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Coins and money

Before coins

Harappan civilization	Weights of chert: Exchanges were regulated by a precise system of weights, usually cubes of a stone called chert, with no markings.
Harappan civilization	Standard weights: The lower denominations were binary (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32) and the higher ones decimal (160, 200, 320, 640); the smaller weights were probably for jewellery and beads.
Early historic period	Guilds (shrenis): Guilds of craft producers and merchants probably procured raw materials, regulated production and marketed finished goods.

The first coins

c. 6th century BCE	Guilds and coins: Traders, craftsmen, moneylenders and agriculturists formed guilds (shrenis) with elected heads, sharing information and making their own rules. Growing trade also brought India’s first coins — silver punch-marked coins — which were exchanged across regions.
c. 600–500 BCE	Punch-marked coins: The earliest coins were named for the way symbols were punched or stamped onto the metal surface.
c. second century BCE	Kings' names and faces: The first coins to bear the names and images of rulers were issued by the Indo-Greeks in the northwest.
c. first century CE	The first gold coins: The first gold coins were issued c. first century CE by the Kushanas, whose rulers also took the title devaputra, ‘son of god’.
c. first century CE	Coins of a tribal republic: Several thousand copper coins of the Yaudheyas of Punjab and Haryana show that tribal republics too took part in trade.
1st–4th century CE	The first dated coins: The coins of the Western Kshatrapas, who ruled western India between the 1st and 4th centuries CE, are reckoned the earliest coins bearing dates — given in the Saka era, which begins in 78 CE and is the official calendar of the Indian Republic.
	Ships on Satavahana coins: Many Satavahana coins show ships, which suggests that sea trade was an important part of economic life; their trade networks reached as far as the Roman Empire.
Early centuries CE	Roman coins in south India: Hoards of Roman coins found in south India show that trade networks reached far beyond political boundaries.
Gupta period	Gupta gold: Some of the most spectacular gold coins were issued by the Gupta rulers.
Nineteenth century	Kharosthi read from coins: Indo-Greek coins carried kings' names in Greek and Kharosthi, so letters could be matched — as in names such as Apollodotus — and Kharosthi inscriptions were found to be in Prakrit.

Kings’ money: Lakshmi, tanka and rupiya

11th century	Seated Lakshmi coins: After the Guptas gold coins became rare, until the Kalachuri ruler Gangeyadeva revived them with his ‘Seated Lakshmi’ coins, which later rulers copied.
	Crests of the southern dynasties: South Indian coins carried dynastic crests: the boar of the Chalukyas, the bull of the Pallavas, the tiger of the Cholas, the fish of the Pandyas, the bow and arrow of the Cheras and the lion of the Hoysalas.
1206–1526	The tanka and the jital: Under the Delhi Sultanate the unit of account became the tanka, with jitals as the smaller coins. Coins were struck in gold, silver and copper, and the money economy expanded considerably.
13th century	Raziyya’s coins: On her inscriptions and coins, Raziyya stated that she was the daughter of Sultan Iltutmish.
1329–1332	Muhammad bin Tughlaq’s token coins: Between 1329 and 1332 Muhammad bin Tughlaq tried a token currency of brass and copper. Mass forgeries made it a total disaster, and he redeemed all the tokens, forged or genuine.
From c. 1336	Vijayanagara’s gold pagodas: Vijayanagara’s standardised gold coins, many bearing Lord Venkateshvara of Tirupati, inspired the ‘Single Swami’ pagodas of the Dutch and French and the ‘Three Swami’ pagodas of the English East India Company.
1540–1545	Sher Shah’s rupiya: Sher Shah Suri, who ruled Delhi briefly from 1540 to 1545, issued a silver coin called the rupiya. Weighing 178 grains, it was the precursor of the modern rupee and stayed largely unchanged until the early 20th century; his system of gold, silver and copper coins carried on under the Mughals.
Akbar's reign	Akbar's silver rupya: NCERT shows a silver rupya issued by Akbar; expanding trade brought huge amounts of silver bullion into Asia, and a large part of it went to India.
Early 17th century	Jahangir’s zodiac coins: Mughal coin design matured under Akbar. Jahangir took a personal interest in his coinage — zodiac signs, portraits and verses — and some of his surviving gigantic coins are among the largest issued in the world.
1664; 1674	Shivaji’s coins: Shivaji first issued coins in 1664, when he took the title of Raja, and issued them again to mark his coronation at Raigad in 1674. These coins are rare.
1710s	Coins in the name of the Gurus: Under Banda Bahadur, the Khalsa declared its sovereign rule by striking coins in the names of Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh.
	Hundis and trading communities: The hundi — a written instruction to pay someone — let merchants move funds across political borders without carrying money, making them less vulnerable to plunder. Communities such as the Marwaris built systems of credit and trust that worked across regimes.

Bank notes and the Reserve Bank

1770–1832	The Bank of Hindostan: Among India’s earliest bank notes were those of the Bank of Hindostan (1770–1832), set up by the agency house of Alexander and Company. It survived three panic runs but failed when its parent firm went under in the crisis of 1832.
1806	Presidency Bank notes: Bank notes came into wide use with the semi-government Presidency Banks, notably the Bank of Bengal, set up in 1806 as the Bank of Calcutta; the Bank of Bombay followed in 1840 and the Bank of Madras in 1843.
1861	The Paper Currency Act: The Paper Currency Act of 1861 took away the banks’ right to issue notes; the Government of India went on issuing currency notes until the Reserve Bank was set up.
1 April 1935	The Reserve Bank of India: Set up on the recommendations of the Hilton Young Commission under the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, the Reserve Bank began work on 1 April 1935. Its first currency offices included Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Rangoon, Karachi, Lahore and Cawnpore.
1948; 1949	The Reserve Bank after Partition: After Partition the Reserve Bank served as Pakistan’s central bank until June 1948, when the State Bank of Pakistan began work. Set up as a shareholders’ bank, the Reserve Bank was nationalised in 1949.

The rupee of the Republic

15 August 1950	The Anna series: Republic India’s first coins, issued on 15 August 1950, replaced the King’s portrait with the Lion Capital of the Ashoka Pillar; a sheaf of corn replaced the tiger on the one-rupee coin. One rupee was still 16 annas — or 192 pies.
1 April 1957	Decimal coinage: the naya paisa: The Indian Coinage Act, amended in September 1955 to adopt a metric system, came into force on 1 April 1957. The rupee kept its value and name but was now divided into 100 paise instead of 16 annas or 64 pice; the new paisa was called the ‘naya paisa’ until 1 June 1964.
2016	UPI: The Unified Payments Interface, developed by the National Payments Corporation of India, was launched as a pilot in April 2016 with 21 member banks and opened to the public in August 2016. It lets people pay bank to bank from their mobile phones.

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Years are from YugMap’s records; dates marked c. are approximate. Printed from yugmap.com.