2016-10-01 Sat

The north-eastern kingdom of Ahom, was established in the upper valley of Brahmaputra in thirteenth century A.D. The kingdom is also known as the kingdom of Assam and it was impenetrable also by the Mughal Empire. The kingdom was established by Sukaphaa, a Tai prince from Mong Mao, in the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra River.

When they arrived in Upper Assam, Ahoms already had a well-developed sense of polity and trade. They did not mint their own currency until seventeenth century. In the middle of the seventeenth century, they decided to mint their own currency. Nobody has convincingly given the explanation as to why the coins were struck at that particular time but one of the main intentions behind the introduction of coinage was the growing trade with Tibet.

The earliest coins issued by Ahom rulers are dated to 1648 A.D. They consist of silver rupees and gold mohurs of identical weight, and struck using the dies. The most interesting and striking feature of the Ahom coins is their octagonal shape. With only a few exceptions, all the Ahom coins are octagonal in shape.

The uniqueness of the shape has invited numerous explanations. A historical manuscript mentions that coins were octagonal to indicate the eight kingdoms subjugated by the Ahoms. Another explanation states that they were so shaped because the Ahom kingdom was described as being eight-sided. A third explanation states that coins of the sultans of Bengal bore their legend in an enclosure surrounded by eight ornamental arcs and that it is this octagonal border that influenced the Ahom coinage.

In the opinion of S. Rajkumar, the Ahoms placed importance on the arithmetical number eight. The earth, according to an Ahom belief, is made of eight cones supported by eight pillars. It is also suggested that as the people had never seen such a large kingdom as under the Ahoms, they expressed the Ahom domain as that stretched in the eight directions of earth and space conceived by the Hindus.

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