example of a Mug̱ẖal mint called solely by an honorific epithet. The great system of coinage illustrated by the Mug̱ẖals, operating over such wide territories, needed, as has been already remarked, a master hand to control it. With the dissensions which set in between rival claimants to the empire on the death of Aurangzeb, the controlling power was weakened. The diminished resources of his treasury compelled the emperor, Farruḵẖ̱siyar (1713-19), to adopt the fatal policy of farming out the mints. This gave the _coup de grâce_ to the system, and henceforward, as will be related in the next chapter, we find independent, and semi-independent chiefs and states striking coins of their own, but always with the nominal consent of the Dehlī emperor, and almost invariably in his name. Not until the nineteenth century was the Mug̱ẖal style and superscription generally discarded. Such was the coinage of the “Great Mogul.” Considering it as the output of a single dynasty, which maintained the high standard and purity of its gold and silver for three hundred years, considering also its variety, the number of its mints, the artistic merit of some of its series, the influence it exerted on contemporary and subsequent coinages, and the importance of its standard coin—the rupee—in the commerce of to-day, the Mug̱ẖal currency surely deserves to rank as one of the great coinages of the world. [Illustration: Fig. 10. Gurmukhī Script on Sikh Coins, _Akāl Sahāī: Gūrū Nānakjī_.] X CONTEMPORARIES AND SUCCESSORS OF THE MUG̱H̱ALS The neighbours of the Mug̱ẖals were not slow to recognise the excellence of their coinage. Even the Ṣafavī monarchs of Persia adopted certain features. The East Himalayan kingdom of Assam, hitherto content to use the money of Bengal, and the adjacent state of Nepāl, which had been without a coinage of its own for centuries, within fifty years of Akbar’s accession had both adopted the rupee standard. I. THE COINAGE OF ASSAM Assam, the ancient Kāmarūpa, had been invaded in A.D. 1228 by the Ahoms, a Shan tribe from Burma, and finally subdued by them in 1540. By the year 1695 the royal family had definitely submitted to the influence of Hinduism. Previously to that date, expression of devotion to the tribal gods Lengdun, Tara and Phatuceng appears on the coins; but the reverse legend of a coin of the Śaka year 1618 (A.D. 1696), struck by Rudra Siṁha (1696-1714), runs as follows, in the highly poetical Sanskrit so characteristic of later coin inscriptions: “_A bee on the nectar of the feet of Hara and Gaurī_.”