Page:"Round the world." - Letters from Japan, China, India, and Egypt (IA roundworldletter00fogg 0).pdf/177

NUMBER TWENTY-ONE.

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Currency in India—Small Change Always Wanted—Requisites for a Journey—A Unique Head-gear—Sleeping Carriages—Irrigation—Opium Monopoly—Scenes on the Railway—Native Villages—Benarer, the Holy City—Shiva-Dotta, Pundit—The Ganges—The Monkey Temple—The Ghants of Benares—Burning Bodies—An Ancient Observatory—Mosque of Aurrangzebe—A Glimpse Behind the Scenes—The Curtain Suddenly Dropped—The Golden Pagoda—Hindoo Worship—A String of Marigolds—England Manufactures Idols for India.

Benares, on the Ganges,
⁠February, 1871.

The unit of currency in India is the rupee, worth about two shillings or half a dollar. The other denominations of coin are annas, sixteen to a rupee, and pice, twelve to an anna. Besides these, cowries, white, glossy shells, are used for small payments among the natives in the bazzars. The great bulk of the currency is silver rupees with their fractions, all of which is coined in Calcutta. The Indian government also issues currency notes of ten rupees and upward, but these are redeemable only at the the presidency where issued, so that Calcutta notes are at a small discount in Bombay, and vice versa. A good supply of small coin is very desirable, and saves one from throwing away annas where pice would do just as well. The railway company furnishes no porters and the demand for small change soon depletes the deepest purse, for the Coolies flock round you at every station and tease you for bucksheesh if they barely touch the smallest piece of luggage, not to mention the poor beggars “whom ye have always with you” in the east. The European residents complain that travelers have spoiled the natives by paying them three or four times too much for trifling services, and it seems natural to an American to give a Coolie half a rupee for carrying his luggage a mile under a boiling sun, while a resident would pay him but a quarter that sum or two annas,