This obvious decimal system of a rupee divided into 10 lesser fanams and 100 pysa would not have appealed to French officials. It is not a decimal system, but the Metric system, that the French scientist requires; the decimal series of measures is only a stalking-horse for the French system abroad. The French do not as a rule care about using it themselves.
The 2 filūs of the half-pysa show that the pysa was once divided into 4 of a small coin (the present pie), the _fils_, an Arabic word probably representing the L. follis.[38]
1638. Fluces are 10 to a cozbeg (one halfpenny).—_N.E.D._ In this quotation it seems as if Sir T. Herbert had mistaken the filūs for the 10 kásh of the half-pysa.
Northern and Central India, the parts more immediately under the Mogul empire, were silver-standard countries. The silver rupee (sicca, = 192 grains) was the standard; and the golden rupee of the same weight, called an Ashráfi, or gold mohur, was valued at 16 rupees, though generally more, according to the market-value of gold. The E.I.C. continued to strike gold mohurs, with halves, thirds and quarters. Other gold coins were current, notably the Venetian zechin, and the approximate correspondence of this coin to the quarter-mohur caused the latter to be commonly known as a ‘chick.’[39]
At whist, high play was for ‘Rupee points and a chick on the rub.’
Southern India offers the curious instance of a gold-standard country (a century ago) having changed to a silver standard. The pagoda has disappeared in currency. The beautiful Farūki pagoda of Tippoo is still to be found; and the Venetian zechin with its archaic design, never changed since it was first struck in the thirteenth century, is highly esteemed in the household treasuries of affluent Indians for its great purity. The word zechin or sequin is derived from sikkah, ‘coin.’ The usual Persian inscription on the Mogul coinage, continued by the E.I.C., is _Shah Alam, bádshah gházi, sikkah mubárak_ (Shah Alam, king victorious, coin auspicious).[40]
The E.I.C. continued the custom of inscriptions on coins being in Persian, the polite language of Moslem India.
It is scarcely necessary to describe the decimal systems of which the Dollar currency is the type. They have some advantages in numeration with the counterbalancing defects of all decimal series. Division of the dollar stops at a quarter; then there is a drop to 10 cents, and that coin has no quarter. Any thirding can only be approximate.