Ancient Indians stored wealth as jewelry to keep it both liquid and personal

Evidence

In India it was long the custom to keep and especially to save money in the form of jewelry. That is, one had the rupees melted and made into jewelry (with only a very small loss of value), and stored it to be given out as silver should the need arise. Apparently value in the form of jewelry is both more condensed and richer in quality. This combination permits value to appear more closely linked to the person in that it becomes more individualistic and temporarily loses its atomized nature. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 452

Categorization

• CANDY: A neat, self-contained fact: Indians melted rupees into jewelry as savings, gambling on the delusion that ornamented treasure was safer from enemies — perfect dinner-party trivia.
• SHARE: Send to anyone interested in material culture or economic anthropology — the practice of melting currency into wearable savings is a vivid, little-known example of storing value in the self.