Quote:
I've looked at the pictures of Indian coins in K & M 1801-1900 and 1901-2000 in vain.
Unfortunately, you won't find it in there, for two reasons - it's not a genuine coin, and the coin it was copied off was much older than 1801.
Just above the exact centre of the bottom pic, you'll see a "date": 988, which would date from the time of Mughal emperor Akbar. Unfortunately, at that time, the kalima-in-diamond design was being used on gold mohurs, not silver rupees.
this zeno.ru example is a gold mohur of Lahore mint, dated 988 - the model for this piece. Genuine square Kalima rupees of Akbar have the kalima inside a smaller square, not a diamond - like
this.
The kalima-in-diamond 988-dated "rupee" is a very commonly encountered Indian "temple token". I'm not sure why, but "988" is a very commonly encountered date on Islamic temple tokens. See
these zeno.ru pages. Some are old (like, 19th or early 20th century), well-made and of high-quality silver; most are cheap modern pieces. We've seen them on forum numerous times before.
This one was quite poorly executed;
this one was even worse.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis