15 Mana - Kuru Janapada

The Kuru Janapadas issued punch-marked coinage during a period when the subcontinent's monetary system was still being negotiated between barter, weighed bullion, and struck currency. The Kuru territory, centered around the upper Gangetic plain near modern Kurukshetra, was already in political decline by the fifth century BC — squeezed between the expanding Magadha empire to the east and shifting tribal confederacies to the northwest. That their coinage survived at all in identifiable series is largely due to the punch-mark system's reliance on banker's marks, which allow modern attribution even without inscriptions.