Catalog
5 Rupees
| Issuer | Oriental Bank Corporation, Galle |
|---|---|
| Year | 1866-1880 |
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| Value | 5 Rupees |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | The note is engraved in a monochrome olive-green palette with a fine guilloche border framing the entire design. At the centre top, the Royal Arms vignette — a lion and unicorn supporters with crown above — is flanked by two oval cartouches each inscribed FIVE RUPEES, with Sinhalese and Tamil script legends appearing at the upper corners. Below, the issuer's name THE ORIENTAL BANK CORPORATION is set in bold letterpress, followed by a manuscript promise-to-pay text referencing payment at the Galle branch or at their Bank in Colombo, the date line reading Galle, Ceylon with the place of issue, and a handwritten agent's signature and accountant's endorsement at the foot. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | No reverse image provided; the reverse of Oriental Bank Corporation notes of this series is understood to be plain or bears only a simple printed border, consistent with private bank issue practice of the period. |
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| Comments |
The Oriental Bank Corporation was a British overseas bank chartered in Bombay in 1842, later headquartered in London, and by the 1860s operating across Ceylon, India, China, and Australia. Its Galle branch issued private banknotes at a time when no government currency authority existed for Ceylon — these were genuinely circulating commercial instruments, not government scrip. The bank collapsed catastrophically in 1884, a failure driven largely by bad loans tied to falling commodity prices across its Asian branch network.
Notes from the Galle branch are rare precisely because the failure triggered immediate recall and destruction of outstanding paper. Survivors almost certainly escaped redemption through loss, hoarding, or abandonment in the chaos following the bank's closure.