Bombay Mint – Silver Fifth Rupees (Fanams), Reverse I, I a & II

Reverse I: Reverse I matches with obverse A inasmuch as it too is a direct derivation of the design of the Shah Jahan II munbai issue. The chronological detail is RY ahd or 1; the mint name is munbai and even the small differentiating mark of a flower is faithfully reproduced in the aeen of julus. This flower then becomes a group of dots in reverse Ia

Reverse II: The most noteworthy feature of this design is the word julus and the way in which the flow of execution between the jim, laam and waav characters has been affected. In fact this remains a point worthy of note for all the succeeding reverse types. In this particular case the ‘knot’ of laam and waav has the shape of an almost isosceles triangle. The differentiating mark in the seen of julus is a cluster of five or six dots. The regnal years observed for this design are 12, 21, 24?, 25, 2, 3, 5 and 9. There are some coins that show figures other than these, but in most cases they turn out to be jumbled die engravings – like 6 occurring as a result of an incorrectly engraved 2. On a couple of coins ‘01’ was seen, which is probably an error for 9, with the ‘0’ emerging as the misconstrued nuqta of noon in sanah, above which the RY is usually placed. Extant specimens indicate RYs 12 and 21 may also be a case of wrongly engraved dies.

Depending on minor variations, reverse 2 may be further classified into:–

Reverse IIa: Like rev I but no (or dot?) differentiating mark. Only seen with RY 1, RY 22 and RY 24. The vowel sign for ‘u’ points towards the bottom of the upstroke of the laam

Reverse IIb: Like rev II but with flower differentiating mark (flower differs from rev III, see below.)

Rev I	Rev. II

Rev I	Rev Ia	Rev II