I've just bought this coin from a local coin fair. The dealer (who isn't an expert in Indian coins) sold it to me as "Indian paisa, 1800's". The colour is steel-grey, so I was pretty sure it wasn't a copper paisa, and it looked older than 1800's to me, so I bought it, hoping my reference books would cover it. Unfortunately, they don't.
On inspecting the coin, I could see what looked like date-numbers: "861", at the bottom of the first pic. Unfortunately, it doesn't really look like coins from that time period (Delhi Sultanate), and on second glance my "1" is just the end-letter of a nearby word. So my coin is dated "?86". Again, 786 isn't a good stylistic match, and both zeno and my reference books are pretty sparse with examples of coinage of Delhi from 886.
I did find
this one example of a silver tanka of Bahlul Lodi, the Sultan that ruled Delhi in 886; I think it matches the style and text very, very well, and I'd be prepared to call it. I just have a couple of questions, to make sure:
1. Have I actually got a match for this ruler's coins, or am I seeing things that aren't really a match, and this is really a coin from some other time and place?
2. As you can see from the scans, my coin is quite thick and chunky, for it's size - 16mm across, and 4.5mm thick. The weight seems to be about the same as the one on zeno (9.3 grams). The dimensions
seem to match, but the coins illustrated on zeno show no depth, so I don't know how thick a "tanka" of the period is supposed to be. I assume I do have a base-silver tanka, unless there was some other denomination being struck at the time (some kind of early rupee)?
I have got to get me a decent Indian Coinage catalogue.
In fact, I've just ordered one off
Amazon right now. But it'll take weeks to get here from Oregon, so in the meantime, any help you can offer will be appreciated.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
Posted 02/10/2009 7:51 pm
