5 Xerafins - João V Dio mint

João V's Goa mint produced this issue during a period when the Estado da India was hemorrhaging territory and trade revenue to the Dutch and British, yet the Crown maintained gold coinage partly as a political signal of continued Iberian authority over what remained of its eastern possessions. The xerafim denomination itself derived from the Arabic *ashrafi*, a linguistic fossil of the pre-Portuguese monetary order that Lisbon never bothered to erase.

The Dio attribution in KM#15.2 distinguishes this from the Goa-struck variety — Diu's mint operated intermittently and its output was substantially smaller.