SikhCoins.in Sikh Empire Coinage

Banda Singh Bahadur

The disciple who struck the first coins ever issued in the name of the Khalsa — displacing the Mughal emperor from the coin of the Punjab for the first time in history. Two coin types survive his six-year sovereignty. The Year 2 rupee is unique.

The Sikh Misls

The eleven Misls of the Dal Khalsa confederacy and the most unusual collective coinage in Indian history — rupees struck in no king's name, only the couplets of the Gurus. The declaration at Vaisakhi 1765 and the coins that embodied it.

The Sikh Empire

Ranjit Singh's empire at its height: fourteen mints from the Khyber to the Sutlej, from Kashmir to Sindh — all striking coins in the Gurus' names, never the Maharaja's own. Five Maharajas, fifty years, and the coinage that recorded every year of it.

The Fall of the Sikh Empire

How the most powerful state in South Asia outside British India dissolved within a decade of its founder's death — Dogra treachery, Army Panchayats, the two Anglo-Sikh Wars, and the stolen bodies of Maharani Jindan and Maharaja Dalip Singh.

The First Anglo-Sikh War

The war the Khalsa nearly won. At Ferozeshah, the British army came closer to catastrophic defeat than at any engagement since Waterloo. Mudki, Ferozeshah, Aliwal and Sabhraon — and the treachery of Lal Singh and Tej Singh that decided each.

The Second Anglo-Sikh War

The war that closed the Sikh mints forever. Chilianwala — the worst single-day British defeat in Asia — Gujrat's three-hour artillery bombardment, the annexation of 29 March 1849, and the last coins of the fourteen imperial mints.