MPSC 2023 Prelims Paper-I · Question 5 of 100

Correct — option (1), 'i, ii and iii'. This question prints FIVE items, not four, and the whole of it turns on separating three units of value from two forms of association. Statement i, Nishka, is the best attested of the three: the Rigveda uses nishka for a gold ornament worn at the neck or breast — the Maruts are described as nishka-griva, wearing nishkas on the neck — and the same word does duty as a measure of value in gift and exchange, so a nishka can be both worn and given in payment. Statement ii, Krusnal, is the krishnala, the small red-and-black seed of the gunja creeper, later called the ratti, which served as the smallest standard weight for gold and silver; a medium of exchange by weight needs a unit, and this is the unit the Vedic texts use. Statement iii, Shatman, is the shatamana, literally 'a hundred manas', a piece of metal reckoned at a hundred krishnalas and named in the later Vedic literature, so it is a defined value built directly on statement ii. Those three form a single coherent system of valuation by weight of metal. Statement iv, Gan, is the gana, a troop, group or corporate body, and in later usage the republican assembly of a gana-sangha; statement v, Shreni, is the guild of artisans or traders that becomes prominent from about the sixth century BC and which even functioned as a banker holding permanent endowments. Both are institutions through which exchange was organised, and neither is a thing that changed hands as payment. Since only option (1) takes exactly i, ii and iii, it is the answer. It is worth adding that true coinage — the punch-marked pieces — belongs to the sixth century BC and after, so the Vedic 'medium of exchange' is metal by weight and cattle by count, not coin.

• (2)ii, iii and iv — This option drops the nishka and admits the gana, which is the wrong trade in both directions. The nishka is the one item on the list that the Rigveda itself uses as a medium of exchange, so any answer that leaves it out has discarded the strongest statement in the set. The gana, meanwhile, is not a unit of value at all: in the Vedic hymns it means a troop or company, and in later political vocabulary it denotes the corporate body of a gana-sangha republic. A candidate picks this option by treating the five items as an undifferentiated list of unfamiliar Sanskrit words and choosing three of them, rather than asking of each one whether it names a thing that could be handed over in payment.
• (3)i, ii, iv and v — This is the only option with four items in it, and its length is part of its appeal — a candidate who recognises nishka and krishnala as genuine may reason that a longer answer must be safer. But it admits both of the false statements at once, the gana and the shreni, and both fail the same test. The shreni is a guild, an association of artisans or traders; guilds handled money, took deposits and even administered permanent endowments recorded in inscriptions, but an institution that manages payments is not itself a means of payment. Adding two institutions to two genuine units of value produces an answer that is half right, and in a combination question half right scores nothing.
• (4)i, iii and v — This option keeps the nishka and the shatamana but replaces the krishnala with the shreni, and the substitution destroys the internal logic of the answer. The shatamana is defined as a weight of one hundred krishnalas, so a candidate who accepts statement iii has already accepted statement ii — the two stand or fall together, and no reading of the evidence admits the derived unit while rejecting the unit it is derived from. The shreni, meanwhile, belongs to the organisation of crafts and trade rather than to its currency. Noticing that two statements in a list are logically linked is often the quickest route through a combination question of this kind.

Before coinage, exchange in India was conducted in cattle and in metal reckoned by weight, and the Vedic vocabulary preserves both. Cattle were the great measure of wealth — the word for wealth itself, rupa and dhana apart, is bound up with cows, and a bride-price or a poet's fee could be counted in them. Metal was handled as ornament and as weighed pieces. Nishka is the key term: a gold ornament for the neck in the Rigveda, and simultaneously a value that can be given away, so the same object is jewellery and payment. Weighing required a standard, and the standard was a seed of remarkably consistent mass, the krishnala or gunja berry, later known as the ratti; the shatamana, a hundred of these, appears in the later Vedic texts as a defined piece. Other terms of the same family are hiranya-pinda, a globule of gold, and later suvarna and pada. What none of this amounts to is coinage: a coin is a piece of metal issued with a mark that guarantees its weight and fineness, and in India that begins with the punch-marked silver pieces of about the sixth century BC, in the age of the mahajanapadas and the second urbanisation. Gana and shreni belong to that later world of organised trade — the corporate body and the craft guild — and are institutions rather than money.

MPSC's ancient-history questions on the Vedic age concentrate on vocabulary, because the vocabulary is the evidence: a candidate who knows what nishka, krishnala, shatamana, bali, vidatha, sabha, samiti, gana and shreni each mean can answer most of what is asked. The Commission's favourite device, used here, is to mix terms from two different categories in one list and see whether the candidate sorts them. That is why counting matters: this list has five items, not the customary four, and a candidate who assumes four and answers from the options alone will misread the whole question. The second point of technique is that these lists usually contain an internal dependency — here the shatamana is defined as a hundred krishnalas — and spotting it collapses the option set quickly, because any option that takes one without the other can be struck at sight. Finally, it is worth being precise about the boundary between the Vedic period and the age of coinage, since MPSC also asks which the earliest Indian coins were and when they appear.

• Nishka in the Rigveda is a gold ornament worn at the neck or breast which also served as a measure of value in gift and exchange; the Maruts are described as nishka-griva, wearing nishkas on the neck.
• Krishnala, the gunja or ratti seed, was the small standard weight used for gold and silver, and the shatamana of the later Vedic texts is a piece reckoned at one hundred krishnalas.
• Cattle were the principal measure of wealth in the Vedic age, and metal circulated by weight rather than as issued coin.
• Gana means a troop or corporate body, and in later political usage the assembly of a gana-sangha republic; it is a form of association, not a unit of value.
• Shreni is the guild of artisans or traders, prominent from about the sixth century BC, which also acted as a banker holding permanent endowments recorded in cave inscriptions at Nasik and Junnar.
• Struck coinage in India begins with the punch-marked silver pieces of about the sixth century BC, in the mahajanapada age, and so lies outside the Vedic period proper.

• Assuming the statement list has four items when this question prints five, and then trying to match an imagined list against the printed options
• Treating shreni and gana as economic units because they occur in economic contexts; both are forms of association, not things that change hands in payment
• Accepting the shatamana while rejecting the krishnala, when the first is defined as a hundred of the second and the two must stand or fall together
• Calling Vedic nishkas coins; coinage in India begins with the punch-marked pieces of about the sixth century BC, long after the Vedic hymns

The Vedic economy reaches MPSC almost entirely through terminology, either as a straight 'what does this word mean' item or, as here, as a combination question that mixes categories inside one list. The Commission transliterates Sanskrit loosely — 'Krusnal' for krishnala, 'Shatman' for shatamana, 'Gan' for gana — so recognition has to work from the shape of the word rather than from an exact spelling. Expect the same terms to reappear in questions about the transition to the mahajanapada age, where the point being tested is usually the contrast between Vedic exchange by weight and the arrival of struck coinage. A compact glossary of twenty or so Vedic terms, each with one line on its meaning and one on whether it is economic, political or ritual, covers most of what this section can ask.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In the Vedic literature the term shatamana denotes a piece of metal reckoned as equal to how many krishnalas ?

  • (a)Ten
  • (b)Fifty
  • (c)One hundred
  • (d)One thousand

  Answer(c) One hundred — the name itself carries the number, shatamana meaning 'a hundred manas', and the krishnala or gunja seed supplied the small standard weight on which the reckoning rested. The relationship matters in combination questions, because a statement list that accepts the shatamana as a unit of value has necessarily accepted the krishnala as well.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following was NOT a medium or measure of exchange in the Vedic economy but an association of artisans and traders ?

  • (a)Nishka
  • (b)Shatamana
  • (c)Krishnala
  • (d)Shreni

  Answer(d) Shreni — the shreni is a guild, an organised body of artisans or traders which in later centuries also acted as a banker holding permanent endowments recorded in inscriptions. Nishka, shatamana and krishnala all belong to the reckoning of metal by weight, which is how value was measured before struck coinage appeared in about the sixth century BC.