Maratha Coinage

Maratha coinage refers to the coins issued by the Maratha state in western and central India from the coronation of Shivaji in 1674 until the defeat of the last Peshwa by the British East India Company in 1818. It ranged from Shivaji's own copper and gold issues, inscribed in Devanagari, to the large output of silver rupees struck by the Peshwas and the great Maratha chiefs, many of them still carrying the name of the Mughal emperor.

Maratha money reflects the political shape of the state: a royal house that asserted independence from the Mughals, followed by a looser confederacy in which powerful families ran their own mints.

Shivaji Bhonsle was crowned Chhatrapati at Raigad in 1674. To mark his sovereignty he issued coins in his own name, a clear break with the Persian-language coinage of the Mughal and Deccan sultanates. Two types are especially associated with him: a small copper coin known as the shivrai paisa, and a small gold coin, the shivrai hon, which followed the gold hon or pagoda tradition of southern India. Their inscriptions, in Devanagari script, read in effect "Shri Raja Shiva" on one side and "Chhatrapati" on the other. Copper shivrai coins were produced in large numbers and remained in circulation long after Shivaji's death, and later rulers issued similar pieces.

In the 18th century real power passed to the Peshwas, the chief ministers based at Pune, and to Maratha families such as the Holkars of Indore, the Scindias of Gwalior, the Gaekwads of Baroda and the Bhonsles of Nagpur. These rulers struck silver rupees in great numbers. Most were modelled on Mughal rupees, using Persian inscriptions in the name of the reigning Mughal emperor even when Maratha power far exceeded his. Using the familiar design helped the coins win acceptance in trade across India, while small symbols or marks identified the actual issuer and mint.

Mints operated at many places, and some were run by private bankers or contractors under licence, paying a fee to the state. This arrangement spread coin production widely but made weights and silver standards uneven.

Because so many authorities issued rupees, a single region might see dozens of coins of different weight, fineness and age. Money-changers, known as shroffs, assessed each coin and charged a discount, or batta, when exchanging one kind for another. This created a busy trade in currency exchange, and the rates between coins behaved much like a modern exchange rate. Merchants and bankers also moved funds across long distances using hundis, negotiable instruments that worked much like a bill of exchange and formed part of a wide network of informal banking similar in spirit to hawala transfer.

The system used gold, silver and copper together, so it was closer to a three-metal arrangement than to simple bimetallism. The silver rupee was the usual unit of account for revenue and large payments.

After the Third Anglo-Maratha War ended in 1818, the Peshwa's territories passed to the East India Company and his mints closed. Several Maratha princely states, including Indore, Gwalior and Baroda, continued to strike their own coins under British oversight well into the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Company itself introduced a uniform rupee in 1835, which gradually displaced the mass of local issues. The modern Indian rupee descends from that standardised coin, itself the heir to the rupees that circulated in Maratha India.

Maratha coins are now studied as evidence of political authority, trade networks and mint organisation in early modern India, continuing a long history of Indian coins that stretches back to issues such as the Kushana dinar.

• The British Museum
• American Numismatic Society