| Abstract: |
Coins appear relatively late in the history of Javanese states. The earliest local coins - those minted around the beginning of the 9th century AD in the Central Javanese state of Mataram - fall into two classes: the gold "piloncito" type coins and the base-metal silver (usually Billon) "sandalwood flower" coins. Although these coins were - like those of India - largely die-struck, and although both the term "māşa" attached to the most common unit represented, and the nāgarī script that appears on coins of both classes, were borrowed from India, these coins bear no resemblance to any known Indian coin. Minting of base-metal silver coins in Java appears to have been less regulated than that of gold coins. These base-metal silver coins constituted the small change of the 9th and 10th centuries and they were probably minted in domestic markets for local commercial use. By the end of the 11th century or shortly thereafter the smallest of the base-metal silver coins appear to have dropped out of circulation. They were almost certainly replaced at this time by Chinese copper coins, which were imported in increasing numbers over that century, as Northern Sung coin output peaked. So important did the Chinese copper coins apparently become in the Javanese domestic economy, that when supplies of Chinese coins became more erratic in the later 12th and 13th centuries, the Japanese responded by casting their own versions of the most popular Northern Sung issues (pisis).
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