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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;EWC3, post: 3193388, member: 93416&quot;][ATTACH=full]820198[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>OK - here are some basics on these PMC&#039;s</p><p><br /></p><p>The main Magadha/Mauryan series is very roughly contemporary with Roman Republican but probably way more plentiful. Dates are very approximately known - they maybe start a little after 400 BC and finish a little after 200 BC</p><p><br /></p><p>19th century guys like Cunningham knew them well but did not really look at them closely, the break through in our understanding came from Kosambi, who spotted they carried a concatenation of exactly 5 marks on the obverse, all applied at the same time, which worked very approximately like hallmarks of English silver.</p><p><br /></p><p>There seem to have been very strict laws in Ancient India about the transmission of knowledge. Maybe think about it like access to the Bible in medieval Europe. In medieval Europe knowledge of the bible was restricted to a group of priests who knew Latin. In ancient India it was restricted to a group of Brahmins who memorised everything. Writing things down, indeed script itself seems to have only started around the time of Ashoka, about half way through this coin issue, so its roots lay in a pre-writing culture. All the same it was a very sophisticated market driven society with a sophisticated civil service, and the hierarchy of symbols very probably reflected the hierarchy of officials involved.</p><p><br /></p><p>Coming to Doug&#039;s specific questions</p><p><br /></p><p>1) Why do they come both rectangular and round?</p><p><br /></p><p>Amongst the later coins most are rectangular with a few round ones. But the rectangular ones have one or more corners clipped off. They seem to stick close to an average weight of 3.43g most of the time (32 rattis) but with quite a lot of individual variation. So another form of al marco production. What they very probably did was beat the silver into big square plates, then scratch a sort of chess board pattern on the plate. Then they cut about half way through the plate along the scratched lines, and snapped rows off as strips, and then individual coins off the strips. (anyone who has cut and snapped plasterboard will see the characteristic marks on the edge of mint state PMC&#039;s). But then they went around snipping corners and one would guess the snippings got remelted and made into the smaller number of round coins</p><p><br /></p><p>2) Why is Doug&#039;s coin so common?</p><p><br /></p><p>Well - it is the type known as GH 574 - a late coin with a reverse mark that probably indicates it was made at Taxila or there abouts - in North West India. So here are a couple of reasons</p><p><br /></p><p>a) Its a very late period Imperial coin. The Mauryan Empire seems to have rapidly and almost completely collapsed fairly shortly after it was issued. Thus unlike earlier types, a time never came for it to go to the melting pot and get recycled</p><p><br /></p><p>b) The collapse of the Mauryan Empire was probably very violent, with lots of hoards from that period, from guys who maybe did not live to dig them up</p><p><br /></p><p>c) It was probably found in Moslem Pakistan, and thus exported, due to limited interest in Hindu History - at least during much of the 20th century - no doubt things are changing.</p><p><br /></p><p>d) They probably just made a lot of this type anyhow - for reasons now lost.</p><p><br /></p><p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p><p><br /></p><p>As a young guy, I thought cracking the code - the meaning of these 5 symbols - was one of the great unsolved mysteries of numismatics, and I hoped one day to do it myself. I recall writing to one of my old maths lecturers, whose big thing was finite combinatorics, to see if he wanted to get empirical with this matter (no reply)</p><p><br /></p><p>I never did solve the problem, but I think I did nibble away at the edges of it. Since my very partial result involves Doug&#039;s coin, I post a link to it here:</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://www.academia.edu/4645738/Late_Indian_Punchmarked_Coins_in_the_Mir_Zakah_II_Hoard" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.academia.edu/4645738/Late_Indian_Punchmarked_Coins_in_the_Mir_Zakah_II_Hoard" rel="nofollow">https://www.academia.edu/4645738/Late_Indian_Punchmarked_Coins_in_the_Mir_Zakah_II_Hoard</a></p><p><br /></p><p>Rob T[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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