In 1894 the Russian government enforced new customs regulations, by which a heavy duty is levied on Anglo-Indian manufactures and produce, excepting pepper, ginger and drugs, imported into Russian Asia by way of Persia; and the importation of green teas is altogether prohibited except by way of Batum, Baku, Uzunada and the Transcaspian railway.
The view, often repeated, that the saccharum of the ancients is the hydrate of silica, sometimes found in bamboos and known in Arabian medicine as tabashir, is refuted by Yule, Anglo-Indian Glossary, p. 654; see also Not.
Several of the viceroy's measures, notably the Ilbert Bill of 1883 - so named after its author Sir Courtenay Ilbert - irritated the Anglo-Indian population, and it was fiercely assailed.
But of late years there has been an enormous influx of Anglo-Indian rupees, so that these have become practically the currency of the country, even to the frontier of China, and are now counted, instead of being valued as bullion.
The system was, on the advice of an Anglo-Indian official (Sir John Scott), modified and simplified in 1891, but its essential character remained unaltered.