Coins & seals

From the silver of the Indo-Greek kings to the mints of Lahore and Amritsar, where Sikh rulers struck money in the name of the Gurus rather than their own.

Vedas, Alexander and Gandhara

1900 BCE – 1000

Coins of the Kunindasc. 2nd century BCE – 3rd century CE

Silver coins of a people of the upper Beas and Sutlej, showing a deer and a goddess, and inscribed in two scripts at once, Brahmi and Kharosthi.

Coins of the Yaudheyasc. 2nd century BCE – 4th century CE

The Yaudheyas, a warrior republic of the eastern Punjab and Haryana, struck coins in the name of their assembly with the war god Karttikeya. Clay moulds for them were found at Rohtak and at Sunet near Ludhiana.

Coins of the Scythian kings1st century BCE

Coins of Azes and other Scythian (Saka) kings, who ruled Taxila after the Greeks.

Coins of the Audumbarasc. 1st century BCE

The Audumbaras of the hills around Pathankot struck coins showing a temple and the sage Vishvamitra. With the Kunindas and Yaudheyas they were among the small states and republics of the Punjab before the Kushans.

Coins of Gondophares1st century CE

Coins of the Parthian king of Taxila who, Christian legend says, met the apostle Thomas.

Kanishka's gold coinsc. 127 – 150 CE

Gold coins of the Kushan emperor that carry one of the earliest images of the Buddha, named BODDO in Greek letters.

Coins of King Menanderc. 160 – 130 BCE

The silver of the Indo-Greek king who ruled from Sagala, now Sialkot, with his portrait on one side and Athena on the other.

The bent-bar coins of Gandharac. 400 – 300 BCE

Bent bars of silver stamped with symbols, the first coins of the Punjab, dug up in hoards at Taxila.

Coins of the Hun kingsc. 480 – 550 CE

Coins of Toramana and Mihirakula, the Alchon Hun kings who ruled the Punjab from Sialkot.

Hindu Shahi bull-and-horseman coinsc. 850 – 1026

Small silver coins with a seated bull on one side and a horseman with a lance on the other, and the king's name, such as Samanta deva, in Sharada letters.

Sultans and Sufis

1000 – 1469

Mahmud of Ghazni's Lahore dirhams1027 – 1028

Silver coins struck at Lahore, renamed Mahmudpur, with the Muslim profession of faith translated into Sanskrit.

The silver tanka of the Delhi SultansFrom the 1220s

The heavy silver coin introduced by Iltutmish, the ancestor of the rupee.

Gurus and Mughals

1469 – 1708

Coins of the Lahore mint1520s – 1849

Lahore was one of the great mints of the Mughal empire. Akbar, who held court in the city from 1585 to 1598, struck gold and silver there, and the mint name, Dar-ul-Saltanat Lahore, 'seat of the sultanate', ran on the coins for two and a half centuries.

Sher Shah's rupee1540 – 1545

The coin of Sher Shah Suri, who drove the Mughals out of the Punjab, and gave the world the word rupee.

Misls and Afghans

1708 – 1799

Banda Singh Bahadur's coin1710

The first coin struck by a Sikh ruler. After taking Sirhind, Banda Singh issued silver coins in the names of Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh, and a seal for his orders.

Nanakshahi rupee1765 – 1849

When the misls took Lahore in 1765 they struck silver rupees bearing the Khalsa couplet Deg Tegh Fateh, and Ranjit Singh's kingdom kept issuing them for eighty years.

The Kingdom of Lahore

1799 – 1849

The Hari Singhi rupeeFrom 1820

The rupee struck in Kashmir by Hari Singh Nalwa as governor of the valley, which stayed in use in Jammu and Kashmir long after the Sikh kingdom had gone.

Colonial Punjab

1849 – 1947

Guru Nanak and Mardana token19th century

Rare coins and temple tokens of the Sikh period show Guru Nanak seated under a tree with Bhai Mardana holding his rabab, the only Sikh coins with a human image.