Talk:Coinage of India

Untitled

I think I will make this an introductory page with links to better pages. Enlil Ninlil 09:48, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok i finally got arround to doing this, I believe the article should be a summery with likes to numismatic articles. I will creat pages on Maurian coiage, Kushan coinage later. Any thoughts? Enlil Ninlil 05:28, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Oppose - The sites and references only deal with India. There's no Pakistani or Bangladeshi coinage to even consider adding a South Asian tag.Baka man 22:46, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Support - This article deals with coinage from all over South Asia, not just India. Bactria, the Indo-Greek Kingdom, the Indo-Parthian Kingdom, and the Indo-Hephthalites all ruled mostly Afghanistan and Pakistan. Afghanistan and western Pakistan were not part of India, so South Asia coinage is the appropriate term.IP198 02:36, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
- Bactria doesn't belong in the article anyways. The "Indo-" in the other three should be indicative of which geographical entity they refer to.Baka man 22:44, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
- The Indo-Hephthalites is also called Hunas. The important thing is that it was in Afghanistan not India. As for Indo-Parthian Kingdom are we also going to put it Persian coinage due to Parthia. The Indo-Greek Kingdom was a continuation of Bactria. Also the Indo-Sassanian(also called Kushano-Sassanians or Kushanshas) was a kingdom mostly of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Whats the problem in calling it South Asia, considering that Afghainstan and western Pakistan was not part of India? IP198 22:54, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
  - You still did not answer the obvious correlation between the Indo- prefix and India.Baka man 01:12, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually the Greco-Bactrians should be in this article as they did control the are of the ganges at some time and influences later indian coinage. Enlil Ninlil 02:34, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
- The Ganges is undisputably part of both Greater India, the Indian subcontinent and the modern Republic of India. Thank you for noting "South Asia" is trivial here as well.Baka man 02:41, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

- Sorry mean't to put thie Indus Mr Indian nationalist. Enlil Ninlil 03:04, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
  - Funny how applying Indian nationalist is so natural while not describing IP198's edit pattern as Pakistani nationalist, sympathetic to Islamofascist terrorism in Kashmir, etc. South Asian is a trivial and anachronistic term in this context, as Ambroodey noted to you.Baka man 03:12, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Alright we can play yer, anyway istead of annoying everyone do you have anything good to add to this article? Hindus nationalsist islamic and christian nationalist who cares they go to their gods hell. Also I dont care about pakistan or india just this article and i was needing a better name to reflect its historical references Enlil Ninlil 03:22, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Bakaman, I am not a Pakistani nationalist, though i am sympathetic to what you call "terrorism" in Kashmir. However that has nothing to do with this discussion. Hopefully some other people will also comment. I saw the proposal and voted. If this stays as Indian coinage then so be it, i wont lose any sleep over it. IP198 03:45, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

IP198, its about the time people stopped indiscriminate usage of term 'South Asia' in history realted articles. It serves little purpose than to assauge Pakistani-nationalist insecurities. User;Nadirali and User:Unre4L tried to go against the consensus and ended up raking 2 vs 100 edit wars. South Asian is primarily a geo-political term which is exculsively used in modern context (except perhaps in a few history books owing to political correctness , but then see WP:NOT. Using term 'South Asia' when all the kingdoms/regions mentioned here have been histroical parts of India (heck 90% of area mentioned IS a part of Indian Union ) only serves to confuse the uninformed. Amey Aryan DaBrood^© 18:43, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Listen Ambroodey i never changed the title to South Asia coinage. I saw the proposal and i voted on it. Sorry for having an opinion. IP198 21:46, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Can we please sop this nationalist crap, i just wanted to make the title more specific and not a vague term as it is now. Enlil Ninlil 10:08, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Article

While the referencing has gotten better the content is pretty poor with many features left out. Enlil Ninlil (talk) 04:57, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I think there is a misunderstanding of a different point of view. The Greeks and Romans considered India or better the plural word “example italian: Indie” in a broad sense including much of Asia. Often the king of barbaric tribes of the steppes were listed as Indians. The same Columbus reached the plural “Indie” in 1492. And today we use the word “Indians” for American indigenous. Today our terminology is more restricted and we indicate only the subcontinent. For Greeks and Romans as medieval and renaissance Europe, Indus river was not the border of India, and also the today Indonesia was India. I do not know which geographic area the Indians mean with word (skt: Sindhu) ?

About datation:

What is known, however, is that metal currency was minted in India well before the Mauryan empire (322–185 BC),[3] and as radio carbon dating indicates, before the 5th century BC.[2]

Early coins of India (400 BC—100 A.D.) were made of silver and copper, and bore animal and plant symbols on them.

This history is curiously very similar Brahmi or in general writing system history and not only. The nationalism needs to date it just before Alexander. Everything must be native. I am very curious to see these metal currency. Which is the State or King that has coined these money ? Perhaps with “metal currency” you intend metal objects with the same function of jade pebbles or cocoa beans ? Ok, but it is another thing it isn’t coins. ....

--Andriolo (talk) 11:25, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

why has indian history got to start from alexander? this is a very eurocentric point of view that everything in india has to be influenced from the greeks? cowry shells were used for thousands before metallic coinage and have been found as far as china, siberia, africa etc before they were simply replaced with metallic forms, maybe the idea may have been influenced by the persians but the entire technology used in minting and bar or square shapes of indian coins was purely native innovation which carried on longer after Alexander and exhibits that coins were independently invented in india. Rameezraja001 (talk) 07:26, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Gallery on Wikimedia Commons to avoid 'overflooding'

Hi,

is started to avoid 'overflooding' by really to many images, regards, Roland 19:57, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Ok thanks Roland. Grateful for your help in creating the Gallery in Commons. I've added introductory text that I feel is better than the existing eng.Wiki page "Coinage of India". Could you review and perhaps move my content to the eng.wiki page? Many thanks.

Meluha66 (talk) 11:08, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

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A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

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Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 06:37, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

unexplained massive content removal from academic sources

Hi, a massive content has been removed citing IP disruption without giving any viable reasons especially complete removal of EUCCC coins, all these content have been backed up with reliable sources, these reliable academic sources have been removed without any other reason than IP disruption, i request the hsenior editors to restore those information. Zombie gunner (talk) 14:10, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 19 May 2026

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: withdrawn. Guess we're going the other way. (closed by non-admin page mover) ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley $\lor$ investigateᛅ} 17:20, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

– Following my rationale at the recent discussion that resulted in a consensus for a move of this sort. It's a WP:CONSISTENCY thing, and there are some reasons for why it should be this format instead of the other, the main one being that in some cases it's really beneficial for WP:CONCISION, as is visible in some of the requested moves. I've left the trickier ones to be handled separately. ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley $\lor$ investigateᛅ} 09:57, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

Once again, some impractical moves requested for the sake of "consistency". There are two reasons why consistency should not be applied across the board here: first, some of these "demonyms" aren't particularly familiar to readers, and while there can be no objection to using them within articles that provide the context, there's also no good reason to make them harder for readers to find (consistency is not a good reason!). I'm a classicist, and like words like "Calenian" and "Populonian", but wouldn't have expected to find articles under those titles.

Secondly, some of these words are ambiguous. Does "Indian coinage" refer to coins from India or coins made by (American) Indians? I know that the Indians didn't make their own coins (though they did have various forms of currency that readers might think of as "coinage"), but will most readers realize that? When I hear "Saxon coinage", I think of hoards of silver pennies dug up in Britain, not 18th or 19th century coins from Saxony. I realize that our guidelines for article titles say, "not what first comes to your mind", but that doesn't mean that we're not supposed to consider what will likely occur to readers in general; that is precisely what we need to take into consideration.

As with most such proposals, consistency needs to yield to the practical needs of an encyclopedia. We don't have to dumb down our articles by avoiding accurate terminology, but we also don't need to make topics harder to find or distinguish from one another. P Aculeius (talk) 08:10, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

Yes, for the sake of WP:CONSISTENCY, which is one of the five criteria for what makes a good title.

I excluded plenty of ones where I didn't have a clear term to use. "Calenian" is used on that article and "Populonian" is both very natural and used elsewhere on Wikipedia. I wouldn't have added them if we weren't already using those terms. I specifically excluded a bunch of articles from the request because it would be impractical, which I mentioned at the end (I called them tricky). If you feel that Cales and Populonia should be counted to those then sure, but I think the rest are fine. Indian coinage is already a redirect to Coinage of India, and we have no article on Native American coinage for it to be confused with. I would argue that Coinage of India is also not perfect considering it doesn't have to do with India's coinage, as in the modern state of India, but rather the coinage of the whole Indian subcontinent and all the civilizations that have existed on it. Coinage of Saxony is already calling it "Saxon coinage" in the article. ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley $\lor$ investigateᛅ} 11:36, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

Hello. I am currently working on an article that will be titled Coinage of Palestine because that it the way it is commonly described in reliable sources. Palestinian coinage would significantly alter the meaning of the article (which is fairly well developed at User:Tiamut/Coins right now. So I would definitely oppose such a renaming scheme. I think it is best to use the phraseology in reliable sources, rather than force a naming move for consistency purposes. Tiamut (talk) 13:01, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

As previously stated, tricky cases exist, and the intent of the requested move was to move the ones that aren't tricky or impractical. This isn't establishing a naming convention, other "Coinage of X" articles aren't going to be forced to move to the more concise and consistent format when doing so would cause problems for some reason. ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley $\lor$ investigateᛅ} 16:01, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

Oppose Possessive doesn't make much sense in this context, and likelier to cause confusion. Walrasiad (talk) 22:54, 20 May 2026 (UTC)
To be clear: you are in favour of "Coinage of X" being the default format, yes? Because I'd be okay with that, I'm mainly interested in getting something established as the default. ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley $\lor$ investigateᛅ} 01:29, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Generally, yes. But I don't think it should be a hard rule. Depends on the content of the page. I'd avoid the possessive unless it really makes more sense. Walrasiad (talk) 09:42, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Yeah I'm not intending a hard rule in either direction. For example, Jubilee coinage wouldn't work in a "Coinage of X" format (it would be something like "Coinage of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee").

I will wait to see some more input, and if other editors agree I'm more than happy to oblige. In that case I will also make a request to move Coinage of the Republic of Venice and Coinage of the Republic of Siena to Coinage of Venice and Coinage of Siena. ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley $\lor$ investigateᛅ} 10:32, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

A recent excavation has revealed new dates for coinage in India

https://theprint.in/feature/ancient-coins-found-in-rajasthan-show-india-currency-history-was-700-yrs-older/2793112/

Can this article be cited in article as an opposition to the theory of Western influences? Biriboy (talk) 06:23, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

I get a 403 error on that, but probably not. What does it say? Indian press articles make rather wild claims all the time, on all sorts of subjects. The point about coinage is that it is used on a large scale - claims of a single isolated find don't mean much. Johnbod (talk) 15:19, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

If it's the same as this Times of India piece, that doesn't actually change the chronology already in the article much, if at all. Johnbod (talk) 15:45, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

The newspaper article (not a good source in itself) seems to be based in this work: The Earliest Coinage Of Bharat As Unearthed From Bahaj Excavations, by Dr Vinay Kumar Gupta. Vinay Kumar Gupta is Superintending Archaeologist at Archaeological Survey of India. The main claim "...taking back the antiquity of coinage in India to somewhat seventh-eighth century BCE" doesn't seem to be very much supported by the findings, the main finding being that coins were found in a "circa 450-550 BCE" deposit in very worn state, "plausibly" suggesting higher antiquity: "Stratigraphically, the deposit belongs to circa 450-550 BCE. Since the coins found in this deposit are much defaced, it is plausible that they were in circulation for at least a hundred to two hundred years. Hence, the punch-marked coinage or the Indian coinage can be better termed as Janapada coinage and its antiquity can go back to seventh-eighth century BCE." (p.50) Pataliputra! (talk) 17:19, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks! When I was a boy, using the old UK coinage, you used to sometimes find coins in your change that were 60-80 years old, and they were worn almost smooth, despite I imagine being made of tougher metal alloys than very early Indian coins. Johnbod (talk) 02:39, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

Wouldn't that still count as a counter point for the theory? . It does prove that punch marked coins were an earlier innovation in India! Biriboy (talk) 14:35, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. Even if accepted, dates that early are already covered in the article, as one of a range of possibilities. Johnbod (talk) 14:39, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

The Joe cribb hypothesis is literally debunked by this fact? Why does the article mentions western asian influence in such detail, even though it's incorrect and contradicts itself in the first few lines of the paragraph? Biriboy (talk) 03:00, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Probably not. Vinay Kumar Gupta's claim boils down to the fact that some coins were found in deposits dated "circa 450-550 BCE", and that they were in a worn state, so that antiquity beyond 450-550 BCE is "plausible". Quite tentative, and nothing very new in my opinion. Pataliputra! (talk) 09:38, 4 June 2026 (UTC)