Coinage, Weights and Measures.

As the currency of India is based upon the rapee, statements with regard to money are generally expressed in rupees, nor has it been found possible in all cases to add a conversion Into sterling. Down to about 1873 the gold value of the rupee (containing 165 grains of - pure silver) was approximately equal to 28., or ene-tenth of a &, and for that period it is easy to convert rupees into sterling by striking off the final cipher (Rs. 1,000 £100). But after 1873, owing to the depreciation of silver as compared with gold throughout the world, there came a serious and progressive fall in the exchange, until at one time the gold value of the rupee dropped as low as 1s. In order to provide a remedy for the heavy loss caused to the Government of India in respect of its gold payments to be made in England, and also to relieve foreign trade and finance from

the inconvenience due to constant and unforeseen fluctuations in exchange, it was resolved in 1893 to close the mints to the free coinage of silver, and thus force up the value

of the rupee by restricting the circulation. The intention was to raise the exchange value

Bombay, may be thus expressed one maund= 40 seers, one seer-16 chittaks or 80 tolas. The actual weight of a seer varies greatly from district to district, and even from village to village, but in the standard system the tola is 180 grains Troy (the exact weight of the rupee), and the seer thus weighs 2.057 lb., and the maund 82-28 lb. The standard is used in official reports.

Retail. For calculating retail prices, the universal custom in India is to express them in terms of seers to the rupee. Thus, when prices change what varies is not the amount of money to be paid for the same quantity, but the quantity to be obtained for the same amount of money. In other words, prices in India are quantity prices, not money prices. When the figure of quantity goes up, this of course means that the price has gone down, which is at first sight perplexing to an English reader. It may, however, be mentioned that quantity prices are not altogether unknown in England, espe

cially at small shops, where pennyworths of many groceries can be bought. Eggs, likewise,

of the rupee to le. 4d., and then introduce a are commonly sold at a varying number for the gold standard at the rate of Rs. 15-£1. From shilling. If it be desired to convert quantity prices from Indian into English denominatione 1899 onwards the value of the rupee was without having recourse to money prices (which maintained, with insignificant fluctuations, would often be misleading), the following scale at the proposed rate of 1s. until February 1920 when the recommendation of

the Committee appointed in the previous year that the rupee should be linked with gold and Dot with sterling at 2s. instead of 1s. 4d. was adopted. This was followed by great fluctuations. (See article on Currency System).

Notation.-Another matter in connection with the expression of money statements in terms of rupees requires to be explained. The method of numerical notation in India differs from that which prevails throughout Europe. Large numbers are not punctuated in hundreds of thousands and millions, but in

may be adopted-based upon the assumption that a seer is exactly 2 lb., and that the value of the rupee remains constant at 18. 4d., 1 seer per rupee (about) 3 lb. for 2s., 2 seers per rupee (about) 6 lb. for 28., and so on.

The name of the unit for square measurement in India generally is the bigha, which varies greatly in different parts of the country. But areas have been expressed in this work either in square miles or in acres.

Proposed reforms.-Indian weights and measures have never been settled upon an organised basis suitable for commerce and trade characteristic of the modern age. They

lakhs and crores. A lakh is one hundred vary from town to town and village to village thousand (written out as 1,00,000), and a crore in a way that could only work satisfactorily a one hundred lakhs or ten millions (written so long as the dealings of towns and villages out as 1,00,00,000). Consequently, according were self-contained and before roads and rail

to the exchange value of the rupee, a lakh of rupees (Rs. 1,00,000) may be read as the equivalent of £10,000 before 1873, and as the equi valent of (about) £6,667 after 1899, while a crore of rupees (Rs. 1,00,00,000) may similarly be read as the equivalent of £1,000,000 before 1873, and as the equivalent of (about) £666,667 after 1899. With the rupee at 1s. 6d. a lakh is equivalent to £7,500 and a crore is equivalent to £750,000.

Coinage. Finally, it should be mentioned that the rupee is divided into 16 annas, a fraction commonly used for many purposes by both Indians and Europeans. The anna was formerly reckoned as itd., it may now be considered as exactly corresponding to 1d. The anna is again sub-divided into 12 pies.

Weights. The various systems of weights used in India combine uniformity of scale with immense variations in the weight of units. The scale used generally throughout Northern India, and less commonly in Madras and

ways opened up trade between one and the other. It is pointed out that in England a hogshead of wine contains 63 galions and a hogshead of beer only 54 gallons; that a bushei of corn weighs 46 lbs. in Sunderland and 240 lbs. in Cornwall; that the English stone weight represents 14 lbs. in popular estimation, but only 5 lbs., if we are weighing glass, and eight for meat, but 6 lbs. for cheese. Similar instances are multiplied in India by at least as many times as India is bigger than England. If we take, for instance, the maund denomination of weight common all over India, we shall find that in a given city there are nearly as many maunds as there are articles to weigh. If we consider the maund as between district and district the state of affairs is worse. Thus in the United Provinces alone, the maund of sugar weighs 48 seers in Cawnpore, 40 in Muttra, 72 in Gorakhpur, 40 in Agra, 50 in Moradabad, 431 in Saharanpur, 50 in Bareilly, 46 in Fyzabad, 481 in Shabjehanpur, 51 in Goshangunze The maund

varles throughout all India trom the Bengal when the following committee was appointe or railway mound of 82-2/7 lbs. to the Factory to inquire into the entire subject anew:

No history of India can be proportionate, id the oriefest summary must suffer from the ne defect. Even a wholesale acceptance as istory of mythology, tradition, and folklore il not make good, though it makes picuresque, the many gaps that exist in the early istory of India: and, though the labours of nodern geographers and archæologists have been

on the Upper Indus. In the spring of 326 he crossed the river at Ohind, received the submission of the King of Taxila, and marched against Porus who ruled the fertile country between the rivers Hydaspes (Jhelum) and Akesines (Cheuab). The Macedonian carried all before him, defeating Porus at the battle of the Hydaspes, and crossing the Chenab and

mazingly fruitful, it cannot be expected that | Ravi. But at the River Hyphasis (Bias) his

these gaps will ever be filled to any appreciable Extent. Approximate accuracy in chronology and an outline of dynastic facts are all that the student can look for up to the time of Alexander, though the briefest excursion into the by-ways of history will reveal to him many siduring and mysterious fields for speculation. There are, for example, to this day castes that believe they sprang originally from the loins of a being who landed "from an impossible boat on the shores or a highly improbable sea"; and the great epic poems contain plentiful statements equally dificult of reconciliation with modern notions of history as a science. But trom the Jataka stories and the Puranas, much valuable information is to be obtained, sod, for the benefit of those unable to go to these and other original sources, it has been Listilled by a number of writers.

The orthodox Hindu begins the political nistory of India more than 3,000 years before Christ, with the war waged on the banks of the Jumna between the sons of Kuru and the sons of Pandu. Recent excavations by the Archæological Department in the Indus Valley at Harappa in the Punjab, but more particularly at Mohenjo Daro in Sind, carry us back even further. They have uncovered sites of cities bearing the marks and containing the relics of a high civilisation stated by the Department to be Sumerian. The excavations are proceeding tinder special direction and have excited the greatest interest in scientific circles throughout the world, but the general critic omits several of those remote centuries and takes 600 B.C., or thereabouts as his starting point. At that time nach of the country was covered with forest, but the Aryan races, who had entered India from the north, had established in parts a form of civilization far superior to that of the aboriginal savages and to this day there survive cities, like Benares, founded by those invaders. In like manner the Dravidian invaders from an unknown land, who overran the Deccan and the Southern part of the Peninsula, crushed the aborigines, and at a much later period, were themselves subdued by the Aryans. Of these two civilizing forces, the Aryan is the better known, and of the Aryan kingdoms the first of which there is authentic record is that of Magadha, or Bihar, on the Ganges. It was in, or near, this powerful kingdom that Jainism and Buddhism had their origin, and the fifth King of Magadha, Bimbisara by name, was the friend and patron of Gautama Buddha. The King mentioned was a contemporary of Darius, autocrat of Persia (521 to 485 B.C.) who annexed the Indus valley and formed from his conquest an Indian satrapy which paid as tribute the equivalent of about one million sterling. Detailed history, however, does not become pos

sible until the invasion of Alexander in 326 В.С.

Alexander the Great.

That great soldier had crossed the Hindu Kuch in the previous year and had captured Aornos,

weary troops mutinied, and Alexander was forced to turn back and retire to the Jhelum where a fleet to sail down the rivers to the sea was nearly ready. The wonderful story of Alexander's march through Mekran and Persia to Babylon, and of the voyage of Nearchus up the Persian Gulf is the climax to the narrative of the invasion but is not part of the history of India. Alexander had stayed nineteen months in India and left behind him officers to carry on the Government of the kingdoms he had conquered: but his death at Babylon, in 323, destroyed the fruits of what has to be regarded as nothing but a brilliant raid, and within two years his successors were obliged to leave the Indian provinces, heavily scarred by war but not hellenized.

The leader of the revolt against Alexander'a generals was a young Hindu, Chandragupta, who was an illegitimate member of the Royal Family of Magadha. He dethroned the ruler of that kingdom, and became so powerful that he is said to have been able to place 603,000 troops in the field against Seleucus, to whom Babylon had passed on the death of Alexander. This was too formidable an opposition to be faced, and a treaty of peace was concluded between the Syrian and Indian monarchs which left the latter the first paramount Sovereign of India (321 B.C.) with his capital at Pataliputra, the modern Patna and Bankipore. Of Chandragupta's court and administration a very full account is preserved in the fragments that remain of the history compiled by Megasthenes, the ambassador sent to India by Seleucus. His menorable reign ended in 297 B.C. when he was succeeded by his son Bindusara, who in his turn was succeeded by Asoka (269-231 В.С.) who recorded the events of his reign in numerous an unusually

inscriptions. This king, in
bloody war, added to his dominions the king-
dom of Kalinga (the Northern Circars) and then
becoming a convert to Buddhism, resolved
for the future to abstain from conquest by
force of arms. The consequences of the con-
version of Asoka were amazing. He was not
intolerant of other religions, and did not en-
deavour to force his creed on his "children".
But he initiated measures for the propagation
of his doctrine with the result that "Buddhism,
which had hitherto been a merely local sect in

the valley of the Ganges, was transformed into
one of the greatest religions of the world-the
greatest, probably, it measured by the number
of adherents. This is Asoka's claim to be re-
membered; this it is which makes his reign
an epoch, not only in the history of India, but
in that of the world." The wording of his
edicts reveal him as a great king as well as a
great missionary, and it is to be hoped that the
excavations now being carried on in the ruins
of his palace may throw yet more light on his
character and times. On his death the Maurya
kingdom fell to pieces. Even during his

carried on a considerable trade with Grecre Egypt and Rome, as well as with the East. Their domination ended in the fifth century A.D. and a number of new dynasties, of which the Pallavas were the most important, began

reign there had been signs of new forces at work on the borderland of India, where the independent kingdoms of Bactria and Parthia had been formed, and subsequent to it there were frequent Greek raids into India. The Greeks in Bactria, however, could not withstand the to appear. The Pallavas made way in tun

overwhelming force of the westward migration of the Yueh-chi horde, which, in the first century A.D., also ousted the Indo-Parthian kings from Afghanistan and North-Western India.

The first of these Yueh-chi kings to annex a part of India was Kadphises II (A.D. 85-125), who had been defeated in a war with China, but crossed the Indus and consolidated his power eastward as far as Benares. His son Kanishka (whose date is much disputed) left

for the Chalukyas, who for two centuries re mained the most important Deccan dynasty, one branch uniting with the Cholas. But the fortunes of the Southern dynasties aré 80 involved, and in many cases so little known; that to recount them briefly is impossible. Few names of note stand out from the record except those of Vikramaditya (11th century) and a few of the later Hindu rulers who made a stand against the growing power of Islam,

a name which to Buddhists stands second only of the rise of which an account is given below. to that of Asoka. He greatly extended the In fact the history of medieval India is singu boundaries of his empire in the North, and larly devoid of unity. Northern India was in made Peshawar his capital. Under him the a state of chaos from about 650 to 950 A.D. power of the Kushan clan of the Yueh-chi not unlike that which prevailed in Europe of

reached its zenith and did not begin to decay until the end of the second century, concurrently with the rise in middle India of the Andhra dynasty which constructed the Amaravati stupa, "one of the most elaborate and precious monuments of piety ever raised by man."

The Gupta Dynasty.

Early in the fourth century there arose, at Pataliputra, the Gupta dynasty which proved of great importance. Its founder was a local chief, his son Samudragupta, who ruled for some fifty years from A.D. 326, was a king of the greatest distinction. His aim of subduing all India was not indeed fulfilled but he was able to exact tribute from the kingdoms of

that time, and materials for the history of these centuries are very scanty. In the absence of any powerful rulers the jungle began to gain back what had been wrested from it: ancient capitals fell into ruins from which in some cases they have not even yet been dis turbed, and the aborigines and various foreign tribes began to assert themselves so success fully that the Aryan element was chiefly con fined to the Doab and the Eastern Punjab. It is not therefore so much for the political as for the religious and social history of this anar chical period that one must look. And the greatest event-if a slow process may be called an event of the middle ages was the tran

the South and even from Ceylon, and, in addi- sition from tribe to caste, the final disappear tion to being a warrior, he was a patron of the ance of the old four-fold division of Brahmans; arts and of Sanskrit literature. The rule of Kshattriyas, Vaisyas, and Sudras, and the his son, Chandragupta, was equally distin- formation of the new division of pure and imguished and is commemorated in an inscription pure largely resting upon a classification of on the famous iron pillar near Delhi, as well as occupations. But this social change was only in the writings of the Chinese pilgrim Fa-hien a part of the development of the Hindu reliwho pays a great tribute to the equitable gion into a form which would include in its administration of the country. It was not embrace the many barbarians and foreigners until the middle of the fifth century that the fortunes of the Gupta dynasty began to wanein face of the onset of the White Huns from Central Asia and by 480 the dynasty had disappeared. The following century all over India was one of great confusion, apparently marked only by the rise and fall of petty king

in the country who were outside it. The great political event of the period was the rise of the Rajputs as warriors in the place of the Kshattri yas. Their origin is obscure but they appeared in the 8th century and spread, from their two original homes in Rajputana and Oudh, into the Punjab, Kashmir, and the Central Hima

doms, until a monarch arose, in A.D. 606, ca- layas, assimilating a number of fighting clans pable of consolidating an Empire. This was and binding them together with a common the Emperor Harsha who, from Thanasar near code. At this time Kashmir was a small king. Ambala, conquered Northern India and ex-dom which exercised an influence on India tended his territory South to the Nerbudda, wholly disproportionate to its size. The only Imitating Asoka in many ways, this Emperor other kingdom of importance was that of yet" felt no embarrassment in paying adoration Kanauj in the Doab and Southern Oudh

in turn to Siva, the Sun, and Buddha at a great public ceremonial." Of his times a graphic picture has been handed down in the work of a Chinese " Master of the Law," Hinen Tsiang by name. Harsha was the last native paramount sovereign of Northern India; on his death in 648 his throne was usurped by a Minister, whose treacherous conduct towards an embassy from China was quickly avenged, and the kingdom so laboriously established lapsed into a state of internecine strife which lasted for a century and a half.

The Andhras and Rajputs.

In the meantime in Southern India the Andhras had attained to great prosperity and

which still retained some of the power to which it had reached in the days of Harsha, and of which the renown extended to China and Arabia.

With the end of the period of anarchy, the political history of India centres round the Rajputs. One clan founded the kingdom of Gujarat, another held Malwa, another (the Chauhans) founded a kingdom of which Ajmer was the capital, and so on. Kanauj fell into the hands of the Rathors (circ 1040 A.D.) and the dynasty then founded by that branch of the Gaharwars of Benares became one of the most famous in India. Later in the same century the Chauhans were united; and by

1

1168 one of them could boast that he had con- were of comparative unimportance, though quered all the country from the Vindhyas to the some great men appeared among them. In Himalayas, including Delhi already a fortress Gujarat, for example, Ahmad Shah, the founder & hundred years old. The son of this con- of Ahmedabad, showed himself a good ruler queror was Prithwi Raj, the champion of the and builder as well as a good soldier, though Hindus against the Mahomedans. With his his grandson, Mahmud Shah Begara, was a

death in battle (1192) ends the golden age of the new civilization that had been evolved out of chaos; and of the greatness of that age there is a splendid memorial in the temples and forts of the Rajput states and in the two great philosophical systems of Sankaracharya its capital at Vijayanagar. Of importance

(ninth century) and Ramanuja (twelfth century). The triumph of Hinduism had been achieved, it must be added, at the expense of Buddhism, which survived only in Magadha at the time of the Mahomedan conquest and speedily disappeared there before the new faith.

Mahomedan India.

The wave of Mahomedan invaders that eventually swept over the country first touched India, in sind, less than a hundred years after the death of the Prophet in 632. But the first real contact was in the tenth century when a Turkish slave of a Persian ruler founded a kingdom at Ghazni, between Kabul and Kandahar. A descendant of his, Mahmud (967-1030) made repeated raids into the heart of India, capturing places so far apart as Multan, Kanauj, Gwalior, and Somnath in Kathiawar, but permanently occupying only a part of the Punjab. Enduring Mahomedan rule was not established until the end of the twelfth century, by which time, from the little territory of Ghor, there had arisen one Mahomed Ghori capable of carving out a kingdom stretchIng from Peshawar to the Bay of Bengal. Prithwi Raj, the Chauhan ruler of Delhi and Ajmer, made a brave stand against, and once defeated, one of the armies of this ruler, but was himself defeated in the following year. Mahomed Ghori was murdered at Lahore (1206) and his vast kingdom, which had been governed by satraps, was split up into what were practically independent sovereignties. Of these satraps, Qutb-ud-din, the slave ruler of Delhi and Lahore, was the most famous, and is remembered by the great mosque he built near the modern Delhi. Between his rule and that of the Mughals, which began in 1526, only a few of the many Kings who governed and fought and built beautiful buildings, stand out with distinction. One of these was Ala-ud-din (1296-1313), whose many expeditions to the south much weakened the Hindu Kings, and who proved himself to be a capable administrator. Another was Firoz Shah, of the house of Tughlaq, whose administration was in many respects admirable, but which ended, on his abdication, in confusion. In the reign of his successor, Mahmud (13981413), the kingdom of Delhi went to pieces and India was for seven months at the mercy of the Turkish conqueror Talmur. It was the end of the fifteenth century before the kingdom, under Sikandar Lodi, began to recover. His son, Ibrahim, still further extended the kingdom that had been recreated, but was defeated by Babar, King of Kabul, at Panipat, near Delhi, in 1526, and there was then established in India the Mughal dynasty.

The Mahomedan dynasties that had ruled in capital other than Delhi up to this date

greater ruler--acquiring fame at sea as well as on land. In the South various kings of the Bahmani dynasty made names for themselves, especially in the long wars they waged on the new Hindu kingdom that had arisen which had also was Adil Khan, a Turk, who founded (1490) the Bijapur dynasty of Adil Shahis. It was one of his successors who crushed the Vijayanagar dynasty, and built the great mosque for which Bijapur is famous.

The Mughal Empire.

As one draws near to modern times it becomes impossible to present anything like a coherent and consecutive account of the growth of India as a whole. Detached threads in the story have to be picked up one by one and followed to their ending, and although the sixteenth century saw the first European settlements in India, it will be convenient here to continue the narrative of Mahomedan India almost to the end of the Mughal Empire. How Babar gained Delhi has already been told. His son, Humayun, greatly extended his kingdom, but was eventually defeated (1540) and driven into exile by Sher Khan, an Afghan of great capabilities, whose short reign ended in 1545. The Sur dynasty thus founded by Sher Khan lasted another ten years when Humayun having snatched Kabul from one of his brothers, was strong enough to win back part of his old king. dom. When Humayun died (1556) his eldest son, Akbar, was only 18 years old and was con fronted by many rivals. Nor was Akbar well served, but his career of conquest was almost uninterrupted and by 1594 the whole of India North of the Nerbudda had bowed to his authority, and he subsequently entered the Deccan and captured Ahmednagar. This great ruler, who was as remarkable for his religious tolerance as for his military prowess, died in 1605, leaving behind him a record that has been surpassed by few. His son, Jehangir, who married the Persian lady Nur Jahan; ruled until 1627, bequeathing to an admiring posterity some notable buildings-the tomb of his father at Sikandra, part of the palace of Agra, and the palace and fortress of Lahore. His son, Shahjahan, was for many years occupied with wars in the Deccan, but found time to make his court of incredible magnificence and to build the most famous and beautiful of all tombs, the Taj Mahal, as well as the fort; palace and Juma Masjid at Delhi. The quarrels of his sons led to the deposition of Shahjahan by one of them, Aurangzeb, in 1658. This Emperor's rule was one of constant intrigue and fighting in every direction, the most important of his wars being a twenty-five years' struggle against the Marathas of the Deccan who, under the leadership of Sivaji, became a very powerful faction in Indian politics. His bigoted attitude towards Hinduism made Aurangzeb all the more anxious to establish his Empire on a firm basis in the south, but he was unable to hold his many conquests, and on his death (1707) the