If we are to go by the lessons of history, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appeal to citizens not to buy gold is likely to end in bitter disappointment. Indians have it encoded in their religious texts, such as the four Vedas, that gold is a divine element, and possessing gold and gifting it away would even lead to a splendid next life. The more gold prices rise, the more we seem to want to buy it.India’s centuries-old gold tradition, rooted in religion and trade, continues to drive demand despite economic concerns over imports. (AFP)According to the Rig Veda’s Hiranyagarbha Sukta, the creation of the brahmand, or the universe itself, takes place in a womb of gold. The Hiranyagarbha ritual became the most expensive and prestigious ritual for kings from obscure dynasties during the medieval period. As a part of this, Brahmins were gifted a golden vessel after it was used as a womb from which the king emerged and necessary rituals such as jatakarma were performed.Radiant and malleable, light and non-corrosive, gold was used for jewellery, as is seen in the mention of various ornaments in Vedic texts. Some of these are pravarta or earrings, amulets, kurira or a gold ornament, and the nishariya or a necklace of gold coins. In Tamil, the necklace is referred to as kasu maalai.At least four forms of gold extraction have existed through the Vedic, post-Vedic (after the 6th century BCE) and Common Era periods. Ancient Indian literature specifies four different ways of gold extraction. Through the alluvial placer method, soil from river banks was strained; for this, the waters of rivers such as the Sindhu, Suvarnarekha, Jambu and Ganga were used. The Arthashastra, dated to the early centuries of the Common Era, mentions the extraction of gold from liquids trapped in crevices of rocks. In the 4th-century text Gandhavuha Sutra, Kalidasa too refers to ‘Kanaka-rasa’ or liquid gold, which could be as valuable as one unit of liquid gold equalled 100 of silver or copper.By this time, the extraction of gold from mines had become a key concern for kingdoms, as is evidenced by references to the aakaradhyaksha or the director of mines, superintendent of gold (suvarnadhyaksha), the superintendent of mint (Lakshanadhyaksha), the coin examiner (Rupadarshaka) and royal goldsmiths (sauvarnika).While Brahminical Hinduism has always adored the goddess of wealth, Lakshmi, even when it suffered setbacks after the emergence of Buddhism and Jainism after the 6th century BCE, the two new religions did not discard the irresistible goddess. Both shunned materialism but innovated their own forms of Lakshmi, such as those evidenced in Jataka tales and sculptures in Sanchi.India, the ‘golden sparrow’Sources of gold and silver were never abundant in India. However, the quality of Indian textiles, ivory, gems, perfumes and, most importantly, spices such as pepper was excellent. These were exported to the West — empires centred around Roman Empire, Greece and Persia, among others — in exchange for gold and silver. Both land and sea routes were used for trade, but after the 2nd century CE, when the discovery of monsoon winds provided an efficient way of transporting goods, the ports in south India became hubs of intercontinental trade. Ships carrying Mediterranean wine and other goods came to the Malabar coast and went back filled with black gold, or pepper. Jeremy Simmons writes in Behind Gold for Pepper: The Players and the Game of Indo-Mediterranean Trade, “we have a single contract and cargo list preserved on the ‘Muziris Papyrus,’ which outlines the financing and transportation of a large cargo acquired at Muziris — the Malabar port…”Romans allegedly coined the term “Golden Sparrow” (Sone ki Chidiya) for India around the turn of the Common Era. In fact, they used up so much of their gold to buy Indian products — gold acquired from north Africa and beyond — that it created the sort of crisis India is experiencing today.Satish Deodhar writes in Gold Is Old: Noble Metal in the Indian Economy Through Ages, “The enormity of the precious coins received by Indians is evident by the colonial-era find in south India, where a cache of Roman gold and silver mintage was estimated to be ‘eight coolie-loads’ with 20,000 coins per porter. In the 1st century CE, Pliny the Elder, a writer, naturalist, commander of the Roman forces and a friend of Emperor Vespasian, lamented that Romans were importing unproductive luxuries which were not worth the gold Rome was giving up and that their luxuries and women were costing them one million sesterces (Roman coins) per year. Tamil Sangam literature also mentions that Yavanas would return to their lands with pepper and Muziris would resound with the noise of gold. Roman gold would also land at various other Indian ports, such as Barbaricum (Karachi) and Baruch.”It is not clear what ancient Indians did with all the gold they received in exchange for pepper, ivory and textiles. Perhaps some of it was used for minting coins, as was done up to at least the Gupta Empire, but what about the rest? Romila Thapar has noted about the use of all this gold that came into India: “What is not clear is the role of the coins in the economy. This certainly needs much more work. Were they simply hoarded and slowly sold? We’re also told that the bullion value of the gold coin is much more than the actual value of the coin. So it’s thought that possibly some of the coins would have been sold as bullion. Sold to whom? Sold where? What is the evidence for this? We don’t have that fully yet.”