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94
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
( MAY, 1928
In translating and explaining this text Cunningham, Hultzsch and others have used expressions like crores of gold coins, but I take it that such are merely a loose way of expressing the currency of the period, which may be almost certainly taken to have been bullion in some special shape, as the Nidana version seems to prove.
F. Forgeries. Having described the Burmese coinage and currency itself, I pass on to other allied matters. Irrespective of the proceedings of Bôdòp'aya, the Burmese were great tamperers with their coinage, even though it was of such recent issue, and in this connection I gave a word of warning to collectors and those interested in numismatics as early as 1893. "Peacock" cuins were even then already beginning to command a price far beyond their intrinsic value in Mandalay, and a factory of sham "peacocks" had sprung up, especially of the smaller values. I had been able to purchase one mû pieces purposely in the Zêjô (the great market at Mandalay, then known to Europeans as the King's Bazaar, though it was never anything of the kind) for more than their intrinsic market value, and I felt sure they were manufactured to sell as curios.
Of course, this is a very old story in India, and from all over Central Asia there have been many complaints from scientific enquirers that forgery has always been rampant. There is a good instance of the situation in a letter to the Pioneer, dated October 4, 1893, on the Gwalior Currency. The writer, obviously an expert, gives an excellent account of the currency in the Gwalior State at the time and in the course of his statement he writes: "All these [Gwalior State) rupees are old fashioned, thickish, roughly rounded pieces of silver, having a legend of the Emperors of Delhi and the date stamped on them. They are unsightly and cause a great deal of annoyance and loss, owing to the very great facility with which similar light and base coin can be, and to a great extent is, manufactured by ordinary goldsmiths : and also froin the chips, which are at times stuck in them to make up their proper weight, getting loose and lost. In some cases as many as four or five in a hundred have been found to be base coin. Of all these coins, eight, four and two anna pieces are also current."
Forgery of coins of the common criminal type became a serious nuisance in Upper Burma before the native coinage was withdrawn. The crime was helped-one might almost say created by the taking of Mandalay, when, in the first confusion, the royal mint dies passed into the hands of anyone who chose to take them. They were frequently and extensively used by British officers as paper weights during the war and I have bought them in the Zejo. The result was that the criminally forged coins were admirably executed.
In China forging was skilful, even in the most ancient times, and has, indeed, had a distinct effect on the currency question in that country. Terrien de Lacouperie writes of it (Catalogue of Chinese Coins, 1892, pp. xxii-15V)in strong terms:-"In the preliminary notices on the series of coins in the present volume we bave had to relate repeatedly the evils resulting in the Chinese currency from the plague of counterfeiters; and until the present time the same doleful history has continued. An increase in the proportion of tin, the legal alloy, the substitution for it of lead, or tin pieces, which, when strung between genuine coins, might pass unperceived, were the various means resorted to by the forgers. The unusual skilfulness of the Chinese counterfeiters has been the insuperable obstacle to the issue of coins of gold or silver."
Forgery of coins has always been common everywhere in the East, largely facilitated by the imperfections of the authorised mints, and its punishment has been proportionately servere. Crawfurd, Embassy to Siam and Cochin China, 1928, p. 395, says that the punishment was usually death. "Murder is always punished with death, and the mode of execution is by decapitation with a sword. Forging the royal signet and counterfeiting the current coin, sre also, by law, punishable with death; but in these cases, too, the punishment hus of late been commonly commuted for imprisonment for life, and the heaviest infliction of the bamboo."
