Catalog
1 Tankah - Thado
| Issuer | Arakan, Kingdom of |
|---|---|
| Year | 1646 |
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| Currency | Tankah |
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| Obverse description | Central field filled with multiple lines of Arakanese (Mon-Burmese) script characters arranged in a dense, roughly circular pattern across the flan. The inscriptions, rendered in a cursive style typical of seventeenth-century Arakan coinage, record the royal titulature and regnal information of the issuing king. The entire design is enclosed within a plain inner circle, beyond which a bold outer border of raised pellets runs continuously around the coin's circumference, characteristic of Arakanese tankah coinage of this period. |
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| Reverse description | The reverse field similarly displays a dense arrangement of Arakanese (Mon-Burmese) script characters in a fluid, cursive style, filling the central area of the flan with royal and religious inscriptions. The characters are boldly struck in high relief against a flat, slightly irregular hammered ground. As on the obverse, the inscribed field is bounded by a plain incuse circle, with a continuous border of raised pellets encircling the entire periphery of the coin, consistent with the established typology of Kingdom of Arakan silver tankah issues. |
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| Additional information |
Arakan's silver tankah coinage of the mid-seventeenth century was produced during a period when the kingdom, based at Mrauk-U, controlled a stretch of the Bay of Bengal coast that made it one of the more commercially active polities in mainland Southeast Asia. The Bengali influence on Arakan's monetary tradition was direct — the tankah form itself derives from the Bengal Sultanate coinage that preceded Mughal standardization in the region.
Thado was among the shorter-reigning kings of the Mrauk-U dynasty, ascending during a succession crisis that followed the death of Sanda Thudhamma in 1684 — though dating for this reign remains contested among scholars working from Burmese and Portuguese colonial sources.