1917.] Numismatic Supplement No. XXVIII. 89 



weight), as equivalent to 25. Qd. (Lane Poole's Aurangzib, p. 120, 

 and the authorities quoted there), we have : 



12 Muradi Tankas = 5 Fadiyahs = d. 4} x 5 = \ 7 - x 5d. = s , d 



= 71 x 3V Rs. = 1 Vo Rs - = \ | R«. = H * T # 5 ™* 



a«r #5"w »28A -Dams. 



2 4 --"-"•«'" -^2 4 



1 Muradi Tanka — " 2 \° Z)ams x A Dam* = I |S Dams 



2. 1 •? Dams. 



The result will be even closer if we take the Phadiyah to be 

 equal to 4d. instead of 4Jd. It will be then 2| Dams. 



But there is yet another gauge that is available. About 

 twenty years ago, I discovered in the possession of an old Parsi 

 priest of Navsari, near Surat, a bundle of original Persian and 

 Gujarati documents, of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 

 illustrating the history of our small community. One of these is 

 a Persian sale-deed of 923 a.h. (1517 a.c.), by which thirty-two 

 bighas of land were sold to a famous Parsi of those times, Manak 

 Changa, by Musammat 'Ismat Khatun for the sum of the five 

 hundred Phadiyas, each Phadiyah of which was to be of the value 

 of L2 Dokdas. Now, the Dokda of Gujarat is almost everywhere 

 defined as the yfo part of a rupee (Wilson's Glossary, s.v.: 

 BeJsare, Gujarati- English Dictionary, s.v.), and is most probably, 

 what the author of the Mirat-i-Ahmadi calls the tankchah of 

 Gujarat, of which also 100 went to the rupee. (Bay ley, Guja- 

 rat, p. 6). Now, if a Phadiya was equivalent to 12 of these 

 Dokdas and if 5 Phadiyahs were equal to 12 Muradi tankas, it 

 is obvious that 12 Muradi tankas = 60 Dokdas = f of a rupee 

 } x \ f) - Dams = 24 Dams : 



/. 1 Muradi tanka = 2 Dams. 



This extraordinary confirmation of the value given for the 



Muradi tanka by Nizamu-d-din, from a chance document 



found in a Parsi house in an obscure corner of Gujarat, is, to 



say the least of it, extraordinary, and deserves careful con- 



ideration at the hands of any one disposed to scout the theory 



enunciated by Thomas. 



But this does not exhaust the evidence. It is possible to 

 demonstrate the existence of a tanka equivalent to two Dams, 

 and to adduce at least two conclusive examples of the equation 

 from the Ain4-Akbari itself. In a chapter on the " Profit of 

 the Dealers in Gold and Silver," which deserves to be carefully 

 studied by every advanced student of Mughal Numismatics, 



Abul-Fazl says : 



c 8 The merchant buys for 100 L'al-i-Jalali Muhrs 130 T[olahs] 



- 7 - n rf\J6 CM- UL^l ^t Unm rrrAA r*f ft.! hn<n m I Hf fViia r.non_ 



M[ashas] 



Of this quan- 



l The Mughal phrase for gold of absolute fineness - 24 carats or 100 

 touch— was Barahhani — i.e of twelve Bans. ^ Abul Pazl writes : 



"The highest degree of purity is called in Persia Dahdahi [i.e. ten in 



