1917.] Numismatic Supplement No. XXVIII. 95 



resources and munificence ? The specimens in our museums of 

 Akbar's falus or dams are sufficiently numerous to demonstrate 

 the fallacy of this supposition, but then when Aurangzeb 

 made to the Prince Muhammad Muazzam a present of three 

 crores of dams, are we to understand that several thousand 

 carts loaded with copper coins were sent to the Prince's 

 residence ? Most probably not* The amount of the gift was 

 estimated in dams, but the dam was an actual coin and not a 

 mere " money of account," in our sense of the term. The entire 

 Mughal revenue was estimated in dams, and all the accounts were 

 kept in dams, but the dam was an actual coin and a Ci money 

 of account " only in the sense that it was the commonest fiscal 

 unit in which all accounts were kept. It would appear as if 

 the Muradi tanka which we have seen mentioned in connection 

 with the amounts of large money-gifts was, just like the dam, 

 a real coin as well as a fiscal unit, and not a mere " money of 

 account M in our sense of the term. 



But supposing that it was a " money of account" and 

 nothing more, it does not at all affect the conclusion so far as 

 the primary question as to the real meaning of the ■ Return * of 

 Nizamu-d-din Ahmad, quoted at the head of this article, is con- 

 cerned. ' Money of account ' or not, it is clear that 640 crores 

 of Muradi tankds were equivalent to .'52 crores of Akbari rupees, 

 and not to 16 crores, and that Thomas was after all right in the 

 surmise which Mr. Lane- Poole rejected as scarcely worthy of 

 serious consideration. So far the demonstration is complete. 

 Whether the 32 crores of rupees represent merely the land revenue 

 or the sum total of the Imperial income from all sources is 

 another matter, which may be discussed more fitly in some 

 other place. 



One word more as to the strictly numismatic aspect of 

 the question. If the Muradi tanka was valued at two Dams, 

 and equivalent to ^th of a rupee, what is its relation to the 

 Tanka-i-Akbarshahi, of about double the weight of the dam, of 

 which several specimens have been unearthed since Thomas 

 wrote ? The difficulty is that the earliest dated tanka is not 

 older than the 44th Regnal year (Whitehead, P.M.C. No. 615), 

 though half -tankds of the 40th, 41st, 42nd years have been found. 

 Nizamu-d-din first mentions the large tanka, equivalent to 

 the twentieth part of a rupee, in connection with the 25th Reg- 

 nal year, while Badaoni's earliest reference is to the 32nd, and 

 even Abul Fazl's is probably not later than the 40th year of 

 the Reign. Indeed, Nizamu-d-din died in the 38th year, and 

 Badaoni, whose history does not go beyond the 40th, is generally 

 believed to have died soon afterwards. Abul Fazl, it is true, 

 lived up to the 46th year, but the facts and figures in the Ain 

 are in more than one instance said expressly to refer to the 39th 

 or the 40th year. 



We are therefore led to suppose that the full tanka of about 



