India is one of the earliest issuers of coins in the world (circa 6th century BC), along with the Chinese wen and Lydian staters.The derivative word Rūpaya was used to denote the coin introduced by Sher Shah Suri during his reign from 1540 to 1545 CE. Formerly the rupee was divided into 16 annas, 64 paise, or 192 pies.
All that is history, now we have got something more to add to it. Indian rupees would no longer be denoted by ” Rs.”, we have got a new symbol
The Indian Finance Ministry had conducted a contest and has selected this symbol from the final 5. The new symbol for Indian Rupee has been designed by Udaya Kumar Dharmalingam from Tamil Nadu. He is also an alumni of IIT Bombay. UdhayaKumar also has credit for designing a tamil font named “Parashakti” as a mini project at IDC. He is awarded a cash prize of Rs.2 lakh, but more than that his name has been recorded in the history of Indian Rupee.
Hey, let me end up with a question!
When will our keyboards start refelecting the new Indian Rupee Symbol? 😉
Do check out the blog post, of another participant of the contest, <here>.
Glimpses from the history of Indian Rupees:
Sher Shah’s Indian Rupee
Indian One Rupee in the year 1917
Rs.5 in the year 1922
Image source: wikipedia
Mano 
Very nice article, thanks! I’ve subscribed to your RSS feed. Please keep up posting.
This new symbol of INR does not appeal to me very much.
I don’t know what would have been better, but I do not like the symbol in its present shape. I think we need to review it.