1 Karshapana

The karshapana predates the Mauryan dynasty itself — these punch-marked pieces were already circulating across the Gangetic plain before Chandragupta seized Magadha around 322 BC. What the Mauryans did was systematize production, imposing state control over what had been a fragmented regional coinage. Kautilya's Arthashastra, the administrative treatise attributed to Chandragupta's minister Chanakya, devotes specific passages to the regulation of silver purity and the duties of the mint superintendent — one of the earliest bureaucratic treatments of monetary policy anywhere in the ancient world.