1/2 Biche Mahe

The Biche coinage was struck for French settlements on the Coromandel Coast, primarily Pondicherry, where the Compagnie des Indes Orientales maintained its principal Indian headquarters. The unit name "Biche" derives from a local Telugu-region accounting denomination, one of several indigenous monetary terms the French absorbed into their colonial currency system rather than imposing purely European nomenclature. Production spanned decades partly because the Company's Indian operations lurched through successive crises — war with the British, loss and partial recovery of Pondicherry in 1761, and the Company's own suppression by the French crown in 1769, after which successor administrations continued issuing under broadly the same types.