CURRENCY AND COINAGE 213 



of its exchange value : a habit that has so grown with 

 time as to become an intuitive custom applied to adhe- 

 sive stamps or any other article which has a legal value. 

 So widely have the marks of certain rulers become 

 known and so greatly have they been appreciated that 

 other peoples and kings have copied them after a 

 fashion, and in some instances they have had to be 

 continued after death. 



The spread and imitations of the coinage of Philip of 

 Macedon are instances in Europe. The issue of the 

 rupees and gold mohurs of the Mogul Emperor Shah 

 Alam by the East India Company and others long after 

 his death, and the use of the Hindu Devanagari legends 

 on the coins of the early Muhammadan invaders, only 

 gradually giving way to Arabic and Persian, are instances 

 in India. The wide use of the Spanish and Mexican 

 dollars in the Far East and of the Maria Theresa dollars 

 in Abyssinia are yet others. Where for local reasons it 

 has not been practicable to establish a stamped or 

 engraved or otherwise certified coinage, or where 

 perhaps its introduction has not come to a civilized 

 people as a development, its value has even in ancient 

 times been at once recognized when pointed out. When 

 some Greek travellers in the centuries B.C. visited 

 Taprobane, which we may assume to be Ceylon or the 

 west coast of Sumatra, the king of the country was so 

 greatly struck with the practical use of the gold legally 

 stamped coins exhibited to him that he lamented his 

 inability to introduce them into his own country. 



Of course deceit and fraud, i.e. the improper use of 

 knowledge or power for personal advantage, are not 

 confined to traders, and long ago and everywhere every 

 kind of device has been adopted for what is called 

 debasing or forcing the currency by both traders and 



