A History
in Coin

May 1710  ·  Lohgarh

The First Sikh Coins

Banda Singh Bahadur strikes rupees at Lohgarh bearing Guru Nanak's name — displacing the Mughal emperor from the coin for the first time in Punjab. Two types are known across his six-year reign. His execution in 1716 ends the first Sikh sovereignty but does not end the coin tradition he founded.

Vaisakhi 1765  ·  Lahore

The Dal Khalsa Declaration & the First Dal Khalsa Rupee

Fifty years after Banda, the reconstituted Dal Khalsa — eleven Misls acting as a single body — strikes coins at Lahore in the name of the Sikh collective, not any individual king. These rupees carry no royal name; only the couplets of the Gurus. It is simultaneously the most republican and the most theocratic coinage in Indian history. Ala Singh of Patiala had already struck the first Cis-Sutlej rupees the previous year, AH 1178 (1764).

25 April 1809  ·  Amritsar

The Treaty of Amritsar — One River, Two Destinies

Ranjit Singh signs the Treaty of Amritsar with the British, fixing the Sutlej as his eastern boundary. The Cis-Sutlej Sikh chiefs — Patiala, Nabha, Jind, Kaithal — pass under British protection. North of the river: the Sikh Empire strikes coins at fourteen mints until annexation in 1849. South of the river: the Phulkian states continue striking their own rupees for another 139 years, outlasting the Empire by a full century.

29 March 1849  ·  Lahore

Annexation — The Empire Falls, the States Survive

The British annexation of the Punjab extinguishes the Sikh Empire's sovereign coinage. Fourteen mints fall silent. The Cis-Sutlej states — already under British protection — continue unaffected. Their rupees, now carrying the Gobindshahi couplet at Nabha since VS 1893, remain the last living expression of Sikh numismatic sovereignty. They will not cease until the Phulkian states merge into PEPSU in 1948.

1948  ·  PEPSU

The Last Rupees

The Phulkian states of Patiala, Nabha and Jind merge into PEPSU (Patiala and East Punjab States Union). The Nabha mint — operating on Rs 570 per year, striking only a few hundred coins annually for Gurudwara offerings — closes. The last Yadavindra Singh Gobindshahi nazarana of VS 1994 is the final coin in the numismatic succession that began with Banda Singh Bahadur in 1710. The arc is complete: 238 years, four chapters, one tradition.