102 The Rupees of the Months of the Ilahi Years of Akbar. [No. 2, 
be eventually recovered. Of course it is late in the day now to commence. 
In my previous papers I have stated that old coins were getting scarcer and 
scarcer. In the Calcutta Review for April 1881 I showed how “ Portable 
Indian Antiquities” were quickly and quietly disappearing from the coun¬ 
try. Native ladies like their ornaments of pure gold and silver such as 
are in mohurs and rupees. English educated officers (and what officer is 
not now thoroughly educated) are constantly on the look out for these 
memorials of past glories. Hence search as we will, coins really good and 
old are seldom met with. One cannot help hoping that the coins in the 
India Office in England may be ultimately restored to India. These would 
form a nucleus for an Imperial collection. They are now in the British 
Museum for the purpose of being arranged. There are no doubt many 
duplicates. These should be distributed to Madras, Bombay, Kurrachee 
and Lahore where there are gentlemen in charge of the Museums who take 
a pride in their work and in the Institutions committed to their care. 
Beyond and above all present collections is the one belonging to General 
Cunningham which contains coins of greater beauty and rarity than any 
other. Whatever else the Government of India does, the reversion of this 
collection to India should be secured. 
I am not so sanguine about a copper series of Akbar’s Ilahi months. 
I have eight months now. But copper coins disappear relentlessly. 
Every manufacturer of copper vessels, and their number in India is legion, 
regards an old copper fulus or sikka of Akbar, with its 315 or so grains 
of good copper, as a god-send, and he melts it down or beats it out ruth¬ 
lessly. As Akbar was the only Mogul who tried to rule India, and as 
mementoes of his reign are not so very numerous, we ought to have a com¬ 
plete collection of his coins in gold, silver, and copper. The editor of the 
Ain-i-Akbari gives a few gold, silver and copper coins in the latest Lucknow 
edition of that work. The author of the gives a list 
of ten coins at the end of Akbar’s reign. One of these is the gold coin 
with figures of Ram and Sita on it, and on the other side the month and 
Ilahi year, a* This is the coin from which all the sapient 
money changers of the bazaars name all coins with figures on them “ Sltd 
Ramil” It is also noticed by the editor of the Ain-i-Akbari. 
Akbar went on coining until his death; hence the list of mints given 
in the Ain is not complete or correct. There were several active mints not 
noticed in that work, e. g., Asirgarh, Burhanpur, Srinagar, Gobindpur, 
Tatta, Fathpur and Lahri Bandar. I have coins of Akbar struck in all 
these mints except Asirgarh. But there are many mints given in the Ain 
from which I have not as yet seen a coin of any kind. 
* On the gold coin in the* British Museum there are the two figures but without 
any inscription in Hindi. 
