Towns, trade and coinage

Detail

Where towns grew, and why there

• Towns followed routes, not accident. From about the 6th century BCE, big towns sat where people and goods already moved.
• Pataliputra — grew on riverine routes (river highways of the Ganga system).
• Ujjayini — grew on land routes crossing central India.

• Puhar — a port town near the coast, so it looked to the sea.

• Mathura was a bustling centre all at once — commercial, cultural and political. It traded, it made art, and it held power. Under the Kushanas it served as a second capital-level city and gave its name to the Mathura school of sculpture, one of the two great early Indian art schools alongside Gandhara [4].

• What archaeologists dig up in these towns:
• Northern Black Polished Ware (NBPW) — a glossy, shiny black luxury pottery. Not everyday cooking pots. Someone rich ate off these.
• Objects in gold, silver, copper, ivory, glass, shell and terracotta (baked clay). Many different crafts in one place means specialists lived there full-time.

Who lived in the towns

• Votive inscriptions (short writings that record a gift to a temple, stupa or monastery) start appearing from the 2nd century BCE. They are our best list of town people because donors proudly wrote down their name and job.
• Jobs named include: washing folk, weavers, scribes, carpenters, potters, goldsmiths, blacksmiths, officials, religious teachers, merchants and kings.

• Point to remember: ordinary working people, not only kings, had enough surplus to donate. That is a sign of real urban wealth.

• Shrenis — guilds of craft producers and merchants. Their likely three jobs:

• Procured raw materials (got the metal, cloth, wood in bulk).
• Regulated production (set standards and rules for members).
• Marketed finished goods (sold them).

Trade routes — inland and overseas

• Land and river routes criss-crossed the subcontinent. They did not stop at the coast or the mountains.
• Overland into Central Asia — this is the corridor the Kushanas controlled, linking India to the Silk Road world.
• Overseas across the Arabian Sea — to East and North Africa and West Asia.

• Through the Bay of Bengal — to Southeast Asia and China.

• Rulers tried to control the routes. They offered protection for a price — tolls and dues in exchange for safe passage. Control of a route was itself a source of income.

• Names for the big merchant:
• Prakrit — setthi and satthavaha (the satthavaha led the caravan).

• Tamil — masattuvan.

• What Rome wanted from India: pepper, textiles and medicinal plants had high demand in the Roman Empire.

• The Periplus Maris Erythraei ("Navigation of the Erythraean [Red] Sea"), an anonymous Greek sailing handbook of the 1st century CE, lists Indian ports in order — Muziris (Cranganore), Colchi (Korkai), Poduca and Sopatma [3].
• At Arikamedu, near present-day Puducherry, excavation revealed an Indo-Roman trading settlement: Roman pottery, beads, intaglios (carved gemstones), lamps, glass and coins. Occupation was continuous, and locals even began making imitations of Roman items [3][5].
• Textiles were made to Roman specification at such settlements and then exported — so Indian workshops were producing for a foreign customer's taste [3].

Coins — the sequence to memorise

• 1. Punch-marked coins (from c. 6th century BCE) — silver and copper, stamped with small punches. Issued by kings, and possibly also by merchants, bankers and townspeople. No portrait, no ruler's name.
• 2. Indo-Greek coins — the first coins with a name and portrait of the ruler. A new idea: the coin now advertises a named individual.
• 3. Kushana gold coins — struck on the Roman weight standard.
• The Great Kushan rulers minted gold in the 2nd and early 3rd centuries CE on this Roman standard; the large gold output itself shows how rich Rome trade had made them [2].
• Kanishka issued coins in gold and copper. His standard portrait: standing, long tunic, shalwar, mantle clasped at the chest, low round cap, sacrificing at an altar, spear in his left hand [4].

• Kushana coins carry Greek, Roman, Iranian, Hindu and Buddhist deities, with legends in adapted Greek letters — a mixed empire showing itself on its money [4].

• 4. Coins of tribal republics — the Yaudheyas of the Punjab–Haryana region, c. 1st century CE. Several thousand copper coins have been found. Coinage was not a monopoly of big kings.

• Roman coin hoards in south India:
• Large hoards have been found there, but south India was never part of the Roman Empire. So trade networks ran beyond political frontiers — money and goods crossed borders that armies never did.
• The Roman coins at Arikamedu are mainly of emperors Augustus (27 BCE–14 CE), Tiberius (14–37 CE) and Nero (54–68 CE) — which dates the peak of this trade to the early 1st century CE [3].

Prelims Hooks

• Pataliputra = riverine routes; Ujjayini = land routes; Puhar = coastal port.
• Northern Black Polished Ware (NBPW) = glossy luxury pottery found in early towns.
• Votive inscriptions recording donors and their crafts begin from the 2nd century BCE.
• Shreni = guild; setthi/satthavaha = Prakrit merchant terms; masattuvan = Tamil merchant term.
• Punch-marked coins — silver and copper, from c. 6th century BCE; earliest Indian coins.
• Indo-Greeks issued the first coins bearing a ruler's name and portrait.
• Kushana gold coins followed the Roman weight standard; Kanishka struck gold and copper with legends in adapted Greek script [2][4].
• Yaudheyas (Punjab–Haryana, c. 1st century CE) — a tribal republic that issued several thousand copper coins.
• Arikamedu (near Puducherry) = Indo-Roman trading station; Roman coins mostly of Augustus, Tiberius and Nero [3][5].
• Periplus Maris Erythraei — anonymous Greek text, 1st century CE, lists Muziris, Colchi, Poduca, Sopatma [3].
• Roman coin hoards in south India ≠ Roman rule; south India was never part of Rome.

Mains Points

• Trade networks are wider than political maps. Roman coin hoards in south India, and Kushana gold on a Roman weight standard, show economic links running far past any single state's border. Use this against the habit of writing ancient history only as dynasty history.
• Urbanisation and religion fed each other. Votive inscriptions exist because urban craftspeople and traders had surplus and gave it to Buddhist and Jain institutions. Those institutions in turn sat on trade routes and served travelling merchants — so town, route and monastery form one linked system.
• Guilds (shrenis) as an economic institution. Controlling raw materials, production standards and sale, they show non-state organisation of the economy. A useful counter-point to arguments that all economic order in ancient India came from the king.
• Coins as a source, with limits. Coins give dynasty names, titles, religious images and trade direction. But hoards show where coins were lost or stored, not necessarily where they circulated — so use them alongside inscriptions and excavation data such as Arikamedu's Roman pottery and glass [3].