Nishka, The Earliest Indian Gold Coin
 

Speaker: Prof. Buddha Rashmi Mani, Former Director General, National Museum and Vice Chancellor, National Institute of Heritage Management. Awarded Padma Shri by the Government of India (2026) for his distinguished services in the field of archaeology.  

Chair:  K. N. Shrivastava, Director, IIC

Numismatists were silent about the identification of Nishka. In a recent study of the so called disc shaped gold beads with the central hole, found in less numbers from Harappan sites and found at Mandi in UP in 2000 with a number of no less than 5000 such pieces, of which 1547 are on display in the National Museum, New Delhi, the speaker has argued that they are the physical evidence of ancient nishkas and we can suggest that nishkas were used as gold coins in the 3rd millennium BCE.