The Cambridge History of India, Vol. III: Turks and Afghans v3.c20.404

v3.c20.404

Some means of replenishing the treasury had to be devised, and it was now that Muhammad conceived the idea of his famous fictitious currency. He may have heard of the paper currency of Khubilāī Qā-ān in China, and the fictitious money of the Mughuls in Persia, and it was perhaps in imitation of these fiscal measures that he issued brass or copper tokens which were, by his decree, to pass current for the silver *tanga* of 140 grains. Mr Thomas, in his *Chronicles of the Pathan Kings of Dehli*¹ has contended that Muhammad’s vast power and the great wealth of his dominions justified, or almost justified, this measure, and that its failure was due to unforeseen causes, but the contemporary historian Baranī asserts that it formed a part of the king’s extravagant design of bringing under his sway the whole habitable world, for the execution of which boundless wealth would be necessary, and from this statement it would appear that Muhammad had no clear notion of the uses and limitations of a fictitious currency, but believed that he could, by his decree, virtually convert brass and copper into silver and gold. He was rudely undeceived. With the almost worthless tokens the people purchased the gold and silver coins for which they were legal tender. The revenue was paid in the tokens, which were also freely used by foreign merchants in their disbursements but refused by them in payment for their goods, but the principal factor in the collapse of the scheme was the wholesale counterfeiting of the tokens. As Mr Thomas says, ‘There was no special machinery to mark the difference of the fabric of the royal mint and the handiwork of the moderately skilled artisan. Unlike the precautions taken to prevent the imitation of the Chinese paper notes there was positively no check on the authenticity of the copper tokens, and no limit to the power of production of the masses at large.’ The justice of these remarks will be appreciated by those acquainted with the appearance and workmanship of the copper coinage of India before the introduction of European methods of minting. An artisan with a few simple tools and a moderate degree of skill in their use could sell at the price of silver any brass or copper which fell into his hands, and this result might have been foreseen. The enormous extent to which counterfeiting was carried on is described in graphic terms by all the historians, and Baranī merely paints the picture in somewhat vivid colours when he writes that every Hindū’s house became a mint.