1/2 Rupee - Upendra Narayana

Cooch-Behar occupied an uncomfortable position throughout the eighteenth century — nominally independent but pressed from multiple directions by the expanding Mughal periphery, the Bhutanese to the north, and eventually the British East India Company. Upendra Narayana's reign saw the kingdom seek Company protection in 1773, a transaction that effectively ended meaningful political autonomy. The coinage issued under his name follows the broad conventions of northern Bengal silver but was struck at the local Cooch-Behar mint, whose output was modest and irregular enough that clean, unworn examples are genuinely scarce.