1 Rupee - Shah Alam II [Shivaji Rao]

Indore's silver rupees of this period carry a peculiar dynastic complication: the coin names Shah Alam II, the Mughal emperor who died in 1806, as nominal suzerain — a fiction maintained decades after the Mughal throne had ceased to hold any practical authority. By 1890 this was pure numismatic convention, a holdover from the treaty obligations and minting customs that Maratha states had inherited and never formally abandoned.

Shivaji Rao Holkar ruled Indore from 1886 until the British deposed him in 1903 following a scandal involving the murder of a Chicago journalist named W.A.C. Rand's associate — a crisis that effectively ended his reign.