Coins
From punch-marked silver to Gupta gold and Mughal rupees — what coins tell us about rulers and trade.
-
c. 600–500 BCE🏺 Ancient
Punch-marked coins
The earliest coins were named for the way symbols were punched or stamped onto the metal surface.
-
c. second century BCE🏺 Ancient
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🏺 Ancient
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🏺 Ancient
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.
-
Early centuries CE🏺 Ancient
Roman coins in south India
Hoards of Roman coins found in south India show that trade networks reached far beyond political boundaries.
-
Gupta period🏺 Ancient
Gupta gold
Some of the most spectacular gold coins were issued by the Gupta rulers.
-
Akbar's reign🏰 Medieval
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.
-
Nineteenth century🏭 Modern
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.
How we check: each entry is written from a passage in the NCERT chapter it links to, and our build fails unless key phrases from that passage are found in the chapter’s own text. Dates appear only where the chapter gives them.