Use of Coivry -shells for Currency, Amulets, etc. 167 



2,560 cowries ; in 1833, 6,400 cowries ; and in 1845,6,500 

 cowries. Major Rcnnell, 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 Burram pooler 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, op. tit., 

 pp. 110 ill footnotes). 



Lovell Reeve, in his "Cpnchplogia Systematica," 11 

 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. moneta\ 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. cit., p. 1 08). 



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 Laccadive and 

 Maldive Islands. Of the latter, the Arab Masudi, in the 

 first half of the loth century, remarked that the queen 

 had no other kind of money than the cowries, which were 



12<J Reeve, " Conchologia Systematica," London, 1842, vol. ii., p. 262 

 footnote. 



