Dam (Indian coin)

• 1. Introduction

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  The dam, a small copper coin of India, turns up in an American newspaper in 1897. On the 27th of November that year, The Chicago Citizen noted that the majority of people did not care a copper dam about the Arbitration Treaty. Few readers today would recognise the coin in that sentence. Yet the phrase hints at a currency that once circulated across a huge stretch of the subcontinent. Who first struck the dam, and what place did it hold among the coins of its day? How did a humble piece of copper end up in a turn of phrase about not caring? The answers begin with a ruler who reshaped Indian money in just a few years.

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• 2. Sher Shah's Currency

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  Between 1540 and 1545, Sher Shah Suri ruled India, and in those years he introduced the dam. It did not arrive alone. He issued it as the copper member of a trio, beside the Mohur, a gold coin, and the Rupiya, a silver one. Each metal had its own coin, so the system covered small purchases as well as large ones.

  The Mughal Emperors who came afterwards inherited this arrangement and improved it. They standardised the dam together with the silver Rupiya and the gold Mohur. Their aim was to consolidate the monetary system across India, so that one set of coins could serve the whole country.

  The arithmetic of that system shows how little the dam was worth. A single rupee was divided into 40 dams.

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• 3. A Word Worth Nothing

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  English speakers may owe one of their favourite mild curses to this coin. It is believed that the dam is one of the possible sources for the word "damn" and for the phrase "I don't care a damn". The connection rests on the coin's tiny value. To say you did not care a dam was to say that something mattered no more than the smallest piece of money.

  The older form of the saying kept the metal in it. People spoke of not caring a copper dam, and that wording shows the coin plainly. Once the word copper dropped away, the coin's name could be heard as a curse.

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