Coinage and royal authority in medieval Kashmir

Coins as evidence for Kashmir’s history

Medieval Kashmiri coins preserve names, images, metal choices and manufacturing traditions that can be studied independently of the later chronicles. They help identify rulers and compare successive issues. They also raise questions that a list of kings cannot answer: how long an older design remained in use, what a monetary name meant, and how coin payments related to grain and other forms of wealth.

The catalogue places this subject around 1100 as a thematic organizing point. The article covers earlier coin traditions and the evidence surrounding the rulers of the ninth to twelfth centuries, with later comparisons where they clarify the monetary vocabulary. It does not describe a single reform introduced in that year.

Three kinds of evidence recur: surviving objects, descriptions of money in historical texts, and reconstructions by numismatists. A coin’s weight can be measured; its intended value may still be uncertain. A chronicle can name a payment without telling us exactly which coins changed hands. Keeping those distinctions visible is essential to understanding the economy.

A durable design, with important variations

Many Kashmiri issues retained a standing royal figure on one face and a seated goddess on the other. The broad design descended from earlier coin traditions associated with the Kushan and post-Kushan world. Its persistence allowed rulers to put their names on a familiar form of money without designing an entirely new visual language.

Continuity did not mean that every issue was identical. The shape of the figures, the position and style of letters, the size of the metal piece, weight and composition could change. Worn or poorly centred examples may preserve only part of the inscription. A missing letter on one specimen is not proof that its original design lacked the letter.

Stein’s survey distinguished earlier mixed-metal groups from the later copper series and noted that a simple sequence from crude to elegant workmanship could not explain every transition. His classifications belong to the evidence available around 1900. They should be compared with later finds and analyses rather than treated as a finished catalogue.

The figures are conventional images of authority and divinity. A standing royal figure should not automatically be described as a lifelike portrait of the named ruler. The inscription, imagery and attribution must be considered together, especially for coins associated with women who exercised sovereignty.

Toramana: a name that outlived a single issue

Coins bearing Toramana’s name occupy an important place in the sequence. Kalhana tells of Toramana issuing money in his own name while serving alongside Hiranya, who interpreted this as an assertion of royal privilege and imprisoned him. The story makes minting a sign of political authority.

The passage is brief, and Stein identified a textual difficulty in its description of the coins being replaced. It should not be expanded into a fully documented monetary reform with a precise exchange rate. Nor should the Toramana of Kashmir’s narrative automatically be equated with every ruler elsewhere who bore that name.

Stein observed differences among coins with the Toramana legend, including more complete and more abbreviated inscriptions. Their abundance and varied execution led him to suggest that later rulers continued producing issues under the earlier name. This is a reconstruction from the series, not proof that every surviving piece was struck during Toramana’s own lifetime.

He also compared a much later reference in Shrivara’s chronicle to money known by Toramana’s name. That reference shows the historical importance of the designation. Establishing the exact age, production sequence and circulation history of particular specimens requires more than the continued appearance of the name in a text.

What metal testing adds

Sneha Kapote’s 2019 study used X-ray fluorescence to examine Toramana coins from the National Museum and a private collection. Its table lists three early-style specimens and one later example, with copper readings between 98.90 and 99.40 percent. The reported tests did not identify gold or silver in those specimens.

The study distinguishes these results from evidence for other, gold-bearing issues. It also stresses its small sample and the need for further work. Because the measurements concern material near the surface, the results should not be stretched into a complete history of every alloy or minting phase. The paper’s prose and table differ in their description of the sample count; the four tabulated specimens are the basis used here.

Metallic appearance alone is therefore an inadequate catalogue description. Equally, a few measured coins do not establish the composition of an entire dynasty’s currency. Scientific analysis is most useful when combined with a clear record of the tested object, its condition, provenance and place within a larger series.

Royal names and surviving objects

A copper-alloy coin of Didda in the British Museum, IOLC.5006, is catalogued with her name and an approximate date of 979–1003. It weighs 5.67 grams and measures 16 millimetres. Its imagery follows the seated-goddess and standing-king pattern. The object gives evidence for money issued in her name, while the catalogue range does not supply an exact accession or minting day.

Harsha’s copper-alloy coin IOLC.5105 in the same collection is assigned approximately to 1089–1101. It weighs 5.24 grams and measures 18 millimetres, with the same broad pair of figures. These are measurements of two individual objects, not official standards inferred from a statistically representative sample.

The comparison illustrates both continuity and the limits of interpretation. Different weights do not, by themselves, establish a deliberate reduction in value between two reigns. Wear, variation in manufacture and the selection of surviving specimens must first be considered.

A ruler’s name on a coin can support the identification of an issuing authority. It cannot alone establish every boundary of that ruler’s territory, the loyalty of every place where the coin later travelled, or the precise sequence of events described by Kalhana.

Harsha’s gold and silver issues

Kalhana connects Harsha with a coin type inspired by Karnata and describes gold, silver and copper money during his reign. Stein recognized the importance of the passage but questioned its suggestion that copper had become rare, given the many copper specimens known to him.

Joe Cribb and Mobin Ahmed’s 2011 study examined ten reported silver horseman coins associated with a find near Gujranwala. One shared its dies with a gold specimen in the British Museum. This strengthened the connection between the two metals within the attributed series, although the circumstances and full contents of the reported hoard were uncertain.

They considered a distinction between gold used for royal gifts and silver used in circulation plausible. They could not establish the total output from the small sample. Their discussion also left the authenticity of the rare elephant types open to further testing, rather than treating every specimen accepted by earlier collectors as secure.

The coin evidence therefore supports a more varied monetary picture than a copper-only account. It does not independently prove every story about Harsha’s treasury, the amount of wealth seized from temples or the exact metal source of a particular coin.

Dinnara: money, accounting unit and coin

The word dinnara is especially easy to misread. Although related forms can designate a gold coin in other settings, Stein argued that Kalhana often uses it more generally for money or cash. The chronicle’s reference to dinnaras in several metals makes a universal translation as gold coins untenable.

Amounts are also expressed in hundreds, thousands, lakhs and crores, sometimes without repeating the word dinnara. These are numerical quantities in a monetary reckoning. A lakh is one hundred thousand and a crore is ten million, but neither expression by itself identifies a bag containing that many separate gold pieces.

This distinction matters for royal salaries, military allowances and gifts. Reading every unit as a high-value gold coin can make the sums fantastically large. Replacing every unit with one copper coin can be equally misleading if the copper piece represented several accounting units.

Stein supported his interpretation through the chronicle’s language, an early gloss equating dinnara with the Kashmiri term for money, and later records of monetary reckoning. That is a historical argument assembled from different periods. It should not be mistaken for a surviving treasury manual from every reign.

Puntshu, hath and sasun

Stein reconstructed a system in which the puntshu represented twenty-five units, the hath one hundred and the sasun one thousand. Four puntshus made a hath, and ten haths made a sasun. A lakh comprised one hundred thousand units. These relationships concern the accounting scale; they do not mean that a distinct coin necessarily existed for each value.

His reconstruction draws partly on Abu’l-Fazl’s description of Kashmir under Akbar and on later Kashmiri usage. He compared those terms with numerical expressions in the medieval chronicles. The continued use of a name did not guarantee an unchanged metal weight or purchasing power.

The smaller denomination called bahagan presents an additional difficulty: its association with twelve in the vocabulary does not fit a perfectly literal division of twenty-five into two whole-number halves. Stein discussed textual readings and conventional reckoning rather than supplying an independent medieval tariff for every transaction.

He associated the common later copper pieces with the twenty-five-unit denomination and discussed rarer smaller coins as possible subdivisions. These proposed identifications are useful to the history of scholarship, but they depend on the surviving specimens, textual interpretation and comparisons across time.

For this reason, a modern catalogue should distinguish an observed weight from an inferred denomination. Museum records sometimes use the neutral description “unit” where a more exact monetary name cannot be securely established.

Cowries, grain, ornaments and bullion

Coins were part of a wider economy of payment. Stein gathered references to cowries in Kalhana and Kshemendra, including descriptions of very small household expenses and contrasts between a single shell and a fortune. He suggested that the low base unit of Kashmiri reckoning might originally have corresponded to a cowrie.

He explicitly acknowledged that the available evidence did not settle that identification with certainty. A mention of cowries as money is stronger evidence than a reconstructed exchange rate projected unchanged across centuries. Their value could depend on supply and the conditions of transport.

Grain also mattered. The Lokaprakasha contains forms distinguishing cash debts from grain debts and records payments in measured rice. Stein used these alongside revenue descriptions and later observations to argue that rice served as a substantial means of payment. The text is composite and contains additions from different periods, so its entire contents cannot simply be assigned to one eleventh-century author.

Ornaments and bullion provided other stores of value. The chronicle’s account of gold testing under Ananta concerns wealth held by people, while episodes of political crisis describe ornaments being offered to obtain resources. Precious metal could have economic value without having been struck into coins.

These forms of payment could coexist. A sum might be stated in money and met in produce, or wealth might be held in jewellery and converted when needed. The presence of copper currency does not establish that wages, revenue and large transfers were all paid exclusively in copper coins.

Prices, scarcity and royal extraction

Kalhana records rice prices in several accounts of abundance and famine. The Harsha narrative, for example, gives a price of five hundred dinnaras for a khari of rice during the scarcity associated with 1099–1100. Such figures are valuable, but their interpretation depends on the historical unit of account and the measure of grain.

Stein attempted to compare salaries and gifts with the quantity of rice they could purchase. This can reveal why a nominally modest metal value might still represent a large claim on agricultural produce. His calculations were scholarly estimates based on selected prices and assumptions, not a continuous series of market observations.

The assumptions become more fragile when amounts are converted across distant centuries. Changing coin weights, grain measures, metal ratios, harvest conditions and access to trade can all affect the comparison. A historical payment should therefore not be assigned an exact present-day cash equivalent from these passages.

Royal fiscal pressure could lead to confiscation, new demands or changes in money. Stein cites Shrivara’s account of Hasan Shah reducing the weight of an older copper denomination during a treasury shortage. That later example helps explain a possible mechanism, but it cannot prove that every lighter earlier coin resulted from the same policy.

Findspots, hoards and the questions still open

A securely recorded hoard can show which coins were deposited together and provide evidence for circulation beyond one reign. A coin bought from a dealer without a documented findspot offers a different kind of information. Both may be genuine objects, but they do not support the same claims about where and when money was used.

Museum acquisition history is not automatically archaeological provenance. The name of a former collection tells us who held an object, not necessarily where it was excavated. Similarly, a reported find near a town should not be turned into a precise excavation context when the original record is incomplete.

The survival of coins is selective. Collection totals may reflect availability, collectors’ interests and recognition of particular names. A small hoard may represent one person’s holdings or a particular transaction. Neither alone provides a census of all currency circulating across Kashmir.

Further work needs well-documented specimens, clearer readings of inscriptions, larger metal-analysis samples and comparisons among hoards. It also needs continued attention to the texts’ monetary language. Together these approaches can connect royal authority with everyday exchange without forcing the objects and narratives into an artificially exact chronology.