Question

Punch marked coins were made of _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.
A.Silver
B.Gold
C.Tin
D.Ivory

Answer 1

Hint:The first recorded coinage is considered to start with coins issued between the 7th-6th century BC and 1st century AD from 'Punch Marked'. Because of their production process, these coins are called 'punch-marked' coins.

Complete answer:
Punch-marked coins are a type of early Indian coinage. The study of the relative chronology of these coins has successfully confirmed that only one or two punches were originally used with the first punch-marked coins, with the number of punches increasing over time. The first coins in India may have been minted by the Mahajanapadas of the Indo-Gangetic Plain around the 6th century BCE.
They were certainly developed in the middle of the 4th century BCE, shortly before Alexander the Great's invasion in the 4th century BCE. Indian punch-marked coins go back to the mid 4th century BCE or marginally earlier, according to Joe Cribb, and probably began with the punch-marked coinage of the Achaemenids in the Kabul/Gandhara region. 19th-century proposals that indicated an origin from as early as 1000 BC are no longer given credence, because of the arrival of coins in Asia Minor.
Punch-marked coins called Puranas, Karshapanas or Pana were the coins of this time. For instance, some of these coins had a single symbol, Saurashtra had a humped bull, and Dakshin Panchala had a Swastika, while others had many symbols, like Magadha. These coins were made of standard-weight silver but with an unusual design. This was done by cutting silver bars and then cutting the sides of the coin to make the right weight.

Hence, the correct answer is option (A).

Note:The early Greek coins, according to Joe Cribb, were at the root of Indian punch-marked coins, the first coins produced in India that used Greek coinage minting technology. Daniel Schlumberger also claims that punch-marked bars originated in the Achaemenid Empire, rather than in the Indian heartlan bars, comparable to the many punch-marked bars found in northwestern India.