Around 1,700 years ago, a woman in India put more than 3,500 karshapanas (an ancient Indian silver punch-marked coin) into craft guilds to fund medicines for sick monks. The obligation was meant to continue even as the guilds changed. Her name was Vishnudatta. This old impression of her inscription at Nashik preserves the arrangement. 1,000 karshapanas to one guild. 2,000 to another. 500 to a 3rd, whose name is now missing. The oil-millers held another deposit, but the amount is unreadable. That makes 3,500+ karshapanas in all. Why give the money to guilds if the purpose was medicines? She was setting up a perpetual endowment. The guilds held the deposits and owed a continuing return to provide medicines for the sick monks of the monastery on Mount Trirasmi. This was funding for supplies over time, not money for a single purchase. E. Senart, who edited the record, explains that the obligation continued even if the guilds changed their constitution. It bound the guild as it existed then and as it might exist in the future. The inscription gives her family too: daughter of Agnivarman, wife of Rebhila, mother of Visvavarma. It calls her a lay devotee. The medicines were for monks "of whatever sect and origin" living in that monastery. The date is the ninth year of the Abhira king Isvarasena, generally placed in the 3rd century CE. The inscription was in print by 1865. Senart's later edition includes this impression, the reading and a translation. I have attached that translation with the relevant lines marked. You can see the medicine provision, the deposits and his explanation of the continuing obligation on the same page. Source: E. Senart, "The Inscriptions in the Caves at Nasik", Epigraphia Indica VIII, inscription 15, pp. 88-89, Plate VII. Publication history: H. Luders, Epigraphia Indica X, Appendix, entry 1137. Photo 1: Vishnudatta's medicine endowment at Nashik, recorded in the ninth year of King Isvarasena. Historical impression of inscription 15, published in Epigraphia Indica, Vol. VIII, Plate VII. Photo 2: The published translation records Vishnudatta's guild deposits and the continuing obligation to fund medicines. Epigraphia Indica, Vol. VIII, p. 89. Yellow highlights added.