48 Notes on Indian Currencies. 
[no. 1, NEW SERIES, 
When we first came to India, attracted by the inviting reports of 
Drake and Cavendish, and were permitted to establish here and 
there a factory, originally subordinate to Surat, but afterwards to 
Madras, Bombay and Bengal---constantly at war to-day with the 
Mahrattas, to-morrow with the Moguls, and the next with the 
Dutch, Portuguese or other European rivals— -our hold upon India, 
even up to the close of the 17th century, was of far too precarious 
and insecure a nature to admit of our finding, at the present day, 
many traces significant of our darly occupation of the country ; ne- 
vertheless our factories and stations rapidly continued to extend 
with a growing .charge in their accounts to " Civil and Military ex- 
penses," and eventually resulted in the cfoundation of a British 
empire in the East, the envy of therpresent age. In this prelimi- 
nary state, things continued with variable fertune till 1746, when 
our political horizon looked gloomy in India, and Madras was taken 
by the French, but restored by the peace of Aix la Chapelle in 
17-18. Subsequent to this, occurred those memorable struggles be- 
tween our countrymen under Clive and the French under Dupleix, 
ending after a long conflict in their overthrow, and in the extinc- 
tion of the Mogul empire and the eventual succession of Company 
Durbar. In 1771, the East India Company, we are told, "stood 
forth publicly in the character of Dewan." 
It is not always an easy matter to get information of many things 
connected with our first government of India — and the coinage of 
money is among the number. 
Csesar Mureau's " E. I. Company's Records" exhibit in chrono- 
logical order the Commercial and Political history of the Company 
from 1600 to 1823, and is a very comprehensive account in a suc- 
cinct and readable form ; but he alludes to mint matters only once, 
and that merely to say that in 1677 permission was granted the 
Company to coin money. 
The earliest notice of a mint, I can anywhere trace, is in Kayes' 
History, (p. 68,) where speaking of various administrative schemes 
proposed by the Court in 1669-70, he says, "They 
recommended also the establishment of a Mint." 
