Buddhist texts and the Ashtadhyayi refer to words such as kahapana/karshapana, nikkha/nishka, shatamana, pada, vimshatika, trinshatika, and suvanna/suvarna.
• The basic unit of the Indian coin weight system was a red-and-black seed of the gunja berry, known as the raktika, ratti, or rati. In South India, the standard weight of coins was theoretically calculated on the basis of the relationship between two kinds of beans — the manjadi and the kalanju.
• The advent of coinage did not mean the disappearance of barter — both co-existed for a very long time.

Punch-Marked Coins

• The oldest coins found in the subcontinent are punch-marked coins, made mostly of silver and some of copper. They are usually rectangular, sometimes square or round, and often irregular in shape.
  • The blanks for these coins were generally cut from a metal sheet, and symbols were then hammered onto them using dies or punches.
  • Most silver punch-marked coins weighed 32 rattis, or about 56 grains.
• Punch-marked coins are found all over the subcontinent and continued to circulate in many places until the early centuries CE, with a longer period of circulation in peninsular India.
• The punch-marked coins of northern India can be divided into four main series, on the basis of weight, the number and nature of punch marks, and area of circulation:
  • Taxila Gandhara type (north-west): heavy weight standard, single punch type.
  • Kosala type (middle Ganga valley): heavy weight standard, multiple punch marks.
  • Avanti type (western India): light weight standard, single punch mark.
  • Magadhan type: light weight standard, multiple punches.
• Changes in coinage patterns mirrored political changes — with the expansion of the Magadhan empire, the Magadhan type of punch-marked coins gradually replaced those of other states.
• Although these coins carry no legends (nothing written on them), it is likely that most were issued by states; in later times there is evidence of city issues and guild issues, and this practice may have prevailed during the punch-marked coin period as well.
• Symbols on these coins include geometric designs, plants, animals, the sun, wheel, mountain, tree (including tree-in-railing), branches, and human figures — some of which may have had religious or political significance.
• The coins often carry primary and secondary punch marks, the latter being ‘counterstamps’ or ‘countermarks’ added later, without heating the coins.

Uninscribed Cast Coins

• Uninscribed cast coins, made of copper or copper alloys, appeared soon after the punch-marked coins and have been found in most parts of the subcontinent except the far south.
• These coins were made by melting metal and pouring it into clay or metal moulds; clay moulds have been found at many sites, and a bronze mould was found at Iran in central India.
• The discovery of punch-marked and uninscribed cast coins at the same archaeological level at some early historical sites indicates that they overlapped in time.

Uninscribed Die-Struck Coins

• These were mostly in copper, rarely in silver. Symbols, some similar to those on punch-marked coins, were struck onto coin blanks with metal dies carefully carved with the required designs.
• Minting of such coins may have begun around the 4th century BCE, and they have been found in large numbers at sites such as Taxila and Ujjain.

Die-Struck Indo-Greek Coins

• The next stage in the history of Indian coinage is marked by the die-struck Indo-Greek coins of the 2nd/1st century BCE.
• These are well-executed, usually round (a few square or rectangular), and mostly in silver, though some are in copper, a silver–copper alloy called billon, nickel, and lead.
  • They bear the name and portrait of the issuing ruler on the obverse — coins of Menander and Strato I show them ageing gradually from teenagers to old men, indicating their long reigns. Coins issued jointly by kings reflect the practice of conjoint rule.
  • The reverse of the coins usually carries religious symbols.
• The Indo-Greeks issued bilingual and bi-script coins, with the issuer’s name appearing on the obverse in Greek and on the reverse in Prakrit, usually in the Kharoshthi script (rarely Brahmi).
• Coins of the Shakas, Parthians, and Kshatrapas follow the basic features of Indo-Greek coinage, and also include bilingual and bi-script issues.

Kushana Coins

• The Kushanas (1st–4th centuries CE) were the first dynasty of the subcontinent to mint large quantities of gold coins; their silver coins are rare. They also issued many copper coins of low denominational value, indicating the increasing spread of a money economy.
• Kushana coins carry the figure, name, and title of the king on the obverse, while the reverse depicts deities belonging to the Brahmanical, Buddhist, Greek, Roman, and other pantheons.
• Their legends are either entirely in Greek, or in some cases in Kharoshthi on the reverse.

Local (Tribal/Janapada) Coins

• A number of coin types ranging from the 3rd century BCE to the 4th century CE, referred to as indigenous, tribal, janapada, or local coins, form an important source of information on the history of the dynasties of northern and central India.
• These coins are mostly cast or die-struck in copper or bronze, though some are in silver and a few rare examples are in lead and potin (an alloy of copper, lead, tin, and dross).
• They include coins issued by chieftains, kings, and non-monarchical states such as the Arjunayanas, Uddehikas, Malavas, and Yaudheyas, as well as coins bearing the names of cities such as Tripuri, Ujjayini, Kaushambi, Vidisha, Airikina, Mahishmati, Madhyamika, Varanasi, and Taxila, presumably issued by the administration of these cities.
• Some coins carrying the word negama appear to represent coins issued by merchant guilds; certain Taxila coins with the legend pancha-nekame may have been issued jointly by five guilds.

Satavahana Coins

• In the Deccan, pre-Satavahana coinage was followed by the copper and silver coins of the Satavahana kings, who also issued coins of small denominational value made of lead and potin.
• Most Satavahana coins were die-struck, though some are cast. Their legends were generally in the Prakrit language and Brahmi script, but the portrait coins (mostly in silver, some in lead) use a Dravidian language and Brahmi script.
• Punch-marked coins continued to circulate alongside the Satavahana issues.

Coinage in the Deccan and South India

• Ikshvakus: In the post-Satavahana period in the eastern Deccan, the Ikshvakus of the lower Krishna valley (3rd–4th centuries) issued lead coins similar in fabric to the Satavahana ones.
• Western Deccan: There was a greater demand for silver currency here, perhaps for commercial reasons. The Kshatrapa ruler Nahapana introduced a silver currency in the Nashik area.
  • Roman gold coins also flowed into peninsular India in large quantities in the early centuries CE, and may have been used as a medium of exchange for large-scale transactions or as currency reserves and capital deposits; locally made imitations of Roman gold coins have also been found.
  • Thus, in the early centuries CE, the western Deccan witnessed the co-existence of Satavahana, Kshatrapa, punch-marked, and Roman coins, and currencies from the western Deccan also flowed into the eastern Deccan.
• South India: Some punch-marked coins found in various parts of South India have been identified as dynastic issues on the basis of their symbols — for example, coins found in a hoard at Bodinaikkanur near Madurai carried a double carp fish, the symbol of the Pandya kings.
  • In recent times, there has been increasing evidence of dynastic issues (some with portraits) bearing legends of the Cholas, Cheras, and Pandyas.
  • Coins with the legend Valuti have been assigned to the Pandyas.
  • Silver coins with the portrait of a Chera king and the legend Makkotai have been found in the Krishna riverbed near Karur, along with coins bearing the legends Kuttuvan Kotai and Kollippurai, alongside Chera symbols of the bow and arrow and the double fish and tiger.

Gupta Coins

• The imperial Gupta kings issued well-executed die-struck gold coins with metrical legends in Sanskrit, known as dinaras, mostly found in north India.
• The obverse depicts the reigning king in various poses, usually martial ones, though coins of Samudragupta and Kumaragupta I interestingly show them playing the vina (a stringed instrument).
• The reverse of Gupta coins carries religious symbols indicating the king’s religious affiliations. There was a decline in the metallic purity of gold coins in the later part of Skandagupta’s reign.
• The Guptas also issued silver coins, but their copper coins are rare.

Numismatic History of the Early Medieval Period

• This period remains a subject of continuing debate. Historians who describe the early medieval period as marked by a feudal order speak of a decline in coinage along with a decline in trade and urban centres, followed by a revival in the 11th century — a hypothesis that can be questioned.
  • There was certainly a decline in the aesthetic quality of coins, in the number of coin types, and in their message content; many are devoid of names or titles and are therefore difficult to associate with a particular king.
  • However, as demonstrated by John S. Deyell, there does not seem to have been a decline in the actual volume of coins in circulation. A number of base-metal alloy coin series were issued by dynasties in this period.
• Rajputana and Gujarat: In the Ganga valley, billon coins circulated in the Gurjara-Pratihara kingdom, while other coin types circulated in Rajputana and Gujarat.
• Sindh: Copper coins were minted by the Arab governors of Sindh between the mid-8th and mid-9th centuries.
• Kashmir: Copper coins were supplemented by bills of exchange (hundikas) denominated in terms of coins or grain, and by the use of cowries.
• Bengal: During the 6th–7th centuries, kings of Bengal such as Shashanka issued gold coins.
  • No coin issues of the Pala and Sena dynasties have so far been identified; it has been suggested that references to currency units in their inscriptions represent theoretical units of value made up of a fixed number of objects, such as cowries, rather than actual coins.
  • A number of silver coins known as Harikela coins circulated in Bengal between the 7th and 13th centuries, with corresponding local eastern series issued in the name of various localities.
• Western Deccan: Some early medieval coin types have been tentatively identified with the Chalukyas of Badami. Gold and silver coins found in the Andhra region have been attributed to the early eastern Chalukyas, though there seems to be a gap of about three centuries until the end of the 10th century, when a revival of gold and copper coinage occurred under later kings of this dynasty.
  • The attribution of certain gold and silver coins to the Chalukyas of Kalyana (8th–12th centuries) and to the Kalachuri Rajputs remains uncertain.
  • Coins issued by the Kadambas of Goa (11th–12th centuries) have been identified, and a few gold coins have been attributed to the Shilaharas of the western Deccan (11th century).
• Far South: Coins with lion and bull motifs, some inscribed with titles, have been associated with the Pallavas. The tiger crest is the emblem on Chola coins.
  • The seals of several Chola copper plate inscriptions show the tiger, fish (the Pandya emblem), and bow (the Chera emblem), indicating that the Cholas had achieved political supremacy over these two dynasties; the appearance of these three emblems on many gold, silver, and copper coins suggests that these were Chola issues.
  • Gold coins found at Kavilayadavalli in Andhra Pradesh carry the motifs of the tiger, bow, and some indistinct marks; the obverse bears the Tamil legend sung, a short form of sungandavirttarulina (abolisher of tolls), one of the titles of the Chola king Kulottunga I. The legends on the reverse may indicate the names of mint towns.
  • The last phase of Chola rule is represented only by copper coins. Coins — mostly copper — of the early medieval Pandyas have been found largely in Sri Lanka.

Cowries

• Cowries were also used as coins, though their purchasing power was low. They appear in substantial numbers in post-Gupta times, but may have been used even earlier, and continued to be used alongside coins as money in many parts of early medieval India.
  • At Sohepur in Orissa, 25,000 cowries were found along with 27 Kalachuri coins.
  • At Bhaundri village in Lucknow, 54 Pratihara coins were found along with 9,834 cowries.
• Cowries were probably used for small-scale transactions, or where coins of small denominational value were in short supply; their market value fluctuated depending on demand and supply.

Coins as a Source of History

• In the course of circulation, coins are subjected to wear and tear, and their weight gradually decreases — a fact that enables numismatists to arrange them in chronological sequence.
• Language and script: Legends on coins give information on the history of languages and scripts.
• Economic history: As coins were used for donations, payment, and exchange, they throw considerable light on economic history. Some coins were issued by guilds of merchants and goldsmiths with the ruler’s permission, showing that crafts and commerce had become important.
• Monetary history: Coins are linked to monetary history, including the analysis of the production and circulation of coinage, the monetary values attached to coins, and the frequency and volume of issues — an important aspect of the wider history of exchange and trade.
• Trade:
  • The wide distribution of Kushana coins indicates the flourishing trade of the period.
  • The ship depicted on certain Satavahana coins reflects the importance of maritime trade in the Deccan during this period.
  • Roman coins found in various parts of India provide information on Indo-Roman trade.
  • The largest number of Indian coins date to the post-Maurya period, made of lead, potin, copper, bronze, silver, and gold; the Guptas issued the largest number of gold coins. This indicates that trade and commerce flourished, especially in the post-Maurya period and much of the Gupta period. However, only a few coins belonging to the post-Gupta period have been found, indicating a decline of trade and commerce in that period.
• Importance of guilds: The few coin series issued by guilds indicate the importance of these institutions.
• Economic prosperity: Coins are often taken to indicate levels of economic prosperity, or the lack of it, or the financial condition of ancient states, since they facilitated large-scale transactions and contributed to trade.
  • Historians frequently interpret the debasement of coins as an indication of financial crisis or general economic decline in a state — for instance, in the time of the later Guptas. However, in a situation where the supply of precious metals is restricted, alloying or debasement can also be a response to an increase in the demand for coins created by growing economic transactions.
• Helps date archaeological layers: Dates appear rarely on early Indian coins; exceptions are the western Kshatrapa coins, which give dates in the Shaka era, and some Gupta silver coins, which give the regnal years of kings.
  • Whether dated or undated, coins discovered in excavations often help date the archaeological layers. An example is the site of Sonkh near Mathura, where the excavated levels were divided into eight periods on the basis of coin finds.
• Political history: As important royal message-bearing media, coins form a vital source of political history.
  • The area of circulation of dynastic issues is often used to estimate the extent and frontiers of empires — this has helped reconstruct the history of several ruling dynasties, especially the Indo-Greeks, who came to India from north Afghanistan and ruled here in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC.
  • However, caution is necessary, because coins made of precious metals had intrinsic value and often circulated beyond the borders of the issuing state, and sometimes continued to circulate for some time after a dynasty faded from power. Several different currency systems could prevail in an area, so it is necessary to visualise multiple, overlapping, and intersecting spheres of coin circulation.
  • Numismatic evidence is an especially important source for the political history of India between c. 200 BCE and 300 CE. Most Indo-Greek kings are known almost entirely from their coins, and coins also offer information on the Parthians, Shakas, Kshatrapas, Kushanas, and Satavahanas.
  • The coins of over 25 kings with names ending in the suffix ‘mitra’ have been found in the area from east Punjab to the borders of Bihar. Coins found in various parts of north and central India (Vidisha, Eran, Pawaya, Mathura, etc.) mention kings whose names end in the suffix ‘naga’, about whom little is known from other sources.
• Ancient political systems: Coins also offer information on ancient political systems — the term gana on coins of the Yaudheyas and Malavas points to their non-monarchical polity, while city coins are suggestive of the importance and possible autonomy of certain city administrations.
• Biographies: Sometimes numismatic evidence offers more than just the names of kings and provides biographical details.
  • The only specific detail known about the life of the Gupta king Chandragupta I — that he married a Lichchhavi princess — comes from coins commemorating the marriage.
  • Coins have helped prove that a Gupta king named Ramagupta ruled between Samudragupta and Chandragupta II.
  • The performance of the ashvamedha sacrifice by Samudragupta and Kumaragupta I is recorded on coins. The archer and battle-axe coin types of Samudragupta predictably advertise his physical prowess, while the lyrist type, showing him playing the vina, represents a completely different aspect of his personality.
• Religion: Coins also portray kings and gods and carry religious symbols and legends, throwing light on the art and religion of their time.
  • The depiction of deities on coins provides information about the personal religious preferences of kings, royal religious policy, and the history of religious cults. For instance, representations of Balarama and Krishna appear on 2nd-century BCE coins of the Indo-Greek king Agathocles at Aï-Khanoum (in Afghanistan), indicating the popularity of the cults of these gods in the region.
  • The depiction of a great variety of figures from Indian, Iranian, and Graeco-Roman religious traditions on Kushana coins is generally interpreted as reflecting the eclectic religious views of the Kushana kings — though it can equally be read as evidence of the many religious cults prevailing in their empire, and of the wide range of religious symbols through which the Kushanas chose to legitimise their political power.

Conclusion

Archaeology, epigraphy, and numismatics each bring a distinct evidentiary strength to the study of ancient and early medieval Indian history — archaeology recovers the material and everyday life often missing from texts, epigraphy supplies dateable, contemporaneous, and largely unembellished testimony, and numismatics illuminates political, economic, and religious history through the circulation and iconography of coins. Yet each of these archaeological sources carries its own specific potential as well as limitations, which the historian must always take into account, since interpretation remains integral to analysing evidence from archaeological sites, inscriptions, and coins alike. Wherever multiple sources are available, their evidence has to be correlated — and the correlation of evidence from texts and archaeology is especially important for building a more comprehensive and inclusive history of ancient and early medieval India. However, given the inherent differences in the nature of literary and archaeological data, integrating them into a smooth and seamless historical narrative is not always an easy task — a challenge that continues to shape ongoing research on the sources of ancient Indian history.