What do Marwar coins record?
Marwar coins are the coinage of the Rathore kingdom centred on Jodhpur, struck from the seventeenth century until Indian independence. Their interest is documentary rather than decorative: the legend on a Marwar rupee names the authority under which it was issued, so a run of coins records, in order, a kingdom's relationship with Mughal Delhi, with the East India Company, and finally with itself.
A coin is the smallest surviving state document. It carries a date, a place of issue, and the name of whoever claimed the right to issue it, and unlike a treaty it was made in thousands. That is why the coinage of a single Rajasthan kingdom repays close reading, and why the coins in the numismatics gallery are catalogued by mint and legend rather than by weight.
In this entry
- Where Marwar was, and what it was. The Rathore kingdom of western Rajasthan, its capital at Jodhpur, and the extent of its territory.
- The mints. Jodhpur, Nagaur, Pali and Sojat, and how a mint mark is read.
- The legends. Why an eighteenth-century Marwar rupee carries a Mughal emperor's name, and what changed when it stopped doing so.
- Metals and denominations. Gold mohurs, silver rupees, and the copper coinage that people actually used.
- The coins in this collection. Object by object, with accession numbers.
- How to look at one. What to read first on a coin you have never seen.
Why the legend matters more than the metal
The value of a silver rupee was its silver. The interest of a silver rupee is the writing on it. Through much of the eighteenth century the princely states of Rajasthan struck coin in the name of the Mughal emperor long after the emperor had ceased to govern them — the formula outlived the fact. Watching that formula change, state by state and decade by decade, is one of the few ways to date a shift in political authority from the ground rather than from a chronicle.
Metalwork of the same region and period sits two rooms away, in silverware, and the comparison is worth making: the same silver, worked by the same guilds, for a court rather than for a treasury.