IN SOUTHEEN INDIA. 
173 
withdra-wing a large share of the trade which the Portuguese 
had hitherto eujoyed, they considerably weakened their posi- 
tion, and from this time dates the commencement of the wane 
of their power. Within the next forty years Ceylon, Malacca 
and the Moluccas were lost, and so rapid was theii- fall that 
Tavernier tells us that when he visited the locality in 1648 
many of the inhabitants, who on the occasion of his first ^asit 
(1642) boasted of incomes of 2,000 crowns, were beggars when 
he went the second time. Henceforward little by little, 
point after point, was lost, the Dutch and English gradually 
increasing in power at the expense of the Portuguese, and 
then the latter b}^ degrees driving out the former tUl by the 
middle of the eighteenth eentmy the only mint towns left to 
Portugal were Groa and Diu. Of these, the latter continued 
operations till 1864 and the former till the signing of the 
monetary convention of the Anglo -Portuguese treaty on the 
18th of March 1880. By this convention the former coinage 
of the Portuguese in India became obsolete and the English 
rupee and anna system was made the only legal tender 
throughout the Portuguese territories. All their coins were 
to be struck by the authority of the Groverument of Portu- 
guese India, but were to be coined on their behalf by the 
Government of British India and by no other agency. The 
series consists of rupees, half rupees, quarter rupees, and 
one-eighth rupee in silver, each bearing on one side the effigy 
of the King of Portugal with the legend Ludovicm I, Porhi- 
galue et AUjarbionm Rex, or such other efiigy and legend as 
the government may from time to time desire, and on the 
other side the value of the coin, the year of the Christian era, 
and the words India Portugucza. The copper coins are simi- 
larly stamped, and of the value of half tanga, quarter taiiga, 
eighth tanga and realy corresponding, respectively, to the half 
anna, pice, half pice, and pie of the British system. 
To turn now to the issues in use prior to the signing of 
convention, we find a vast number of coins struck in gold, 
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