3. The Rupee of 16 annas, of 3 pysa, of 4 kásh. 4. The Rupee of 16 annas of 4 quarter-annas (called 3/4 pysa by the natives) or of 12 kásh improperly called ‘pies.’ The division of the rupee into 8 fanams of 24 kásh survives, or did survive till quite recent years, in the French settlements of Pondichery, &c. The reason alleged was that the anna is non-existent as a coin. But it is curious that the French administration did not discover that there was a decimal system connected with the rupee. For in Southern India thirty years ago, and perhaps at the present day, the pysa was = 1/3 anna and the half-pysa 1/6 anna, but these were always reckoned among the people as 1/50 and 1/100 rupee.[37] To the people of the South the rupee is divided into 5 fanams each of 10 pysa each of 3 kásh. But the term kásh (kássu) is merely a name for the lowest coin. The E.I.C.’s pysa of 1808 bears the Persian inscription _Bis kás chhar fleūs ast_ (It is 20 kásh, 4 filūs), followed by ‘XX cash.’ So this coin, so dear to the people of Southern India that they cannot look on the modern quarter-anna (the Anglo-Indians’ ‘pice’) otherwise than as a _mookal_, a 3/4 pysa, is really 20 kásh, and the rupee is 200 filūs or 1000 kásh. Here is a decimal division ready for the rupee, for the half-pysa, nominally 1/96 rupee (in 1797 coins it is so inscribed ‘96 to one rupee’), but 1/100 rupee in the bazaar, is similarly inscribed as of ‘10 kásh 2 filūs.’ So the rupee could easily be made of 10 fanams, 100 lesser pysa, 1000 kásh. But the sexdecimal division into annas, and the duodecimal division into pies, are too convenient to be given up for a decimal system. Footnote 37: 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] Footnote 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. _Indian Gold Coinage_