A History of the Mahrattas v1.c10.37

v1.c10.37

² [*Tanka* (*Tunkha*) is probably derived from a Sanskrit word signifying a weight of silver equivalent to four *māsas*, and was the popular name of the chief silver coin of the Delhi sovereigns during the thirteenth and early part of fourteenth centuries. The tanka was substantially the same as the rupee of later days. Ibn Batuta describes the gold coin of Muhammad Tughlak (1333–43) as a tanka or dīnār of gold, while at a later period (1488–1577) the word was applied to copper coins, of which twenty went to the old silver tanka. (Yule’s *Hobson-Jobson*, ed. Crooke, 1903, s.v. Tanga.) According to Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole (*B.M. Catal. Mughal Coins*, 1892, p. xciii) ‘the term tankah [or tanka] appears to be used just as vaguely as fulūs, both for dāms of 315 to 325 grs., and double dāms of 618 to 644 grs. Mr. Rodgers states that his weights prove that the tankah was equal to two dāms; but I do not draw the same inference. All [that] his weights prove is that some tankahs weighed about 630 grs. and others about 320. He publishes a coin specifically named an eighth of a tankah, weighing nearly 40 grs., which brings the tankah to 320 grs., and also sixteenths of 38·5 grs., which would make it 616 grs.’ See also for further references and remarks, V. A. Smith’s *Akbar*, Clarendon Press, 1917, p. 139 n.]