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Rh Mahomed struck a copper coin, which, because his name was impressed upon it, he ordered to be received at an extravagant imaginary value. This idea, he is said by Ferishta to have borrowed “from a Chinese custom of issuing paper on the emperor's credit, with the royal seal appended, in lieu of ready money.” He shrewdly adds:— “The great calamity consequent upon this debasement of the coin, arose from the known instability of the government. Public credit could not long subsist in a state so liable to revolutions as Hindoostan ; for how could the people in the remote provinces receive for money the base representative of a treasury that so often changed its master?”

In the midst of the discontent and ruin produced by these wretched financial devices, Mahomed conceived the idea of enriching himself by the conquest of the empire of China. As a first step to the realization of this idea, he despatched his nephew Khosrow MuUik, at the head of 100,000 horse, to subdue Nepaul, and the mountainous region on both sides of the Himalaya, as for as the Chinese

frontiers. This done, he was to follow in person. In vain did his more sagacious and faithful counsellors assure him that the whole scheme was visionary. He had made up his mind, and was not to be dissuaded. Rh