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2 Karshapana
| Issuer | Republic of Shakya (Janapadas (pre-Mauryan)) |
|---|---|
| Year | 600 BC - 500 BC |
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| Value | 2 Karshappana |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Diameter | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Uniface punchmarked field bearing a primary symbol consisting of four crescents arranged symmetrically around a large central pellet, accompanied by a faint ancillary punch mark in the adjacent field. Two banker's marks are also present: a solar symbol and a horse, applied as secondary countermarks. The surface is irregular and slightly concave (scyphate), consistent with early Janapada punch-marked coinage technique. |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Log in to see details |
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Blank and uninscribed, as is characteristic of uniface punch-marked coinage of the Janapada period. The reverse surface is plain silver, showing the rough, irregular texture resulting from the hammering process used to produce the planchet. |
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| Additional information |
The Shakya republic — the same polity into which Siddhartha Gautama was born, probably within this very coin's period of issue — was one of the oligarchic gana-sanghas of the eastern Gangetic plain, governed by a council of kshatriya clans rather than a single monarch. Punch-marked coinage of this type was not minted in any centralized sense; blanks were weighed, cut, and authenticated by individual merchants or local authorities, each punch mark functioning as a guarantor's stamp rather than a sovereign declaration.
Attribution to specific Janapada states remains contested among specialists, with identifications often resting on regional findspot data rather than inscriptional evidence.