190 COINS FROM MALACCA. 
these towns according to Da Cunha (4), part 1, p. 273; part 3 
p. 202; part 4, p. 21. 
G Lor. G—-* ne Kees Gen 
M or M—A ice sae, Malaeea 
C—LO Saat) aes ey lon 
D Ser. Kee Damage 
Decor D206 Je esc WOR 
“ee. Jbassein 
Finally the letter A which is found on some coins, is sup- 
posed to stand for ‘Asia’ (see Da Cunha, part 1, p. 271), but 
‘Albuquerque’ has also been suggested. 
Da Cunha, the first authority on this subject, alludes 
to the many difficulties which the study of the coins 
issued by these mints presents, he states that the coins were 
issued by the viceroys or even’ by _ the officers 
of the mint in the most capricious fashion, that they 
frequently bore effigies and leyends which had no con- 
nection whatever with the reigning monarchs of the periods 
when they were issued, that some of them were struck years 
after the kings, whose busts they bore, had ceased to live (4, 
part I, p. 267). Da Cunha continues: ‘But these difficulties are 
increased tenfold by an absolute want of examples of the early 
periods of the Portuguese rule in India, their place being but 
inefficiently supplied by some written official reports and private 
memoirs. The coins of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
are not only scarce, but even the written documents relating to 
them are rare or deficient.” To Valentyn (76) they seem to have 
been entirely unknown. Millies (22), p. 140, says: “Un des 
monuments méme de la victoire du grand Alfonso d’ Albuquer- 
que, la monnaie qu'il fit frapper 4 Malaka, a tellement disparu, 
que nous n’avons nullepart pu en decouvrir un exemplaire.” 
Birch (2), in a foot note to Albuquerque’s ‘Commentaries,’ Vol. 
II, p. 130, refers for descriptions of the earliest Portuguese 
coins to the works of De Faria (6) and Fernandes (8) and states 
that ‘the coins themselves are so rare that they may almost be 
described as no longer extant,” and that those writers had not 
figured any of them. I have not been able to see the works 
of De Faria and Fernandes, but I am glad to say that the collec- 
tion unearthed in Malacca does contain some of those earliest 
Jour. Straits Branch 
