SILVER COINAGE. Silver is the legally con stituted medium of exchange in all money trans actions throughout the British Indian possessions. The extent to which the IIindu, Muhammadan, tuid British rulers of India have issued coins, may be shown by mentioning that in 1868 Surgeon Major Sheklion in a pamphlet gave the assays of 102 gold mohurs, 62 hun or pagodas, and 1 half pagoda, 24 gold fanams of from 2.6 to 5.9 grains, and 21 foreign cold coins ; but of silver coins he gave 456 rupees, 23 half rupees, 6 fanams, and a damri.
The English East India Company kept up mints at several of the large towns, but since the 31st August 1869, when. that at Madra.s was closed, minting has been continued only at Calcutta and Bombay, and that chiefly for silver ; for in the ten years 1873 to 1882, the total of gold coined was £156,253 ; for silver, £60,153,158; and of copper, 1679,171.
Indian System of Coinage and Currency.—The silver rupee was introduced, according to Abul Fazl, by Sher Shah, who took the throne of Dehli from Humayun in the year 1542. Previous to his time, the Arabic dirham (silver drachma), the gold dinar (denarius auri), and the copper fulus (follis), formed the currency of the Moghul dominions. Sher Shah's rupee had on one side the Muhammadan creed, on the other the emperor's name and the date in Persian, both encircled in an annular Hindi inscription. Since the same coin was revised and made more pure in Akbar's reign, we may assume the original weight of the rupee from Abul Fazl's statement to have been llf masha. Akbar's square rupee, called front its inscription the jahtli, was of the same weight and value. This coin was called char-yari, from the names of the immediate successors of Mahomed, Abubakr, Omar, Osman, and Ali, being inscribed on the margin. This rupee is supposed by the vulgar to have talismanic power.
ilfasha.—Coneerning the weight of the masha of the Muhammadans, some difficulty prevails, as this unit now varies in different parts of India. Mr. Colebrooke makes it 17f, grains nearly ; but the average of several gold and silver jalali of Akbar's reign, found in good preservation, gives 15.5 grains, which also agrees better with the actual masha of many parts of Hindustan. By this calculation the rupee originally weighed 174.4 grains troy, and was of pure silver, or such as was esteemed to be pure. The same standard was adopted by the emperor Akbar, and accordingly we find coins of Akbar's reign dug up in various places weighing from 170 to 175 grains. Cabinet specimens of Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurang zeb have also an average weight of 175 grains pure ; and the same prevails with little variation up to the time of Muhammad Shah, in the coins of oppo site extremities of the empire, or struck in the subahs of Surat, Ahmadabad, Delili, and Bengal, as in the Akbari, Jahangiri, Shah Jahani, Dehli Sonat, Dehli Sonat Alitngir, Old Surat tupee ; Murshidabad, Persian rupee of 1745 ; Old Dacca Muhammad Shalii, Ahmad Shahi, and Shah Alam of 1772. The Moghul emperors thus maintained
a great uniformity in the currency of their vast empire, and they were very tenacious of their privilege of coining. On the breaking-up of the empire in the reigns succeeding Muhammad Shah, numerous mints were established by ministers and by the viceroys of the principal subahs who were assuming independence, and the coin was gradu ally debased as the confusion and exigencies of the time increased. The Mahratta and other Hindu states also established mints of their own, retain ing, for form sake, however, the emperor's name and superscription, as a titular avowal of Deh supremacy. As the British dominion spread, these differences gave rise to the difference in the cur rencies of the British provinces, and by a happy chance brought those of Madras, Bombay, Far rakhabad to a close approximation. Regulation xxxv. of 1793 was the first of those of the E.I. Company which treats of mint matters. At that time the differences in the values of the currencies were very great, but the dates of the coinage on each coin facilitated the work of the sirafs or money-changers in applying the batta to which tbe known debasement of each coin entitled it. In 1793, the E.I. Company resolved to remedy the inconveniences which bad thus arisen, by declar ing that all rupees coined for the future should bear the impression of the 19th year of Shah Alam, and thus by its adoption at that early period, it happened that the Sicca rupee was the only one of the Company's coins which retained the full value of the original Dehli rupee. About the same time, the Surat rupee of the Moghul emperor, weighing 178.314 grains, was adopted as the currency of the Bombay Presidency. It contained 172.4 pure, and was thus nearly equal to theli rupee. From depreciations made in the Surat coin by the nawab, the coinage at Bombay ceased for twenty years ; but in 1800 the Surat rupee was ordered to be struck at Bombay, and from that date it became fixed at 179 graina weight, 164.74 pure, and the mohur was equalized in weight thereto. In 1829, under orders from the Court of Directors, the cm rency of the Bombay l'residency was equalized with that of Madras by the adoption of the 180 grain rupee and niohur. The Arcot rupee in 1788 still retained 170 grains of pure silver, and subsequently, when coined at the mint of Fort St. George, it had a weight of 176-4 grains, or 166-477 grains pure, until the new systetn was introduced in 1818, and the Madras lt30 grain rupee was established.