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1 Sho - In the name of Jiaqing, 1796-1820 With clouds, five characters
| Issuer | Lhasa Mint (Tibetan Government under Chinese suzerainty) |
|---|---|
| Year | 1803 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | 3.78 g |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Chinese (traditional, regular script) |
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| Reverse description | Central field displays Tibetan script arranged in three horizontal lines, reading འཆིན་པའུ་གཙང་ / བརྒྱད་ཅའ (Chenpo Tsang / Gyad cha), denoting the Great Tibet and the fractional denomination in the Tibetan language. The characters are rendered in a bold, slightly archaic calligraphic style characteristic of early nineteenth-century Lhasa Mint coinage. The legend is contained within a raised inner circle, and the entire design is surrounded by an outer border of evenly spaced raised pellets, mirroring the obverse border treatment. The flan shows the typical hand-hammered texture of Tibetan silver coinage of the period. |
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| Additional information |
The 1 Sho series struck at Lhasa under the Jiaqing reign title reflects the administrative compromise reached after the Gurkha invasions of 1788 and 1791, when Qing forces under Fuk'anggan expelled the Nepali army and Beijing reasserted authority over Tibetan monetary production. The resulting coinage bore the Qing reign title but was physically produced by Tibetan artisans using local dies — a hybrid arrangement that bred the extraordinary variety seen across this type, including the cloud motif variants catalogued under C#83.
Hand-cut dies and inconsistent planchet preparation mean virtually no two pieces are identical. The "var." designation here likely reflects a deviation in the cloud rendering or character spacing rather than a separate die marriage.