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 early 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 foundation of a British 

 empire in the East, the envy of the present age. In this prelimi- 

 nary state, things continued with variable fortune 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 

 1748. 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. 



Caesar Mureans " 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 

 1669 A D proposed by the Court in 1669-70, he says, "They 

 recommended also the establishment of a Mint." 



