92 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [N.S., XIII, 





• 



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U3l a,^ **U iw„ ^) ^ij • «*«■ &<> *£i3 .,/ ofiA J/-*' 



JWJ ^ J.I4JI ^ ;r * o.«u tty) ^_w ^»j ^ ^v, «> «>~ ;57 



* aw7 flua 



Ma flsir-uUU mara , Bibl. Indica Text, Vol. Ill, p. 63, 11. 6-10. 



" And the elevated Fortress of Agra, the like and equal of 

 which in strength and solidity has not been described (lit. point- 

 ed out) by those who have travelled in the quarters of the 

 inhabited [world], was completed and received the finishing 

 touch in the space of eight years, at a cost of seven crores or 

 tankds which are equivalent to thirty-five lakhs of rupees, 

 [thanks] to the excellence of Qasim Khan's management. 



It is scarcely necessary to say that if 



Seven crores of tankds — thirty-five lakhs of rupees, 

 20 Tankds = one rupee , 

 1 Tankd = j 1 , of a rupee or 2 dams. 



One more documentary proof of the value borne by the Tanka 

 has been recently discovered in distant Kashmir, which shows 

 that the Tanka equal to the twentieth part of a Rupee was in 

 general use, and that the name also was familiar to the people* 

 so late as 1093 in. (1682 A.C.). In a manuscript of a portion 

 of the Mahabharata, purchased by Dr. M. A. Stein at grinagar 

 in October 1898, " a curious deed of sale " is endorsed on the 

 obverse leaf of the ' Ashvamedha Parvan.' The agreement is 

 written out in Sanscrit as well as in Persian, and it is recorded 

 in the former that the MS. was sold to the worshipful Guru 

 Ananda for forty- five thousand Dinndras. It is stated w^" 

 equal clearness in the latter, that the sale took place on the 

 1st of Ramazan 109:{ a.h., and that the price was two hundred 

 and twenty-five Tank&s. 



Now Dr. Stein has proved that " the Kashmiri an Hath, Sans. 

 S'ata, i.e. the hundreder (the hundred-dinnara piece), was, m 

 Akbar's time, as clearly shown by a statement of Abul Fazl, 

 only equal to ,'„ of a Rupee. The Sasiin or thousander , the old 

 Sahasra, accordingly, then represented a value of not more 

 than I of a Rupee." The forty-five thousand Dinnaras of the 

 document would, at this rate, have been equal to 11 J Rupees- 

 So far, everything was clear to Dr. Stein (J.R.A.S., April 19W» 

 pp. 187-194, and Numismatic Chronicle, 1899, Vol. Xp,; 

 pp. 125-174), but he was unable to say , " what particular coin 

 was meant by the « Tanka,' though he thought that " a cofV tr 

 coin was evidently intended.' ' It i? «<"^««° ana mtAxi necessary 



to say that the coin was the Tanka 



article, i.e. the Tanka = j, of a Rupee. It is clear that if 



It is perhaps scarcely necessary 

 nkd which is the subject of this 









