IN SOTJTHEKN INDIA. 
193 
The copper coins of the Company, prior to about 1700, 
are very rare, especially in the Southern Presidency, and as 
few of them bear any date, and fewer still any mint town, 
it is somewhat hard to discover when and where they were 
struck. Several appear to have been issued by Charles II 
and a few by James II, a notice of which, well worthy of 
perusal, appeared from the pen of Mr. E. Thomas in the 
Indian Antiquary for November 1882. Greorge II also ap- 
pears to have struck money in Bombay both in copper and 
in tutenag, which usually bears on the obverse a large crown 
surmounted by the letters Gr.E. and with the abbreviation 
BOMB. (Bombay) in the exergue. On the reverse we usually 
find the motto Auspicio regis et Senatus Anglice, or, as on the 
" Pice Bombaye," the monogram of the Company V.E.I.C. in 
a divided shield, surmounted by a device like the figure 4, 
and this, with some few variations, continued on most of the 
Company's coins up to the time of the introduction of their 
coat of arms at the commencement of the present century. 
A good deal of discussion has arisen as to the origin and 
meaning of this 4, but as a reference to the hand-books of 
the mercantile tokens of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries proves the same mark to be of very common occur- 
rence on the pieces struck by the tradesmen of those periods, 
I think there is every reason to regard it as merely a trade 
mark. 
In one series of coins struck in the south during the 
eighteenth century, we find another form 
PI. IV, No. 60. ° •/ V 11 ^ 
01 monogram, ii so it may be called, a 
specimen of which I figure as No. 60. On the one side 
invariably appears the date in large characters between two 
waving lines, while the other is divided by a horizontal line, 
" A very much needed contribution to numismatic literature is, I lielieve, 
now in course of preparation by Mr. E. Thurston of the Central Bluseum, 
Madras, in the shape of a complete catalogue of the coins of the East India 
Company. 
