Money in the village

Money in the village The seventeenth-century French traveller Jean-Baptiste Tavernier found it remarkable that in “India a village must be very small indeed if it has not a money- changer called a Shroff. (They) act as bankers to make remittances of money (and who) enhance the rupee as they please for paisa and the paisa for these (cowrie) shells”. Fig. . A woman spinning thread Fig. . A shroff at work