Catalog
1/2 Rupee / Deb Period I
| Issuer | Bhutan |
|---|---|
| Year | 1790-1840 |
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| Value | 1/2 Rupee / Deb |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Crude hammered silver flan bearing a central square or rectangular panel containing Devanagari or archaic script characters arranged in compartmentalized fields, divided by bold raised lines forming a grid pattern. The design is characteristic of Bhutanese imitative coinage of the Deb Raja period, loosely derived from Mughal rupee prototypes. Script elements and decorative motifs occupy the inner panels, with additional legend fragments distributed in the surrounding triangular segments between the inner square and the outer circular border. The overall execution is rough and irregular, consistent with the hand-hammered technique employed at local Bhutanese mints during this era. |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Devanagari |
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| Additional information |
Bhutan's early coinage was struck not by a government mint but by local craftsmen working under loose royal sanction, which explains the dramatic variation in flan preparation and strike quality seen across this type. The "Deb" in the attribution refers to the Druk Desi, Bhutan's secular ruler, who held administrative authority parallel to the theocratic Je Khenpo throughout this period — a dual-power structure that complicated any standardization of weights or monetary policy.
KM#3 spans a half-century of issue precisely because no reliable die records survive to narrow the dating further.