The confusion into which the coinage of India fell on the break up of
the Mug̱ẖal power, when independent mints sprang up in every part
of their wide dominions, may be gathered from the calculation made
in the early part of the nineteenth century, that there were no
less than 994 different gold and silver coins, old and new, passing
as current in the country. The complexity of the subject is further
accentuated by the impossibility of distinguishing at present the
earlier coins of independent mints from the imperial issues. Later
on, the gradual debasement, caused by the addition of special local
marks and the evolution of distinctive types in certain states, makes
classification easier. Few of these coinages have hitherto been treated
comprehensively, and all that can be attempted here is a bare outline,
according more detailed treatment only to the more considerable
moneying states.
The papers of the East India Company, fortunately, have preserved for
us a record of events typical of what was taking place in many parts
of India. They show that, besides coining the South Indian pagodas,
already noticed, and copper and silver coins in European style, the
English factories were early engaged in reproducing the rupees of the
Mug̱ẖal emperors. The first which can be fixed with any certainty
are those from the mint of Bombay, or Mumbai, as it appears on the
coins, opened in the reign of Farruḵẖ̱siyar (1713-19); and in 1742
the emperor, Muḥammad Shāh, granted the Company a _sanad_ permitting
them to coin Arkāt rupees. Gradually the Company assumed control of
all mints within its increasing territories. In 1765, for example,
after the battle of Buxar it took over the Bengal mints. Uniformity
of standard was maintained, first by engraving special marks on the
coins (Fig. 9, 4), and then by fixing the regnal year.[68] Thus the
gold and silver coins of the Banāras mint of the Hijrī years 1190 to
1229 all bear the same regnal date 17.[69] So also the year 19 was
fixed for the Murshidābād mint, the year 45 for Farruḵẖ̱ābād. These
coins, still inscribed with the Mug̱ẖal emperor’s name, became more
and more European in style (Pl. XII, 9), those of Farruḵẖ̱ābād being
even struck with a milled edge, until finally superseded by the British
Imperial currency of 1835.
[68] This was to stop peculation on the part of money-changers, bankers
and even revenue collectors, who made a rebate on all rupees not of the
current year.
[69] On the Banāras coins the actual regnal date, _i.e._ of Shāh ’Ālam
II, is added beneath the conventional date 17; this was not adopted for
other mints.
A similar evolution, but in the direction of deterioration, can be
traced in the issues of the Marāṭhās, Rājpūts, and other powers. The
Marāṭhās seized the important mint of Aḥmadābād in 1752; and the
coins struck there in the Mug̱ẖal style (until it was closed by
the British in 1835) all bear as a characteristic mark the “Ankūs,”
or elephant-goad. The Peshwa also had a mint at Pūna; and numerous
private mints in Mahārāsṭhra, some striking pagodas and fanams as well
as rupees, were worked with or without his permission. Other Marāṭhā
mints were those of the Bhonsla Rājas at Katak in Orissa and at Nāgpūr;
rupees of the latter bear the mint name Sūrat. So also the Gaikwār had
a mint at Baroda, Scindia at Ujjain and later on at Gwāliār, Holkār
at Indor. Jaśwant Rāo Holkār issued, in 1806, a notable rupee with
Sanskrit legends on both obverse and reverse (Pl. XII, 7).
Numerous Rājpūt states copied the imperial coinage in their local
mints, Jaipūr (opened about 1742), Bīkāner, Jodhpūr, and many others;
but in the nineteenth century the names of the ruling chiefs were
substituted for that of the titular emperor. Silver and gold were
struck in the emperor’s name by the Niz̤āms of Ḥaidarābād, who were
content to distinguish their several issues by the addition of their
initials (Pl. XII, 4) until 1857, after which the full name of the
Niz̤ām took the place of the emperor’s. The Rohillas during the period
of their ascendancy had a group of mints in Rohilkhand, the chief of
which were Najībābād, Murādābād, Barelī and Sahāranpūr. The copper
coinage of these independent states is excessively crude, and the
practice of striking to local standards, which began under the later
Mug̱ẖals, now became general. The copper mints were probably entirely
in private hands.
Here it will be convenient to deal with a coinage, which, though
partially of Mug̱ẖal lineage in other respects, stands by itself. The
reign of Tīpū Sult̤ān of Mysore, though lasting only sixteen years
(1782-99), was productive of one of the most remarkable individual
coinages in the history of India, comparable in many ways to that of
Muḥammad bin Tug̱ẖlaq. His father, Ḥaidar ’Alī, as we have already
seen (Chap. VI), struck pagodas and fanams. Tīpū continued to strike
both these, retaining the initial “hē” of Ḥaidar’s name, but adding
a mint name on the obverse or reverse (Pl. VI, 10). In addition, he
coined muhars and half muhars, in silver the double and full rupee,
with its half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth and thirty-second parts,
and in copper pieces of 40, 20,[70] 10, 5 and 2½ cash. The 40-cash
piece weighed 340 grains. To each of these coins, following perhaps
the example of Jahāngīr, he gave a special name. The pagoda, equal to
the quarter of a muhar, he called, for instance, _Fārūqī_; the double
rupee, _Ḥaidarī_; the rupee, _Aḥmadī_; the 20-cash piece, _Zohra_; and
so on. The Persian inscriptions on gold and silver are religious in
character, that on the rupee runs as follows: obverse, _The religion
of Aḥmad_ (_i.e._ _Islām) is illumined in the world by the victory of
Ḥaidar, struck at Nagar, the cyclic year Dalv, the Hijrī year 1200_;
reverse, _He is the Sultan, the unique, the just; the third of Bahārī,
the year Dalv, the regnal year 4_. For his copper coins Tīpū adopted
the elephant device of the Wodeyar kings of Mysore (1578-1733), and the
animal appears in various attitudes on the obverse, sometimes to right,
sometimes to left, with trunk raised, and with trunk lowered. On the
40-cash pieces he carries a flag. The reverse gives the mint and, later
in the reign, the distinctive name of the coin also (Pl. XII, 5).
[70] The 20-cash piece had been struck by Ḥaidar ’Alī in the last two
years of his reign, A.H. 1195-96. Cf. J. R. Henderson, _The Coins of
Ḥaidar ’Alī and Tīpū Sultān_, Madras, 1921, p. 5.
At least thirteen mints were working under Tīpū, the most important
being Pattan (Seringapatam), Nagar (Bednūr), and Bangalūr; for some
mints merely honorific titles appear, thus _Naz̤arbār_, “scattering
favour,” for Mysore.
The most remarkable and perplexing of Tīpū’s innovations was his method
of dating the coins. For this purpose he used the Jovian cycle of sixty
years, according to the Telugū reckoning, inventing special names
for each of the sixteen years of his reign, in accordance with their
correspondence with that cycle, and composing the names at different
periods from the letters supplied by the two systems of numeration
known as _abjad_ and _abtas̤_. For the first four years of his reign,
when he employed the _abjad_ system, he also dated his coins in the
Hijrī era; in the fifth year he invented a new era, the Maulūdī,
reckoned from the date of Muḥammad’s birth in A.D. 571; dates in this
era appear written from right to left. The execution of most of Tīpū’s
coins is exceptionally good.
Kṛishṇa Rāja Udayar (1799-1868), the restored Rāja of Mysore, for a
time continued the elephant copper pieces of Tīpū, but later changed
the device for a lion. Kanarese inscriptions (Fig. 6) were, however, at
once substituted for Persian.
We must now turn to Hindustān proper. Both Nādir Shāh, in 1739, and
Aḥmad Shāh Durrānī (1748-67) and his successors struck rupees and
muhars to the Mug̱ẖal standard for the districts they temporarily
occupied. Nādir’s issues are Persian in fabric, but the Durrānī coins,
struck at Shāhjahānābād (Pl. XII, 2), Farruḵẖ̱ābād, Lāhor, Multān,
Kābul, and several other mints, are largely Mug̱ẖal in style. On the
whole, the issues of these princes, especially those of Qandahār and
Peshāwar and the rare pieces of the pretenders, Sulaimān and Humāyūn,
reach a much higher artistic level than the contemporary Mug̱ẖal coins.
One of the most important results of Aḥmad Shāh’s repeated invasions
of the Panjāb was the formation of the Sikh League, known as the
Ḵẖ̱ālsā. After the seventh invasion, in 1764, the League assumed
the right of coinage; and from that date till 1777, with a gap of two
years, 1766-67, for Aḥmad Shāh’s last invasion, “Gobindshāhī” rupees
were struck at Lāhor, so-called from the name of the Gūrū Gobind
being included in the Persian couplet, which formed the inscription.
Amritsar, _Ambratsar_ on the coins, became a mint in 1777. Its earliest
rupees, known as “Nānakshāhī,” bore a different couplet (Pl. XII, 10).
A few coins were also struck at Anandgarh. All Sikh coins are dated in
the Samvat era.[71] The coins of Rañjīt Siṅgh (1799-1839) are of two
distinct kinds, those with Persian (often very faulty) and those with
Gurmukhī[72] inscriptions. Rupees of the Persian couplet type appear
regularly from the mints of Lāhor and Amritsar throughout his reign,
from Multān after 1818, from Kashmīr after 1819; and a few rupees are
known from Peshāwar, Jhaṅg and Pind Dādan Khān. The king’s name was
never inscribed on the coinage; but the characteristic Sikh “leaf” mark
makes its appearance upon his earliest rupee, dated S. 1857 (= A.D.
1800). During the Samvat years 1861-63, first a peacock’s tail and then
a thumb-mirror appears on the Amritsar rupees; these are said to bear
reference to Rañjīt’s favourite dancing girl, Mora. A curious rupee of
Lāhor of S. 1885 displays the figures of Gūrū Nānak and his Muhammadan
follower, Mardānā. Rañjīt Siṅgh also coined muhars similar in style to
the rupees.
[71] The Samvat, which corresponds with the Vikrama era, begins in 58
B.C.
[72] Gurmukhī is a Panjāb provincial form of the Nāgarī script (cf.
Fig. 10).
About the year S. 1885, apparently, the Gurmukhī coins were introduced.
A few gold and silver coins are known, but most are copper, some
weighing as much as 600 grains. The inscriptions are generally
religious in character; the commonest is _Akāl Sahāī, Gūrū Nānakjī_,
“O, Eternal one help us! Guru Nānakjī!”[73] The reverse gives the date
and mint, generally Ambratsar. The script is usually very crude, and
the “leaf” mark is almost invariably present. Some coins, like those
of Kashmīr, have bilingual legends in Persian and Gurmukhī. Rupees of
the Persian couplet type continued to be struck after Rañjīt’s death,
in S. 1896, till S. 1905 (= A.D. 1848). The chiefs of the Sikh states,
Patiāla, Jhind, Nābha and Kaital, and the Dogra Rājas of Kashmīr, after
A.D. 1846, also coined rupees of this type. On some of these last was
inscribed, on account of its supposed talismanic power, the Christian
monogram I.H.S.
[73] The two parts of this legend are quite separate in sense.
In conclusion, we must consider the coins of the Nawāb-wazīrs
and kings of Oudh or Awadh. The existence of this province as
a separate principality began in 1720, when the wazīr, Sa’ādat
Ḵẖ̱ān, was created Ṣūbahdār. From 1754 to 1775 the Mug̱ẖal mint of
Muḥammadābād-Banāras was under the control of the third Nawāb-wazīr
Shujā’u-d-daula. From 1784 till 1818 succeeding nawābs continued to
mint in Lakhnau (Lucknow) the famous “Machhlīdār” rupees, so called
from the fish (Fig. 9, 5), the royal badge of Awadh, appearing on the
reverse. All of these bear the regnal date 26, and continue the mint
name Banāras. Other mints worked by the nawābs from time to time were
Barelī, after 1784, Ilahābād, 1776-1780, and Āṣafnagar.
In 1818 Lord Hastings persuaded G̱ẖ̱āzīu-d-dīn Ḥaidar to assume the
title of king, and from that time the regal series of coins begins. The
royal arms of Awadh, in various forms, appear on the obverse of gold,
silver and copper of G̱ẖ̱āzīu-d-dīn and his four successors, until
the forced abdication of the last king, Wājid ’Alī Shāh, in 1856. On
the reverse, the inscription, following the Mug̱ẖal example, takes
the form of a couplet; and silver and gold are struck to the Mug̱ẖal
standard (Pl. XII, 3). Fractional pieces of the rupee and muhar were
struck in all reigns. Though better executed and finer in metal than
those of most other successors of the Mug̱ẖals, these coins display
a certain monotony, all denominations in the three metals following
the prescribed pattern for the reign. Certain modifications in the
inscription, however, take place from time to time. The coins of Wājid
’Alī Shāh’s seventh and eighth years, of which five denominations in
each metal are known, are probably the finest of the series.
Two large silver medals are associated with the Awadh dynasty, the
first commemorating Shujā’u-d-daula’s victory over the Rohillas at
Mirān Katra, in 1774, the second struck by G̱ẖ̱āzīu-d-dīn Ḥaidar, in
honour of his coronation on 1st Muḥarram A.H. 1235. On the obverse of
the latter is an ornate and very realistic portrait of the king, and on
the reverse the arms of Awadh. Certain “Machhlīdār” rupees and muhars,
bearing the date A.H. 1229, on which the mint name _Ṣūbah Awadh_
occurs, are believed to have been minted by the Lucknow mutineers. It
is not unfitting that this short history of Indian coins should close
with a description of the money of the Awadh kings; for this latest
scion of the great Mug̱ẖal currency not only received its sanction
from an English Governor-General, but manifested, in the adoption of
armorial bearings of a Western type for its obverse, the beginning of
that European influence, which, later on in the nineteenth century, was
to revolutionise the coin types of the few Indian states, Ḥaidarābād,
Travancore, Gwāliār, Alwar, Baroda, etc., which retained the right of
minting after the introduction of the British Imperial currency.