Early money and monetisation

Detailed chapter description

Chapter argument. Early money in Mithilā, Vajji and Aṅga should be reconstructed as a layered history of measurement, portable value, coin manufacture, circulation, credit and institutional payment rather than as a simple transition from barter to cash. Silver punch-marked and copper coins widened the possibilities of exchange, taxation and saving, but their presence does not prove that all transactions were monetised. This chapter therefore combines numismatic evidence with archaeological context, urban systems, textual vocabulary and fiscal institutions while preserving the limits of each source. A key regional anchor is the Gorho Ghat hoard of fifty-eight silver punch-marked coins from the wider Bhagalpur–Aṅga corridor, set beside the urban monetary evidence of Vaiśālī and Campā. The history of money begins before a society becomes fully or uniformly monetised. Money can function as a unit of account, a means of payment, a medium of exchange and a store of value, and these functions need not develop together. A silver piece accepted by weight may settle a large payment even where daily food exchange remains in kind. A coin may be used for taxes or merchant settlement while wages are partly paid in grain. Chapter 12 therefore treated punch-marked coins as one component of expanding exchange; this chapter asks the narrower and more difficult question of how far monetary practices penetrated the societies of Mithilā, Vajji and Aṅga. The central methodological rule is that coin finds prove the presence of portable monetary objects, not a universal cash economy. Monetisation must be reconstructed from the density, contexts and social uses of monetary evidence rather than declared from the first occurrence of coinage.