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Economic Conditions
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the chronology of some of these coins. It may be presumed that the larger and thinner punchmarked coins belong as a general rule to an earlier date than the smaller and thicker ones. D.D. KOSAMBI has shown that generally the number of reverse marks on the early coins increases with their age while their weight decreases correspondingly.
A six-armed symbol with three arrow heads and three ovals was found on the coins in the Golakhpur hoard. It has therefore been suggested with great probability that this particular variety of the six-armed symbol belongs to the pre-Mauryan age. On the coins of the Bhir Mound hoard, we find the symbols of the Sun, the six arms, a hill above a tank with two fish, and a peculiar symbol surrounded with five taurincess. The coins with these symbols were current just before the foundation of the Mauryan empire. Coins having a hare on a hill and a bull on a hill were widely current in northern India on the eve of the Mauryan empire, and may have been, issued by the kings of the time of Bimbisāra and some by the . rulers of the Nanda dynasty.
The number of symbols on the obverse is generally five. On some coins, there is a sixth symbol, but it probably represents an authentication mark punched later; 19 coins in the Bhir Mound hoard (1924) had a sixth mark. One coin in the Patrāha hoard had also a sixth mark. There are also some coins having four symbols. Such for instance is the case with thc coins of the Paila hoard. The bent bar coins have only two symbols along with a third one which may have been added later. The obverse symbols on ardha-Kārslāpanas and pāda-Kārslāpaņas were naturally fewer. The tiny māshaka picces could with difficulty accommodate only one symbol.
Thc reverse side, which was originally blank, began to be punched haphazardly at different times with a number of symbols. On the coins of the latcr period, their number is reduced to onc or two, and they seem to have been impressed on a dcfinite plan and probably at one time. The symbols on the reverse are gencrally smaller in size than those on the obverse. Somc of them arc squarc, some reciangular, soinc oblong, some polygonal, sonic elliptical, and some circular. Some coins have become cupshaped owing to the punching of
