Catalog
10 Rupees Jaffna; Oriental Bank Corporation
| Issuer | Oriental Bank Corporation |
|---|---|
| Year | 1864 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | Black intaglio print on white paper. The British Royal Arms vignette occupies top centre, flanked by oval guilloche panels bearing the denomination '10 RUPEES' at left and right. The promise-to-pay text is set in letterpress below, with 'THE ORIENTAL BANK CORPORATION' in bold, and the place and date 'JAFFNA, CEYLON 15th Feby. 1864' above. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | රුපියල්දහයයි பத்துரூபாய் TEN 10 RUPEES INCORPORATED BY ROYAL CHARTER JAFFNA, CEYLON 15th, Feby., 1864. THE ORIENTAL BANK CORPORATION Promise to pay the Bearer on demand at their Branch here, or at their Bank in Colombo TEN RUPEES or the equivalent in the Currency of this island. Value received. By order of the Court of Directors, Entd. Accountt. Agent. Perkins, Bacon & Co, London. Patent Hardened Steel Plate. (Translation: Ten rupees.) |
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The Oriental Bank Corporation, chartered in London in 1851, operated across British colonial Asia and at its peak maintained branches from Bombay to Yokohama. The Jaffna branch — in what is now northern Sri Lanka — was a secondary outpost serving a commercially active peninsula whose economy ran largely on tobacco cultivation and trade with the South Indian coast. Notes payable specifically at Jaffna rather than Colombo are considerably scarcer than the principal-branch issues, reflecting lower circulation volumes at the branch level.
Perkins, Bacon engraved and printed the series using their standard intaglio security method, the same firm then producing postage stamps for much of the British Empire. The bank collapsed entirely in 1884, making any surviving branch-payable note from the 1860s a document of a defunct institution with no redemption history behind it.