While I have a good few Tets and I am quite fond of them, I ran into a anomaly with an india coin and was hoping maybe a few of you might know. Im not a collector of Indian coins but this really spoke to me so I bought and another. I notices it was really thick and it came in the mail today and wow it really is like a tet. Is this carried over from Ancient India based on weight like a Tet or just from something else. It is about 1/4inch thick This is the other one its similar but no way as thick as the above coin.
The first is a coin of Shah Alam II, a late 18th to early 19th century Mughal ruler. It's either a rupee or 1/2 rupee, depending on the weight. Although he only ruled until 1806, evidently these types were struck clear up until 1869. Here is the Numista entry on the type. Although modern, these, and many other Indian types from this era, used ancient techniques in their manufacture - hammered planchets using hand-carved dies.
Very Interesting. im just wondering if the methods were carried over from the ancient side. Thank you for the link and info The coins should be 1st AH1286 (1869) Indore Hammered Silver Rupee Chunky High Grade Silver w/ Strong Lettering 2nd AH1286 (1869) Hyderabad Hammered Silver Rupee Beautiful Toning w/ Strong Lettering
I also have a rupee struck in the name of Shah Alam II. This type has a larger sun face with the Marathi legend महाराज शिवाजी राव होल्कर, or Maharaj Shivaji Rao Holkar, who reigned from 1886 to 1903.
I'm not hugely into Islamic coins, only because the proscription against graven images has rendered a massive amount of types that show nothing but script, like your second coin. (Similar to the vast majority of Chinese cast cash coins.) So when you come across some interesting devices, like the sun-face, I feel that they're more collectible.
The rupee denomination was introduced in the 1540s by Sher Shah Suri and was a ~80% fine coin of ~11g from that time until the start of WWII, when it dipped to .500 fine, and then silver was cut entirely after the war. Some people claim the rupee is an ancient denomination (the oldest coins of India were silver bars that weighed a little over 11g) but the lack of any sort of continuity I think disproves that claim. The rupee essentially replaced the Tanka, also of Islamic origin, and originally ~10 but it had become debased to low purity billon by the mid 16th century. Prior to this, the coinages of India were the Indo-Sassanian Damma (of Hunnic/Sassanian origin, and of Attic weight standards), the Bull-and-Horseman jital (of Turkic origin), and a hodgepodge of localized currencies, mostly small and weighing less than 5g. In terms of manufacture, except for a few exceptions, all Indian coins were hammered, from antiquity until the 1700s. The British (more specifically the East India Company and their puppet governments) set up the first modern mints in India, although the mints in the minor Princely States mostly produced hammered coins until the mid-late 1800s. The last hammered coins in India AFAIK were the hammered silver rupees from Bundi state, which made fascinating coins inscribed in English on the obverse (naming Victoria, Edward VII, or George V) and the ruler's name and VS date in Devanagari on the reverse. These were made until 1932: https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces47842.html I have a disjointed collection of Indian rupees - they are a lot of fun to collect!
thanks for the information and input. I actually have a decent group of British India pieces. Im fond of the Gothic Crown Vikies.
