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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
The addition of a counter-mark to a coin already current has usually served one or other of two distinct purposes. It has occasionally merely denoted the ratification or re-sanction of a currency already legal; it has more frequently been used to show some change in the conditions of a currency—as, for instance, a change in its value as legal tender, or its circulation in a different country or under a different government. The true interpretation of many ancient counter-marks would no doubt add considerably to our knowledge of the world's history. Unfortunately their evidence is generally of that kind which suggests a great deal more than it can prove; and it must be confessed that their contribution to knowledge has been disappointingly small.
page 865 note 1 For the literature of ancient counter-marks see Engel, , Revue Numismatique, 1887, p. 382Google Scholar.
page 868 note 1 Gardner, , “Brit. Mus. Cat. of Indian Coins: ‘Greek and Scythic Kings,’” p. lxviiiGoogle Scholar.
page 869 note 1 For instance, by the late ProfDarmesteter, J., in the Journal Asiatique for 1892, p. 62Google Scholar, the last but one in that brilliant series of rapports annuels in which this truly great scholar was wont to summarize the whole progress of Oriental research.
page 871 note 1 Martin, Montgomery, “History of the British Colonies” (1835), vol. i, p. 340Google Scholar.
page 872 note 1 Indian Studies, No. iii: “On the Origin of the Indian Brāhma Alphatst,” p. 47.
page 873 note 1 Thomas, , “Ancient Indian Weights,” p. 57Google Scholar.
page 873 note 2 “Coins of Ancient India,” p. 56.
page 873 note 3 DrBühler's, translation in “Sacred Books of the East,” p. 324Google Scholar. The original quotation is—
and the commentators explain 
by 
“sealed with his own seal.”
page 874 note 1 Thomas, , “Ancient Indian Weights,” p. 57noteGoogle Scholar, shows that in the fourteenth century in Southern India “goldsmiths and dealers in bullion were authorized, by prescriptive right, to fabricate money at will on their own account”; and he further quotes from Malcolm, (”Central India,” 1832)Google Scholar to show that in the present century any banker or merchant was permitted to coin money at the mints of Central India.