1784 - Dutch - Ceylan
Colombo - Silver Rupee

SPECIFICATIONS Denomination One Rupee Alloy Silver.972 Type Struck Diameter ~22. mm Thickness __._ mm Weight legal 11.706 gms Weight 11.76 gms Shape Round Edge Smooth DieAxis ___° Mint Colombo
	Codrington PL127; Schloten 1260; Krause #31.1

Obverse :	Malay-Arabic Legend in Rim of radial dashes		Wang Walan-d Kompani Kolom-bu	Coin Holland Company Colombo
Reverse :	Malay-Arabic Legend 4 dot cross above Year 1784 below.		Puqu djaziret Sailung	Money, Island (of) Ceylon

They were first proposed that they agree to the standard of Batavia, but since this was not acceptable in the Coast of Coromandel, coins were minted to the Surat Standared.

The inscription in badly formed and incorrectly abbreviated Malay-Arabic letters. Two dies known. Little more than 121,500 were struck in 1784. It is listed as extremely rare (RRR) in Scholten.

1,636 were minted in 1786 with weight 12.977 gms of 0.833 fine Silver according to official sources, but none are known. See also the subsequent classic 1787 Colombo Silver coin from that Dutch era.

Text from
* Ceylon Coins and Currency By H. W. Codrington. Colombo 1924
  Chapter X Dutch - Coins of the Eastern Mints. Plate 127. Page 132
* The Coins of the Dutch Overseas Territories- 1601-1948
  C. Scholten, 1953, Amsterdam: Jacques Schulman. page 148-149

It was illustrated lot#35 in Taisei-Baldwin-Gillio Auction #19 of Richard Ford collection of The Colonial Coinage of Ceylon, held in Singapore on 1995 February 23rd.

I thank Jan Lingen who kindly sent me the 300 dpi scans of this extreamly rare XF coin from his collection and are displayed at 250 dpi.