1917.] Numismatic Supplement No. XXVIII. 93 



225 Tankas = 45,000 Dinnaras, 



= 11 J Rupees, 



1 Tank a = 200 Dinnaras. 

 But 100 Dinnaras = ~\ Rupee, 



.\ 1 Tanka = ,,'-> x } = ^ Rupee. 



So far we are on solid ground. All the passages quoted are 

 clear enough and there is not room for much difference of 

 opinion as to their meaning. But there are several other 

 points in this connection which are not easy of solution and to 

 these I must now advert. 



We have seen that Abul Fazl calls this full tanka (equal 



to two Dams or the ^o^ 1 P ar ^ °f a rupee) the u Tanka4- 

 Dehli." Nizamu-d-din and Badaoni give it the designation 

 of " Tanka-i-Muradi" I confess that I cannot give any 

 particular reason for either appellation. Why call it the 

 1 * Tanka of Dehli" only, and not of Agra v Lahore, or any 

 other place where it was current ? And for the matter of that, 

 why call it * Muradi ' ? I am afraid it is scarcely possible to 

 say anything really useful on that head, and we are left to 

 mere conjecture. It is possible that the epithet had something 

 to do with the name of the Prince Murad, and that the full 

 tanka came, at some time in its history, to be called after Akbar's 

 favourite son. It is of course open to any one to hold that it is 

 nothing more than one of those meaningless expletives or 'co- 

 efficients ' as they have been called, of which there are so many 

 in Persian and Hindustani idiom, e.g. Panj (five) Zanjir-i-fil, 

 Qabzah-i- Shamshir , Danah-i-Marwarid f Muhari-Shutur, Qata'a- 

 i-La c al 9 Nafar-i-Barqandaz, Fard-i-Kaghaz or Dast-i-Baz. These 

 and many another "gem of the Munshi's repertory" may be 

 seen in Carnegy's Kachari Technicalities, or in Yule and 

 Burnell's Hobson-Jobson (s.v. Numerical Affixes, ed. Crooke, 

 p. 634). But neither of these suppositions is supported by any 

 positive evidence, and our knowledge of the many fanciful and 

 often far-fetched innovations in nomenclature for which Akbar 

 appears to have had an unreasoning partiality, should warn us 

 against making any confident statement on that head. Indeed, 

 it seems to me that the origin of the phrase is a mere side-issue 

 upon which it is scarcely necessary to lay stress in the present 

 state of the inquiry. Etymological inquiries are of practical 

 value only when there is a doubt as to the real meaning of a 

 word or phrase. They are scarcely anything more than curi- 

 osities when the meaning stands out clearly, as it does in this 

 case, from the words of the writers themselves. It is possible 

 that scholars will long continue to differ about the derivation 

 of the word Muradi, but then how many of us are agreed as to 

 the etymology of Tanka itself, or Dam or Paisa or Dokda or 

 Kant (or Oani) ? 



I submit, therefore, that our ignorance of the origin of the 



