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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
ECONOMIC CONDITION
28 to 36 tolas), kollage (sixteen maunds), saṅgaḍi (double siddige), daṇḍige, soḷasa, oṭṭila, bhaṇḍigoḍa etc. [1] The weights current there were pala, maḷava, kōrusē, and aḍḍa. [2] .. The coins current in North Koṅkaṇ were as follows−Dramma was in use throughout the period. Kielhorn supposed that there were two kinds of drammas −(1) those of gold, and (2) those of silver, but this was because of his wrong reading of a passage in one of the Kānherī inscriptions included here. [3] Dramma was only a silver coin. It is called rajata-nishka in the Kutāpura grant. [4] Dīnāra was a gold coin current in India in the Kushāṇa and Gupta ages, but later it seems to have gone out of use. It weighed 124 grains. It is surprising that the Paṭṭaṇakuḍi plates of Raṭṭarāja, dated Śaka 940, refer to this coin. [5] Other gold coins mentioned in the Śilāhāra inscriptions of North and South Koṅkaṇ are gadyāṇaka and dharaṇa. That they were of gold is shown by their prefix svarṇa in the Khārepātaṇ plates of Rāṭṭarāja. [6] Of these, the gadyāṇa was a coin of the size of the modern half-rupee piece. Its standard weight was 48 rattis [7] or 87.84 grains. The dharaṇa, also called purāṇa, was usually a silver coin. According to the Yājñavalkya-smṛiti, a dharaṇa weighed 32 kṛishṇalas or rattis, and was a silver coin. [8] According to another table, its weight was 144 rattis. The Khārepāṭaṇ plates, how ever, mention it as a gold coin. [9] The Manusmṛiti mentions a gold dharaṇa weighing 10 palas (of 320 rattis each). [10] It, therefore, weighed 3200 rattis. It is doubtful if such a heavy gold coin was intended to be referred to in the aforementioned passage of the Khārepāṭaṇ plates. Perhaps,. the gold dharaṇa and the gold gadyāna were of the weights mentioned in the Lilāvatī, viz. the dharaṇa of 24 rattis and the gadyāna of 48 rattis. [11] One inscription [12] mentions visōva (Sanskrit viṁśōpaka), which seems to have been a small coin equivalent to one twentieth of a dramma in value.
.. The coins of only Chhittarāja have been found so far. The one illustrated and described by Rapson was from the collection of W. Theobold. [13] It is of the Gadhiya kā paisā type imitated from thick Sassanian type of coinage. It is of silver, .6” in size, weighing 53 grains. It has a debased form of the king’s head on the observes, and the legend Śrī-Chhittarājasya within a border of dots on the reverse. Besides the silver coins of Sōmaladēvī, these are the only Gadhiyā kā paisā coins which a legend. These are the only drammas referred to in several inscriptions of the Northern Śilāhāras. [14]
..
Some Śilāhāra inscriptions [15] mention pōrutha or pōruthidrammas which also were current
in North Koṅkaṇ in that age. Various explanations of this coin-term have been given. Some
take it as meaning Pārthian [16] coins, but these coins seem to have been current in Rājaputana,
[1] No. 49, lines 26-32.
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