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First Person Singluar

Coins, Calligraphy & A Quarrel !

Aroon Sharma
Apr 2011

Till I saw 'mohars' minted during the era of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir, depicting zodiac signs, showcased at the National Museum at New Delhi, my knowledge of the word 'flan -- I confess with perfect honesty -- was presumptive: that it was nothing beyond a cuisine-centric name for a circular casing of a seasoned wood or a firm metal – for a pre-determined sized confectionary filling, preferably pastry, and at times whole cut-cheese, sub cut further to cubes for retail.

Well, flan is also the base sheet, with or without a rim, in which a coin, of course metallic, still malleable, is cast to solidify. The Mughal 'mohars' were not ordinary. They were calligraphic in cut, and the ingots uniformly stamped, with a special metre of a verse to mark an event, and passed onto a die cutter to arrange it to perfection on the flan, which was being mid-wifed by a bunch of artisans, each supplementing the other's skill in tandem. The end result was of taste royale.

I spotted three coins with zodiac signs: Taurus, Libra and Aries. My curiosity multiplied four-fold, proverbially and figuratively: # Why zodiac signs at all ? # Where were the rest ? # Where was the one depicting my Sun sign – Cancer ? AND # Which museum had the complete set of 12 zodiac sign coins ? I managed to lay my hands on a pictorial coffee table book: 'A Treasury of Indian Coins' edited by Martha L. Carter for the ANZ Grindlays Bank.

On 'Mughal Coins', Prashant P. Kulkarni, a CA, awardee of the Nelson Wright Medal of the Numismatic Society of India, and President of the Indian Coin Society, had authored the chapter: 'Where Art Meets Wealth'. It had answers to all my questions. And quite a bit more. In his 13th regnal year, Emperor Jahangir had the brainwave: To mint zodiac coins. Alexander Rogers and Henri Beveridge's translation of the Emperor's mind from 'Tuzuk-e-Jahangiri' reads:

“At this time, it entered my mind that in place of month, they should substitute a figure of the constellation, which belonged to the month; for instance, in the month of Fawardin ( A Month in the Islamic Calender ) the figure of a ram, and in Urdbihist ( another Islamic month ), the figure of a bull. Similarly, in each month that a coin was struck, the figure of a constellation was to be on one face, as if the Sun was emerging from it. This usage is mine and has never been practiced until now.” (The author has yet to own a book by these two Indologists.)

My second curiosity stood satisfied, too. The complete set of coins with 12 zodiacal signs were in three museums across the world: Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, the Berlin Museum and the British Museum. Some stray pieces were with private collectors in India, or a collector abroad. For instance, the coin portraying the zodiacal sign – Sagittarius – is with the American Numismatic Society. The 'mohar' highlighting my sun sign –Cancer – is in the collection of an Indian, R.D. Bhatt.

Before I digress to coins by other Emperors – Jahangir had these zodiac coins minted in astro-cycles. Carbon dating of the in-between die linkage has substantiated that only when the Sun entered a particular constellation, was the corresponding zodiac sign coin minted. Thus, such coins were seldom struck and the reverse dyes preserved for the ensuing years; the new year of the Emperor's reign and the Islamic month re-engraved, and incorporated in the transcription.

And now the piece de resistance ! If Emperor Jahangir was innovative, Emperor Akbar had original ideas, too ! In his 50th regnal year, he ordered a 'mohar' minted in Gold depicting Rama and Sita (en route exile) on the obverse, and supplementary inscriptions on the reverse. A sole coin survives at Bibliotheque National, Paris. The book has colour photographs. ( Sidelight: I am amused that Vishwa Hindu Parishad is unaware that a Mughal-minted Rama-Sita coin exists ! )

The courtier poets lent rhythm with choicest expressions, elevating the Emperors next to the Almighty. Sharif Sarmadi wrote for Akbar's coin: “Ever may current be like the Gold of Sun and Moon / From East to West of the world the Illahabad coin !” When Jahangir had his wife Nur Jahan's name co-inscribed, a verse was: “By the order of Jahangir, Gold attained a hundred times its beauty / When the name of Nur Jahan, the first lady of the court, was impressed on it !”

My end-pick is a coin-quarrel between an emperor in India and his counterpart in Mid East ? Emperor Aurangzeb's chosen poet Abdul Baqui aka Sahbai versifiedafor a coin: “Conqueror of the World”. It was known that he had slain his brothers; jailed his father. Emperor Shah Abbas of Persia minted a parody: “He struck coin upon a round of cheese (flan) / Aurangzeb ? brother slayer, father seizer !”

(Footnote: The word 'regnal' figures twice in the write-up. Earlier, dating was in regnal years. A date was an ordinal not a cardinal number. An emperor had a first year of rule, a second year of rule, a third, and so on, but no zero year, like 1200 or 1300 or 1400. Later, the Indian invention: the epochal 'zero' in calculating dates, months and years to perfection found favour, and the 99-year Latinese 'regnal' met its repose)

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