1 Paisa - Sikh Imitation Loharu

Loharu was a small princely state in the Punjab hills whose copper coinage became a template widely imitated by Sikh-adjacent mints during the first half of the nineteenth century. These imitative issues were not forgeries in any modern legal sense — they circulated by convention and weight acceptance rather than by issuing authority, filling a practical void in a region where small-denomination copper was chronically short.

Attribution to the Sikh Empire specifically remains contested among specialists; HHS cataloguing acknowledges the imitative relationship but the precise mint origin is unresolved.