Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/174

 140 MOHAMMAD TAGHLAK AND FIROZ SHAH from the paper notes with which a Mongol khan of Persia had recently endeavoured to cheat his subjects. But Mohammad Taghlak's forced currency was not intended to defraud, and as a matter of fact accidentally enriched the people, whilst the substitution of minted copper for paper was a new idea. The copper token was to pass at the value of the contemporary silver tanka, and of course its acceptance depended upon the credit of the public treasury. Mohammad Taghlak has been called " the Prince of Moneyers," and there is no doubt that he devoted much attention to his coinage and dealt with it in a scientific way. " So im- portant indeed," says Ed- ward Thomas, the great- BRAS8 MONET OF MOHAMMAD TAGHLAK, STRUCK 6St authority OU Indian AT DELHI, A. H. 731 (1330-31 A. D.). . .. // TT t numismatics, did he consider all matters connected with the public currency, that one of the earliest acts of his reign was to remodel the coinage, to adjust its divisions to the altered rela- tive values of the precious metals, and to originate new and more exact representations of the subordinate cir- culation. The leading motive seems to have been the utilization of the stores of gold which filled the Sultan's treasuries; and, without proposing to introduce a defi- nite gold standard, which under the surrounding cir- cumstances would doubtless have proved impracticable, he appears to have aimed at a large expansion of the currency of the land by direct means, associated with an equitable revision of the basis of exchange between gold