190 
HINTS TO COIX-COLLECTOKS 
We must hasten on, tlierefore, to 1640, when we find 
an event recorded of importance alike to our subject and 
ourselves. In that year the East India Company purchased 
the town and port of Madraspatnam. On the fatal field of 
Talikota the last vestige of actual power had been wrested 
by the Mahomedans from the once powerful house of 
Yijeyanagar, and the representative of the royal race had 
retired to the fastnesses of Chendraghiri. Here he sold to 
the English the ground where now stands Fort St. Greorge, 
with permission to establish a factory and fort there, at 
the same time granting them jurisdiction over the natives, 
an exemption from customs, and the right to coin money, 
with the proviso that the pattern in use with his dynasty 
should be followed. This consisted of the figure of a stand- 
ing god, the reverse of the coin being granxdated and con- 
vex. It does not appear certain that any coins were sti'uek for 
some time after this. Twenty years later, however, we find 
Charles II inheriting, as part of the dower of Cathaiine of 
Braganza, the Island of Bombay, and this ten-itory was 
leased to the East India Company for £10 per annum, a fair 
proof of the value of land in the East in those days. Several 
coins were struck in his time, a mint ha ving been established 
under royal letters patent, and permission granted to coin 
rupees, pice and budgrooks,'® which, however, were not to be 
of the same pattern as the medals in use in England. Ee- 
garding these coins Tavernier, whose works were published 
in Paris in 1676 by Chapuzeau, one of his comrades in 
his eastern travels, after observing that the English in their 
fort of Bombay coin silver, copper, and tin, observes that 
There can, I think, he hut little douht, hut that this word owed its 
origin to the Portuguese " bazarucco," the name of a coin which had been 
in use by that power for years in India : more especially, as both were in the 
same metal, tutenag. Dr. da Cunha refers the origin of the term to ^^^^^ 
(small change) and ( market) . 
