Full-and-Final Settlement before God

Learning to play the flute

- Devdutt Pattanaik

We often forget that the word cash is derived from the Sanskrit word “Karshapana”. Indians invented the idea of money long ago. Irregularly-shaped copper coins were used by merchants for banking 2500 years ago, about the time coins began being used in ancient Greece and China. Even before this, Harappans are known to have used Cowrie shells as currency for exchange. Across India, we find women from tribal communities still wearing Cowrie shells or coins around their neck. The ornaments indicate their use as currencies of exchange for a long time in the past. As late as the 14th century, Cowries were used as tools of exchange. Their use stopped when the Portuguese destroyed the market by flooding it with vast amounts of Cowrie shells obtained from the Maldives.

It has long been assumed that humans invented money to make the barter system easier as it became a common denominator of value. This sounds very logical. However, cultural anthropologists have not found any evidence of this in any part of the world. They found that tribal societies around the world were very comfortable with barter. It created a complex system of debt creation and giftgiving across cultures. In India, this took the form of the Karma theory that forms the bedrock of Jain, Buddhist and Hindu beliefs since the time coins appeared in the Indian subcontinent i.e., 5th century BCE.