1 66 Shells as evidence of the Migrations. 



again (p. go) in speaking of the standard of money 

 in India from Alexander the Great to the Mahommedan 

 Conquest, he says : "In Northern India the copper pieces 

 were supplemented by gold and silver multipliers, in 

 Southern India by dividers of cowrie-shells." In the 

 Manikyala tope in the Punjab, opened in 1830, " were 

 found mingled together cowrie shells, gold coins of the 

 Kadphises and Kanerkes, Roman consular coins shortly 

 before the Christian era, and copper coins of the Sassanian 

 line.'"-" Cowries formed the bulk of the currency between 

 the beginning of the Christian era and the Mahommedan 

 dynasty of A.D. 1203.'" f" Bengal the system of a copper 

 standard with cowry dividers and gold and silver multi- 

 pliers remained unchanged after the Mahommedan Con- 

 quest. Ibn Batuta, the Arabian traveller of the 14th century, 

 gives an account of the collection of the cowry-shells in 

 the Maldive islands, from whence they were exported to 

 Bengal in exchange for rice. He states that a biistus 

 equalled a lak of cowries, and four /^r/tj, or four bustus, were 

 estimated as worth one gold dinar, but the rate of exchange 

 was so variable that occasionally a dinar would purchase 

 as many as twelve laks of cowries.'^ 



In Orissa, the next kingdom south of Bengal, accounts 

 were kept in cowries, and the following scale of values 

 prevailed during the early part of the Mahommedan rule : 

 4cowries=i gunda ; 5 gundas= i boory ; 4 boories=i 

 pun ; 16 — 20 puns=i khawun ; 10 khawuns=i rupee. In 

 1740, a rupee exchanged for 2,400 cowries ; in 1756, for 



'-" .Maisden, " Numismata Orientalia," edited by Hdward Thomas, 

 London, 1874, quoted by Del Mar, op. (it., p. 86 footnote. 



I''' Marsden, op. cit., p. 37 ; Del Mar, op. cit., p. 90 footnote. 



'" Del Mar, op. cit., p. 99; Edward Thomas, "The Chronicles of 

 the I'alhan Kings of Delhi," London, 1871, p. no footnote. In Lee's 

 translation of " Ibn Batfita" (London, 1829, pp. 179 & 181) the cowry 

 (Wada) is referred to as alms-gifts and as currency in the Maldives. 



