* indian rupee
Posted on August 15th, 2009 by Alex. Filed under India.
The currency of India is the Indian Rupee. However the fact itself is not that interesting. But if you have a closer look at the notes, it says: “I promise the bearer to pay the sum of X Rupees”. So what does this mean? The signee (that is “I” or the Governor) promises the me (I am the “bearer”, since I am in the possession of the note currently) to pay me e.g. 10 Rupees for a 10 Rupees note. Therefore the note itself is something like a certificate of debt which I can exchange for real Rupees. If the note is only a certificate, what are the real Rupees?
A close-up of the promise given by the governor.
Asking people who deal with money daily for years, did not lead to any answer, but I earned lots of strange looks. Well, the answer (accordingly to Wikipedia) is quite easy: The word Rupee is derived from the Sanskrit word raupya, which means silver. Historically a Rupee was a silver coin meaning, it was a valuable metal. So in theory I could approach the signee and ask him to exchange the paper note (which gets its value only by the print) into a little pile of silver. Let’s see, if I will have success with that. A promise is a promise… 
March 19th, 2011 at 4:37 am
my self alagu,i am a coin collector never before i have observed this fact.it is nice…………….
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May 16th, 2011 at 2:58 am
Hi Alex,
I just stumbled upon ur blog and quite an interesting read, planning to read all the entries !.
You are partly right about the silver rupee connection, but its not just an Indian thing. The currencies which we use (used?) are something called as ‘representative money’ and their value was tied with gold (so called ‘gold standard’). So basically these paper currencies were ‘gold or silver certificates’. Unfortunately, the gold standard has been abolished, and hence those words mean nothing now, read inflation !.
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