This is one of those tiny, thin silver coins from Nepal known as "dams". They're bracteate uniface, with the obverse design showing through, incuse and back-to-front, on the reverse.
Nepal, and it's precursor kingdoms in the Himalayas, issued them from before 1600 up into the early 20th century. As a result, it's one of those series you need to do a lot of "Krause-flipping" to find an exact match for your coin. I've had this one for a while now, but I've only just now got around to looking it up. They're tiny coins (mine is 8mm at its widest), and the pics in Krause are as fuzzy or fuzzier than mine (sometimes there's a 2x magnified pic, which sometimes helps)
The dealer I bought it off IDed it as "1799-1816"; that would be King Gurvan Yuddha Vikrama of Nepal. But personally, I think that the one pictured for 1701-1715 (KM#211) is a much closer match (Note: if you've got a 18th C Krause, the pics for numbers 211 and 213 appear to be around the wrong way). That would be King Bhaskara Malla of the Kingdom of Kathmandu - a century older, and a new country for my OFEC list. But I'm not really certain.
Does anyone have experience in this series, or knowledge enough with the language, to tell the difference? Or does anyone know a good, comprehensive reference site for Nepalese dams? I tried Googling it, but all I got were people in Nepal building dams (the big, hold-back-the-water kind)!
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
Posted 09/03/2006 05:50 am
