1000 Rupees Oriental Bank Corporation

The Oriental Bank Corporation was chartered in Bombay in 1842 and grew into one of the dominant exchange banks of the British colonial world, with branches spanning India, Ceylon, China, and Australia. By 1861 it held a note-issuing privilege in several territories, though this was always a contested right — the colonial banking landscape was periodically disrupted by legislative pressure to centralize currency under government control. The bank ultimately failed spectacularly in 1884, one of the largest banking collapses in nineteenth-century Asia, rendering its surviving notes relics of a very short commercial window.

Perkins, Bacon & Petch were the engravers of choice for high-security colonial instruments throughout this period, their intaglio work difficult to counterfeit by local means.