A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c18.43

c18.43

There was at all times a great multiplicity of currencies, weights and measures—each locality having its own system. At important trade centres money-changers assisted trade by settling fair exchange-rates. In liquid and grain measures, and particularly in the measurement of land, mention is often made in the inscriptions of the major dynasties of a ‘royal measure’; this doubtless implies some effort at standardization. The Rāṣṭrakūṭa inscriptions, for instance, mention the dramma besides the suvarṇa and the gadyāṇa. The first recalls the Indo-Bactrian drachma, a silver coin of 65 grains. In Tamil inscriptions of even the eleventh and twelfth centuries occurs the name tiramam as that of a coin, perhaps of silver, which was a fifth or sixth of the standard gold coin—the kāśu of the Cholas. But golden drammas are mentioned in the Rāṣṭrakūṭa records and their value cannot be determined. In general two systems of weights are traceable in the ancient coins of South India. The gold gadyāṇa of the Deccan averages 58 grains, the heaviest reaching 60.1 grains; this was the old gadyāṇa kaccāṇam or kalañju (Tamil). But in the Chola period the more usual standard was a heavier kalañju of twenty mañjāḍis equal in theory to 72 grains but sometimes going up to 80. A coin of this standard was called pon or māḍai, and the kāśu was exactly half of this. But the records contain the names of many varieties of māḍai and kāśu, and it does not appear that standardization ever attained any tangible measure of success. And in many small day-to-day transactions coins seldom played a part, as barter was the rule, or grain served as currency. Coinage was never the monopoly of a single central power, though this condition was very nearly realized for some time under Vijayanagar. Abdur Razzak mentions the royal mint, and adds: ‘In this country they have three kinds of money, made of gold, mixed with alloy: one called varāha weighs about one mithkal, equivalent to two dinars, kopeki; the second, which is called pertab, is half of the first; the third, called fanom, is equivalent in value to the tenth part of the last mentioned coin. Of these different coins, the fanom is the most useful. They cast in pure silver a coin which is the sixth of the fanom, which they call tar. This latter is also a very useful coin in currency. A copper coin worth the third of a tar, is called djitel. According to the practice, adopted in this empire, all the provinces, at a fixed period, bring their gold to the mint.’ About sixty years later, Varthema records other relations among the smaller currency units, saying that sixteen tares went to the fanom, and sixteen cas to the tare, though he counts twenty fanoms to the pagoda (pardao, varāha) all right. Duarte Barbosa pays a high compliment to the integrity of the currency system and says: ‘Coins of this place are perfectly genuine, not one of them has been ever found false, nor is now so found.’ But the multiplicity of currencies persisted and caused inconvenience, and Caesar Frederick grumbles that a new governor's country meant new coins, ‘so that the money we took this day would not serve the next’.