92 
C. J. Rodgers —On the Coins of the Silchs. 
[No. 1, 
The coins depicted in plates YIII and IX are known as Nanak Shahi 
pice. They are sold in the bazaars at the rate of 56, 57, 58 couples (tagge) 
for the rupee or from 112 to 116. Now 6 Nanak Shahi pice weigh down 
7 of our pice, and hence each one is -^ths of one of our pice. Hence, 
roughly speaking, although our pice is of less weight than the Nanak Shahi 
pice, the market value of the latter is one half that of the former. These 
pice are in great demand. Their cheapness enables a man to give away 
at a marriage 112 to 116 coins, whereas if he changed a rupee into pice 
struck by the English, he would give only 64 Thus he gives more actual 
weight of metal and gives more in number. In Amritsar and Lahore and 
all centres of population in the Pan jab they are in great demand. One 
source of gain of the money-changers is the trade in these pice. They 
sell them to people who are about to celebrate a marriage. Afterwards in 
the course of barter and exchange the coins find their way to the shop¬ 
keepers and traders who let them accumulate, until they have a rupee’s 
worth, when they sell them to the money-changer again at reduced rates. 
Each money-changer’s stock consists chiefly of these pice. * He has 
hundredweights stored away. As they come from all parts of the country, 
they are mixed with other odd coins. And it is from these mixed heaps of 
things that most of the rarest coins of the Pan jab olden times are obtained 
For when the coins return to the money-changer, he sets to work to sort 
them, and every year he gets great quantities (if he is in a favourable part 
of the country) of coins other than Nanak Shahi pice. It is from these 
men I have got all my rarest coins. They are the natural places for old 
coin deposits. But whereas dealers charge enormous prices for their coins, 
these men are content if they get three or four times the value of the 
coin. The stream incoming is constant. I have sometimes visited one 
of these places as often as twice a week and have never been disappointed 
yet. The silver coins however do not lodge here. They get only as far 
down as the sarrafs and dealers in bullion, and to them therefore I go 
for rupees and gold coins. Of course if no collector goes near these shops, 
the copper coins are melted down for the sake of the silver thej r contain, 
and the silver and gold coins are melted down for the sake of bullion or 
ornaments. I am sorry to add that up to the present no collection of 
Sikh coins exists for the people of the country in which the Sikhs once 
held sway.* 
There is one point still more, worthy of notice, before I close this 
paper. I mean the ratio existing between silver and copper. I have shown 
above that the pice sell for from 112 to 116 per rupee and that they are 
* [ Since the above was put in type, the Panjab Government have purchased the 
whole of Mr. Rodgers’ Sikh coins for the Lahore Museum. Ed.] 
