Fig. 10. Gurmukhī Script on Sikh Coins, Akāl Sahāī: Gūrū Nānakjī.
The neighbours of the Mug̱ẖals were not slow to recognise the excellence of their coinage. Even the Ṣafavī monarchs of Persia adopted certain features. The East Himalayan kingdom of Assam, hitherto content to use the money of Bengal, and the adjacent state of Nepāl, which had been without a coinage of its own for centuries, within fifty years of Akbar’s accession had both adopted the rupee standard.
Assam, the ancient Kāmarūpa, had been invaded in A.D. 1228 by the Ahoms, a Shan tribe from Burma, and finally subdued by them in 1540. By the year 1695 the royal family had definitely submitted to the influence of Hinduism. Previously to that date, expression of devotion to the tribal gods Lengdun, Tara and Phatuceng appears on the coins; but the reverse legend of a coin of the Śaka year 1618 (A.D. 1696), struck by Rudra Siṁha (1696-1714), runs as follows, in the highly poetical Sanskrit so characteristic of later coin inscriptions: “A bee on the nectar of the feet of Hara and Gaurī.”
The earliest known coins are those of Śuklenmung (1539-52), but these and the money of his five successors were struck for ceremonial occasions, probably only at the coronation, and a yearly coinage was first introduced by Rudra Siṁha. The strange octagonal shape of the coins is said to owe its origin to a statement in the Yoginī Tantra, which describes the Ahom country as octagonal. Some of the smaller coins are, however, round, and Śiva Siṁha, for a coin of Ś. 1651, on which he associates the name of his queen, Pramatheśvarī, and Rājeśvara Siṁha (1751-69), for two of his issues, adopted the square Mug̱ẖal form and style with legends in Persian. The inscription on Śiva Siṁha’s coin is as follows: obverse, Shāh Sheo Singh struck coin like the sun by order of the Queen Pramatheśvarī Shāh; reverse, In the year 15 of the fortunate reign at Gargāon 1651 (= A.D. 1729). For this the Nūr Jahān issues of Jahāngīr were obviously the model. With the exception of a coin of Śuklenmung, all gold and silver was struck to a standard of 176 grains, and half, quarter, eighth, and even smaller fractional pieces were minted. Several of the earlier Rājas employed the Ahom language and script for their legends. Sanskrit written in the Bengālī script was first used by Sūrya Nārāyaṇa (1611-49). Pramatta Siṁha (1744-51) and Rājeśvara Siṁha employ both, but after the coronation ceremony of the latter Sanskrit alone was used. The legends, in either script, are always enclosed within dotted borders (Pl. XII, 8). These thick rather solid-looking coins, though attractive on account of their unusual shape, are entirely without artistic merit; they ceased to be minted with the cession of Assam to the British in 1826. The broad round silver pieces of the Rājas of Jaintia (Jayantāpura) of the eighteenth century, and the coins of the hill state of Tipperah, bear legends similar in style to the Assamese Sanskrit coins, and, like them, are dated in the Śaka era. The dates on the Ahom coins of Assam are reckoned according to the Jovian cycle of sixty years.
The considerable Mug̱ẖal influence exhibited in the modern coinage of the Malla kings of Nepāl, which starts in the early years of the seventeenth century, finds expression in the native legend which affirms that Rāja Mahendra Malla of Kāthmāṇḍū obtained permission to strike coins from the Dehlī court. Although none of his money has come to light, the story gains some support from the weight of the early Nepalese coins, which are all half-rupees, and from a curious piece of Pratāpa Malla of Kāthmāṇḍū (1639-89), which imitates Jahāngīr’s coinage, even adopting fragments of the Persian inscription.
Nepāl, at the period when the coinage begins, was divided into three principalities—Bhatgāon, Pātan and Kāthmāṇḍū—and probably the earliest coins are those of Lakshmī Narasiṁha, ruler of the last province (1595-1639), although the earliest date, Nepālī Samvat[67] 751 (= A.D. 1631) appears on one struck by Siddhi Narasiṁha of Pātan. The usual design on the coins, perhaps suggested by some of Akbar’s and Jahāngīr’s issues, consists of elaborate geometrically ornamented borders surrounding a central square or circle, with the legends in Nāgarī fitted into the spaces left in the design. On the obverse appear the king’s name, titles and date, and on the reverse various symbols, accompanied sometimes by a further title or a religious formula. The Gūrkhas, who conquered the country in 1768, continued the style of their predecessors (Pl. XII, 6), but occasionally struck full as well as the ordinary half-rupees. Gīrvāṇ Yuddha Vikrama (1799-1816) and Surendra Vikrama (1847-81) also struck gold similar in design to the silver coins, and the latter introduced a copper currency.
The silver tang-ka (tankah) of Tibet was directly imitated from the coinage of Jagajjaya Malla of Kāthmāṇḍū (1702-32).
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.