10 Rupees Kandy

Kandy's selection for this denomination reflects the city's status as the seat of the last independent Sinhalese kingdom, which fell to the British in 1815 under the Kandyan Convention — a treaty that effectively ended over two millennia of unbroken indigenous rule on the island. The shift to stainless steel for higher-denomination circulation coinage was driven largely by the rising cost of the nickel-brass and bimetallic compositions used in earlier issues, a pragmatic response to metal commodity prices that affected central banks across South Asia in the late 2000s.