East Ind. Forms: 6– tanga; 6–7 tango, 7 tang, tanghe, 8 tange, 9 tungah, tanja, tanka. [app. a. Pg. tanga, ad. ṭaṅka in various Indian vernaculars:—Skr. ṭaṅka, a weight = 4 māshās (beans), a coin; also, ṭaṅkaka, a stamped coin: see Note below.] A name (originally of a weight) given in India, Persia, and Turkestan to various coins (or moneys of account), the value of which varied greatly at different times and places; it is still applied in certain places to a copper, in others to a silver coin. a. in Goa, and on the Malabar coast: see quots.
1598. W. Phillip, trans. Linschoten, xxxv. 69/1. There is also a kinde of reckoning of money which is called Tangas, not that there is any such coined, but are so named onely in telling, fiue Tangas is one Pardaw,… foure Tangas good money are as much as fiue Tangas bad money. Ibid., xcii. 161/2. Foure Tangoes.
1615–6. R. Steele, in Purchas, Pilgrimes (1625), I. IV. xiii. 523. Their moneyes in Persia … are … of Copper, like the Tangas and Pisos of India.
1662. J. Davies, trans. Mandelslo’s Trav., 107. Five Tanghes make a Serafin of silver, which … is set at 300. Reis, and six Tanghes make a Pardai.
1698. Fryer, Acc. E. India & P., 207. [Coins in Goa], 60 Rees make a Tango.
1700. S. L., trans. Fryke’s Voy. E. Ind., xii. 180. Some Chests of Tanges and Larines, (which is a certain Money of that Country).
1766. Grose, Voy. E. Ind. (1772), I. 283 (Y.). Throughout Malabar and Goa, they use tangas, vintins, and pardoo xeraphin.
1858. Simmonds, Dict. Trade, Tanga, Tanja, a money of Goa on the Malabar coast, worth about 71/2d.
[1886. Yule, Hobson-Jobson, 682. The name still survives at Goa as that of a copper coin equivalent to 60 reis or about 2d.]
b. in Turkestan, Persia, Tibet, etc.
1740. Thompson & Hogg, in Hanway, Trav. (1762), I. IV. lii. 242. Their coin [at Khiva] is ducats of gold,… also tongas, a small piece of copper, of which one thousand five hundred are equal to a ducat. Ibid., 244. Their money [at Bokhara] is ducats of gold,… also a piece of copper, which they call tongas, that pass at fifty to eighty to a ducat, according to their size.
1815. Malcolm, Hist. Persia, II. xx. 250. One tungah … a coin about the value of five pence.
1904. Times, 19 Sept., 12/6 (Tibet). The official rate of exchange is three tankas to a rupee.
[Note. Under the Mogul sovereigns, the silver ṭaṅka was the chief silver coin, the same as the silver dinar or later rupee; mention is also made in 14th c. of a ṭaṅka or dinar of gold, worth 10 silver dinars. About 1500 there were black or copper ṭaṅkas, of which 20 went to the old silver ṭaṅka. In the end of the 16th century, the tanga was a money of account, and afterwards a copper coin, at Goa, where it is still in use: see quot. 1886. The name also survives, in derived forms, in most of the Indian vernaculars, as that of a copper coin, and in Urdū, in its Sanskrit form and sense, as that of a weight. The identity of the Turkī tanga, tonga with the Sanskrit word has been disputed, and the word attributed to a Chagatai Turkī origin.]
