Boeserokken Public Deposited
A coin struck by the Portu- guese in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and current in their possessions at Chaul, Goa, Bassein, Diu, and in the vicinity of Bombay. Specimens occur in copper, lead, and billon.
In the early Goa coinage of about 1510, the Bazarucco, also called Leal, was equal to two Reis. Later it became the fifteenth part of a Vintem ; but the value fluctuated. Multiples exist as high as twenty.
The coin bears on one side the armorial shield of Portugal, which is sometimes found with the letters D and B to the left and right, to indicate the mints at Diu and Bassein. The reverse designs vary; some specimens have a St. Andrew's cross with a central horizontal bar, others a sphere, and others again a cross with the four figures of the date in the angles. See Roda.
Jacob Canter Visscher, in his Letters from Malabar , Madras, 1862 (p. 82), de- scribes a base coin struck at Cochin which he calls Boeserokken, consisting of an alloy of lead and tin, with the arms of the Dutch East India Company on one side. Sixty of them are equal to a Cochin Fanam.
The name of this coin is frequently cor- rupted to Buzerook, and the nickname Tinney is also given to it, in allusion to its composition.
- Frey's Dictionary (American Journal of Numismatics, Vol. 50, 1916)