Administrative System of the Marathas c18.s25.36

c18.s25.36

"It causes loss to the government. You represented that all these mints should be abolished and in their place one central mint should be established at Dharwar. Bad coins should be discontinued and good coins issued. Such a measure will be profitable to the government. Therefore agreeing with your view that the continuation of the issue of bad coins is not desirable and should be discontinued, the management has been entrusted to you. You should pull down the mints established in different places and establish a central mint at Dharwar. You should also destroy the bad coins and issue good ones." The mint charges was fixed at seven per thousand (six coins for the government and one for the manager). "The customary charge from former time is one Mohar for each thousand Mohars and one Rupee per thousand. The work of the mint should be profitable, therefore the Sawkars have been exempted from this charge for one year from Rabilakhar, San Ihide, to Rabilakhar, San Issanne Sitain. After this you should take the customary due of six per thousand coins and remit the same to the government. In addition to this, take one coin more with the free consent of the Sawdars in your own name, and remit that also to the government. Your dues will be afterwards fixed according to your service." But this reform could not be carried out till 1765-66 when the first Madhava Rao had to issue a circular letter to the Kamavisdar, Zamindars and Sawkars telling them that no payment should henceforth be accepted by the government except in new coins. We have many other instances of suppression of spurious mints and counterfeit coins.¹⁵ But the government confined itself to supervision only, and the actual control of the currency was never undertaken. The currency was further strengthened by an extensive use of *hundis* or credit instruments. The Peshwas always instructed their revenue officers to make use of *hundis* in the transmission of money to the central treasury. How popular the use of *hundi* had become is seen in a letter written by one Ganesh Bhat, where he says that he has remitted Rs. 13-8 by *hundi*.¹⁶