Hello! I recently received this coin and thought it was really interesting and wanted to share it here. I was lucky to cherry-pick this off of eBay where it was listed without the double strike being noticed. I've never seen an example of a double struck Javanese silver sandalwood coin and figured it would be good to put out there. I'm sure there are others and would love to see more examples surface! The history of the silver coins of Java is quite uncertain and controversial, but it is believed that the so-called Silver Sandalwood Massa coins appeared around 800 CE or a few decades before. The coins were first produced by the Mataram Kingdom of central Java and the earliest coins are differentiated by a flat, thick flan and by differences in the style of the ma character on the reverse. Later coins were primarily produced by east Javanese kingdoms based around the Brantas River Delta region. See the map below made via NatGeo Mapmaker for the general region that this coin would have been used. The massa weight standard, standardized around 2.4-2.5 grams, was first seen in the silver sandalwood coins from the late eighth century and continued to be used throughout Java and further into Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula well into the seventeenth century, around 900 years later. I believe that the Southeast Asian massa Weight System was the longest running weight standard in numismatic history but I would love to be corrected on this. The massa (2.4g) was fractioned into the atak (1.2g), kupang (0.6g), and into other unnamed denominations, each fractions or multipliers of the massa. It was a very organized system of weights and the coins generally held to it. The most common sizes seen are 2.4g, 1.2g, 0.6g, and 0.3g with more rare weights of 9.6g, 4.8g, 0.15g, and 0.075g. As with any ancient and medieval coins, some variance is expected. In particular, the east Javanese coins seem to have held to the standard less tightly. The silver sandalwood coins were continually produced by various Javanese kingdoms for at least five hundred years, making it one of the longest running coinages with no intentional inscription changes; if not the longest. After around 930 CE the Mataram Kingdom moved to east Java where it soon crumbled and was succeeded by a variety of Buddhist and Hindu kingdoms throughout central and east Java. The general power center of the east Javanese kingdoms was the Brantas River Delta. The most notable kingdoms are Mataram, Kediri, Jenggala, and the Majapahit who phased out the native silver coinage for Chinese copper cash coins by 1300 CE. My coin is an East Javanese example based on the cup-shaped (scyphate) flan and the shape and form of the ma character. This coin is an interesting weight, 0.45 grams which is exactly half way between the kupang (0.6g) and half-kupang (0.3g). It's most likely that my example is simply a severely underweight kupang given the tendency for east Javanese relaxation of weight standards in later years. The sandalwood flower, usually a square with four angled petals facing into the corners, is doubled and forms an attractive ring of six beads around a center square or dot. On either side of the ring is the double flared corners of the incused square design from the double strike. Finally, here is the much-talked-about coin followed by an earlier central Javanese massa coin for comparison. East Java c. 930-1300 CE AR Kupang | 0.45 grams | Cup-shaped flan Obv: Double struck sandalwood flower Rev: Extremely distorted ma character in Nagari script Mataram Kingdom of Central Java c. 800-850 CE AR Massa | 2.44 grams | 12mm | Mostly flat flan Obv: Sandalwood flower Rev: Barely distorted ma character in Nagari script Thanks for checking this out and I'd love to see any other coins from the Buddhist / Hindu period of the region!
