Indian History Quiz: Coins and Currency in Indian History

These are the oldest Indian coins, mostly silver pieces cut into irregular shapes and impressed with symbols punched one at a time, such as the sun, a six-armed wheel, hills, trees and animals.

Iltutmish gave the Delhi Sultanate its standard coinage by issuing the silver tanka and the copper jital, with purely Arabic legends and the name of the mint, and this pair remained the basis of Sultanate currency.

In 1329 or 1330 he issued brass and copper tokens declared to be worth a silver tanka.

As part of his reform of the currency he issued a silver coin of about one hundred and seventy-eight grains called the rupiya, together with a copper dam and a gold mohur, and fixed their rates of exchange.

Jahangir struck a celebrated series of gold and silver coins showing the twelve signs of the zodiac, and another series carrying his own portrait, which is unusual in Islamic coinage; he also issued coins in the name of Nur Jahan.

Gupta gold coins, called dinara, survive in greater numbers than those of any other ancient Indian dynasty, and their types form a gallery of royal images: the King and Queen type, the Ashvamedha and Lyrist types of Samudragupta, and the Archer and Chakravikrama types of Chandragupta II.

These coins show a king with the Lichchhavi princess Kumaradevi on one face and a seated goddess with the legend Lichchhavayah on the other, and they are conventionally attributed to Chandragupta I, whose marriage to her strengthened the early Gupta state; some scholars believe his son struck them in his…

The Arthashastra of Kautilya describes a large body of superintendents, and the Lakshanadhyaksha was the superintendent of the mint, responsible for striking coins of the prescribed weight and alloy.

With effect from 1 April 1957 the rupee ceased to be divided into sixteen annas and sixty-four pice and was divided instead into one hundred units, called naye paise at first and, from 1964, simply paise.

The Satavahanas of the Deccan issued coins mainly in lead and in potin, an alloy of copper with tin, lead and zinc, and some of their issues carry a two-masted ship, which historians read as evidence of their sea-borne trade on the eastern coast.