1 Karshapana - Ashoka

Ashoka's karshapanas circulated across one of the largest contiguous empires of the ancient world, from the Hindu Kush to Karnataka. The punch-marked technique used to produce them — multiple dies struck cold onto a pre-cut blank — means no two pieces share an identical arrangement of symbols, a manufacturing reality that still complicates attribution today. Mitchiner's classification system remains the primary reference, though scholars continue to dispute which symbol clusters are genuinely Ashokan versus inherited from Bindusara's earlier issues.