1/2 Dudu 5 cash

The "Dudu" denomination was specific to the Madras Presidency, a unit of account inherited from earlier South Indian monetary practice rather than imposed by London. The East India Company's early copper issues from this region were struck to conform with local reckoning — the cash being the smallest indigenous unit — precisely because Company merchants needed coins locals would actually accept and count in familiar terms. This piece predates the more systematized Madras copper coinage of the mid-18th century by decades.