An observation to Passion

God has blessed human beings with the ability to observe and interpret. The observation that some water droplets deposit outside a glass filled with chilled water taught me that air does have water vapour which is not visible otherwise. The simple observation that bowls having different quantity of water can produce different frequency sound taught me how a jal-tarang works. The observation that a lightning can be seen several seconds before its thunder can be heard taught me that light travels faster than sound.

It was one such observation which brought me closer to one of my passions. The importance of saving money was instilled in me right from my childhood. It was more of an incentive of filling the piggy bank as quick as possible which used to be my objective and it used to keep me engrossed in repeatedly counting the accumulated amount. During one such exercise I encountered in my piggy bank a coin which looked similar to a 25-paisa coin but as I observed closely, I found it different. It did not have any "Ashok Stambh" inscribed on any side. Rather I found that there was a lateral figure of tiger inscribed on one of the side with the text as "Quarter Rupee, India" and a crowned person on the other side with an inscription above which read "George VI King Emperor ". I asked my parents about it and they told me that it was actually a Pre-Independence Era Coin.

My observation gave me a lead into exploring more about the crowned person i.e. the British India rulers and their policies with respect to coins. I came to know that the Britishers at one time managed to acquire and rule the whole country after having entered into India as Merchants through the coastal routes, offered local authorities some favour and money, steadily increased their influence and conquering their French, Portuguese and other counterparts who intended to colonialize India in the same manner, ousted the great Mughal Dynasty and successfully transformed East India Company into the East India Empire.

The Britishers ruled India earlier as "East India Company" till the first Battle for Independence which broke out in 1857.After quelling the first great revolt with their organised might and assistance of rulers of many princely states, they passed a legislation and the administration of India was passed to the ruler of Britain.

These and many more were the facts which I established not through history text books but by the coins which I started collecting. Victoria served for the longest period of 61 years (1840-1901) as the ruler of British Empire.It was in early 1870s that the coins which used to engrave "Victoria Queen" as the text gave place to new inscription of "Victoria Empress" as a result of the mentioned change in administration of colonial India.

The influence of Britishers emerging as a great power led to a number of Princely states softening their stand to such an extent that one Udaipur King brought out an inscription saying "Dosti Landhan Chitrakoot Udaipur" ,"Vikram Samvat 1985" so as to please the Britishers.

Moreover, the Britishers in their earlier coins inscribed their ruler bust along with "One Rupee India" in english only, but slowly moved to the practice of accommodating "Urdu" and Hindi which were significant languages of administration that time. They started with denominations like one penny, one pence but slowly moved to the forms of currency locally popular in India as One anna, half anna, One quarter anna, Half rupee, one-twelfth of an anna with the more valuable coins like One Rupee minted in Silver and the others in copper and brass.

Another interesting observation was to find that all the rulers had a lateral view bust with the successive Rulers having left and right facing busts alternately. The transformation of the Empress who ruled for the longest tenure also reflected in the coins where the earlier coins showed Victoria as young Lady with pony hair which was replaced with a crown with pleated hair in coins minted in the later phase of her life. Equally interesting is her son's succession as Emperor of India. Edward VII's coronation could not happen for a long time after Victoria's death and the coins had an Uncrowned Emperor in his 50s portrayed bald !!

The desire to know more about pre Independent India made me foray into the Princely States Coinage and I could manage to collect some coins belonging to Nizam of Hyderabad, the ruler of Junagadh, Kachh-bhuj, Udaipur, Jaipur, Jaora district (MP), Indore, Baroda, Junagadh, Jamnagar(Navanagar), Gwalior, Mysore and Ratlam. Some of my important findings were that other than the Britishers, the marathas were still operating as the greatest authority in the country by compromising some of the powers.

The Marathas had established kingdom in the form of dynasties like Gayakwad in Baroda, Holkar in Indore, Scindia(Shinde) in Gwalior and made use of only hindi as the communication language on the coins. They majorly followed “Vikram Samvat” the Hindu Calendar and the usual bust of the ruler on the obverse face and the floral designs and the denomination of the coin and the year of minting on the reverse side in Hindi.

On the contrary, the Muslim rulers, following the directions of Quran which forbids extending devotion to any person except God, refrained from leaving any identity in the form of any bust of the ruler and rather had landmarks and floral designs as part of the obverse side of the coins.

This is quite evident in Nizam of Hyderabad coin which shows Chaar Meenar on the obverse side or Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan's coin which shows no bust of Tipu but a figure of a mighty elephant on the obverse and "aayaten" from Quran on the reverse. Another similarity in the two coins was a complete adherence to "Hijri Sann" for denoting the years. So in a way religion did have a huge impact on how the king of a territory wanted himself to be seen in the eyes of his subjects.

I found out that the coins were also used to gain a high and favourable status in the eyes of subjects by depicting a mythological character to which the "praja" associated themselves with as in depiction of Hanuman by the Ratlam ruler,imposing their sovereignty with lengthy arrogant designations like "Shree Khengarji Sawai Bahadur Maharajadhiraj Mirja Maharau", and even introduction of folklores in the coins. This was practiced by the then East India Company where in a coin of brass they try to establish their image of being a merchant by depicting a monkey carrying a balance on the obverse side inspired probably from the monkey and two cats story .

I am glad that an observation of mine way back in my childhood has helped me develop an intense interest in old India coin collection. This observation to passion experience and willingness to focus energy and other resources has given me many exulting moments of discovering something obscure and hitherto hidden, a few disappointing moments of being duped and cheated, research and analysis of events of the past, an ability to connect strings of historical events hanging loosely and develop an interest in different languages like Urdu. Even today, visiting every sea shore where I could find most of my coins,

I try to heed to the call of the coins, all of which have a new story to tell me.