Use of Cowry-shells for Currency, Amiutlets, etc. 167 
2,560 cowries ; in 1833, 6,400 cowries ; and in 1845, 6,500 
cowries. Major Rennell, who was in Silhet in 1767-8, 
speaking of the cowry-money, remarks: “I found no other 
currency of any kind in the country ; and upon an occasion, 
when an increase in the revenue of the province was 
enforced, several boat loads (not less than 50 tons each) 
were collected and sent down the Burrampooter to Dacca.” 
As late as 1801 the revenues of the British district of 
Silhet “were collected in cowries, which was also the 
general medium of all pecuniary transactions, and a con- 
siderable expense was then incurred by Government in 
effecting their conversion into bullion.” (Thomas, of. et., 
pp. 110—111 footnotes). 
Lovell Reeve, in his “Conchologia Systematica,’™ 
mentions that “a gentleman residing some time since at 
Cuttack is said to have paid for the erection of his 
bungalow entirely in these cowries [C. sonefa]. The 
building cost him about 4,000 rupees sicca (£400 sterling) ; 
and as sixty-four of these shells are equivalent in value 
to one ‘pice, and sixty-four pice to a rupee sicca, he paid 
for it with above sixteen millions of these shells.” 
In the Deccan, up to the thirteenth century, but few 
coins of any kind seem to have been minted, the currency 
appearing to consist almost entirely of cowries (Del Mar, 
op. cet., p. 108). 
In early times, cowries, it is thought, were brought to 
India from the Philippines and Borneo, as well as from 
the island of Bima near Macassar (Celebes); in later 
times they were obtained from the lLaccadive and 
Maldive Islands. Of the latter, the Arab Masudi, in the 
first half of the 1oth century, remarked that the queen 
had no other kind of money than the cowries, which were 
129 Reeve, ‘* Conchologia Systematica,” London, 1842, vol. ii., p. 262 
fo otnote. 
