kraya क्रय

Definition: Sale,’ is a word which does not actually occur in the Rigveda, though the verb krī, from which this noun is derived, is found there. Both noun and verb are common in the later Samhitās. Sale appears to have regularly consisted in barter in the Rigveda ten cows are regarded as a possible price for an (image of) Indra to be used as a fetish, while elsewhere not a hundred, nor a thousand, nor a myriad are considered as an adequate price (.śulka) for the purchase of Indra. The Athar­vaveda mentions, as possible objects of commerce, garments (dūrśa), coverlets (pavasta), and goatskins (ajina). The haggling of the market was already familiar in the days of the Rigveda,® and a characteristic hymn of the Atharvaveda is directed to procuring success in trade. The ‘ price ’ was called Vasna, and the ‘merchant Vanij, his greed being well known.There is little evidence of a standard of value in currency having been adopted. When no specific mention is made of the standard, the unit was probably the cow. In a consider¬able number of passages of the Satapatha Brāhmana and elsewhere, however, the expression hiranyam śata-mānam suggests that there must have been some standard other thancows, though it might in all these passages be rendered as ‘gold worth a hundred cows.’ But the use of the Krsnala as a measure of weight suggests that the meaning is ‘ gold weighing a hundred Krsnalas,’ and this seems the more probable explana¬tion. This unit seems not to be known in the Rigveda, where the meaning of the term Manā, which occurs once, is mysterious, and where necklets (Niska) seem to have been one of the more portable forms of wealth, like jewellery in modern India, and may perhaps have served as a means of exchange.


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