Punch-marked coins

Punch-marked coins, also known as Aahat coins, are a type of early coinage of India, dating to between about the 6th and 2nd centuries BC. It was of irregular shape. These coins are found over most parts of subcontinent and remained in circulation till the early centuries CE. The study of the relative chronology of these coins has successfully established that the first punch-marked coins initially only had one or two punches, with the number of punches increasing over time. The first coins in India may have been minted around the 6th century BC by the Mahajanapadas of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. 19th-century proposals which suggested an origin from as early as 1000 BC, independent of the introduction of coins in Asia Minor, are "no longer given any credence". Silver coins were certainly being produced in the Achaemenid Satrapy of Gandāra, by the mid-4th century BC, before the Indian campaign of Alexander the Great, in 327 BC, as Plutarch noted Taxiles (Ambhi) of Taxila exchanged coined tribute with Alexander. According to Joe Cribb, Indian punch-marked coins go back to the mid-4th century BC or slightly earlier, and actually started with the punch-marked coinage of the Achaemenids in the Kabul/ Gandhara area. The coins of this period were punch-marked coins called Puranas, Karshapanas or Pana. Several of these coins had a single symbol, for example, Saurashtra had a humped bull, and Dakshin Panchala had a Swastika (which was a symbol of good luck prior to the 20th Century), others, like Magadha, had several symbols. These coins were made of silver of a standard weight but with an irregular shape. This was gained by cutting up silver bars and then making the correct weight by cutting the edges of the coin. They are mentioned in the Manu (c. 200 BC - 200 AD), Panini (bef. 300 BC), and Buddhist Jataka (c. 300 BC - 400 AD), circulating in the North until approximately the beginning of the first century AD, but lasted three centuries longer in the South, i.e. until about 300 AD.