Taking note of history

Coins from the Gupta empire, dating back to roughly 1,500 years ago

In 2013, two rare Mughal gold coins from the 17th century, minted during the reigns of emperors Jahangir and Shah Jahan, went up for auction in Geneva, Switzerland. The Indian government tried its best to stop this private sale, since it considered the coins to be "national treasure". But it failed. The auction eventually didn't take place either, though, after buyers developed cold feet due to a crashing stock market. Nonetheless, both coins went missing thereafter, and they haven't been traced ever since. No one seems to know where they are right now.

Notes printed by the British in 1905

That isn't a tragedy just because the Indian government lost out on the monetary value of the items, estimated at R18.2 crore. The bigger tragedy is that the country lost out on a valuable piece of history that could have helped put its past in better perspective, feels Girish J Veera, a numismatist who is the host of Let's Talk Mint, a new show on ancient coins and currency notes that airs on YouTube. "I'll give you an example," he says, adding, "In the medieval period in Bengal, there were 65 sultans who ruled different parts of the region before the Mughals arrived. But there were also two Hindu rulers based there, and we know this only because of certain coins that were discovered. That piece of history would have remained buried otherwise."

Kishore Jhunjhunwalla, an authority on paper money and one of the guests on the show, adds that once the Mughals arrived, they, too, used coins to document their rule. "They were really clever because they would make coins with different dates for each year, so that these became a marker for how long each emperor based in Delhi ruled," he tells us, further highlighting the role that currency plays in decoding historical periods. "The evidence is before you because the coin itself is proof," Jhunjhunwalla explains.

He adds that the British colonists later introduced paper money to help in trade, since coins were cumbersome to ferry around and were susceptible to being robbed. These are the sort of tidbits that the audience will glean from Let's Talk Mint. Its aim, Veera says, is to record the knowledge that the experts have so that it can be preserved for posterity, and not get lost in the sands of time like the two rare gold coins being auctioned off at Geneva did. So, tune in and watch these people put, in a manner of speaking, their money where their mouth is.

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