1 Karshapana - Mahapadma Nanda

Mahapadma Nanda founded the dynasty that classical sources — particularly Curtius and Diodorus, drawing on earlier Greek accounts — describe as commanding an army so vast it deterred Alexander's forces from advancing beyond the Hyphasis in 326 BC. Whether that account is exaggerated hardly matters; the Nanda treasury was by any measure extraordinary, and these punch-marked pieces were the instrument of a monetized economy operating at a scale unprecedented in the subcontinent. Each symbol was applied by individual punch, meaning no two pieces are strictly identical in layout.