──────────────────────────────── Troy grains 180 Deduct one-twelfth alloy 15 ―― An contain of fine silver 165 troy grs. ──────────────────────────────── [pg 10] Such were the proposals put forth by the Court of Directors for the reform of Indian currency. The choice of a rupee weighing 180 grs. troy and containing 165 grs. pure silver as the unit for the future currency system of India was a well-reasoned choice. The primary reason for selecting this particular weight for the rupee seems to have been the desire to make it as little of a departure as possible from the existing practice. In their attempts to reduce to some kind of order the disorderly currencies bequeathed to them by the Moghuls by placing them on a bimetallic basis, the Governments of the three Presidencies had already made a great advance by selecting out of the innumerable coins then circulating in the country a species of gold and silver coin as the exclusive media of exchange for their respective territories. The weights and fineness of the coins selected as the principal units of currency, with other particulars, may be noted from the summary table opposite. To reduce these principal units of the different Presidencies to a single principal unit, the nearest and the least inconvenient magnitude of weight which would at the same time be an integral number was obviously 180 grs., for in no case did it differ from the weights of any of the prevailing units in any marked degree. Besides, it was believed that 180, or rather 179·5511, grs. was the standard weight of the rupee coin originally issued from the Moghul Mints, so that the adoption of it was really a restoration of the old unit and not the introduction of a new one.¹⁶ Another advantage claimed in favour of a unit of 180 grs. was that such a unit of currency would again become what it had ceased to be, the unit of weight also. It was agreed¹⁷ that the unit of weight in India had at all times previously been linked up with that of the principal coin, so that the _seer_ and the manual weights were simply multiples of the rupee, which originally weighed 179·6 grs. troy. Now, if the weight of the [pg 11] TABLE I _Principal Units of Currency_