1/2 Pice - Victoria [Anand Rao Pawar III]

Dhar was a small Maratha-ruled state in central India under British paramountcy, and its coinage occupied an awkward administrative position — technically sovereign issues struck under a feudatory ruler, yet circulating alongside imperial British copper in the same markets. Anand Rao Pawar III ruled Dhar from 1857 until his death in 1898, a tenure that coincided almost exactly with the formal consolidation of the British Raj following the suppression of the 1857 uprising. The timing matters: many princely states quietly curtailed their own coin issues under post-Mutiny pressure, making Dhar's continued production into the 1880s a minor act of jurisdictional persistence.

KM#12 is among the final issues attributable to this ruler before the state's coinage effectively ceased.