Coins In Lucknow Mus. Vol 01 [56 MB - IndianCoins.org

CEYLON COINS. 67possession of the British crown, might, at the present day, be aMahometan kingdom, under the rule of some Arabian adventurer. "The occupation by the Portuguese was, however, the cause of constantdissension with the natives, and eventually an alliance was formedbetween the native princes and the Dutch to expel the Portuguese, theconditions of the treaty being made by Rajah Singha, who afterwardsbecame sole king of the interior, on board one of the Dutch ships offBatticoloa.In his work8on Ceylon Bertolocci says:" Whatever was thecurrency of Ceylon during the government of the Portuguese, no vestigenow remains of it ;and an investigation of that subject could throw nolight upon its present condition." On this point Mr. Rhys Davidssays " No coins are known to have been struck by the Portuguese in:or for Ceylon. Knox says that of three sorts of coin in use onewas coined by the Portugals ;the king's arms on one side and theimage of a friar on the other, and by the Chingulays called tangommassa. The value of one is nine-pence English ; poddi tangom, or thesmall tangom, is half as much ;but these were probably struck inPortugal, and not for use in Ceylon."The last stronghold of the Portuguese in Ceylon, Jaffna, was givenup in 1658, and the Dutch occupation continued till 1796, in whichyear the island was ceded to the English. So far back as 1763 anembassy had been despatched by the Governor of Madras to propose atreaty to Kirti Sri, the king of Kandy, but no immediate resultfollowed. Twenty years later Trincomallee was occupied by a Britishforce under Sir Hector Munro, but the fort was surprised by a Frenchfleet, and the British garrison transported to Madras. In 1795 anexpedition, commanded by Colonel Stuart, landed at Trincomallee, whichcapitulated in three weeks. Later in the same year Calpentyn wasoccupied, and early in 1796 Negombo and Colombo were taken possessionof, and a convention was signed, by which Point de Galle, Matura,and the remaining fortified places were ceded to Great Britain.During the Dutch occupation large numbers of the coins of theDutch East India Company, many bearing the monogram, v.o.c.found their way to the island, but these I shall deal with on a futureoccasion. As regards the IJrropean coins, which were struck speciallyfor Ceylon, I cannot do better than quote in detail the observationsof Mr. Rhys Davids, who " says: The Dutch struck only a very fewsilver rix dollars, which are very rare, if not entirely extinct, andwhich I have never seen. A thick copper Stniver having on the obversethe monogram, v.o.c., the o and c written over the sides of the v,and in the open part of the v the letter c, perhaps for Colombo orCeylon, is occasionally met with. On the reverse is the legend 1 stuiver,the mimeral 1 being above the word stuiver (which occupies the centreof the field coin), and having four dots on each side of it. Below is thedate, the dates in my collection being 1784, 1785,1786, 1789, 1791,1793, 1795. It is possible, however, that this c is only a mint mark,and that these coins, whose rough execution shows them to have beenstruck in the Dutch East Indies (the monogram, v.o.c., stands for theinitial letters of Vereinigte Ostindische i.e.Compagnie, Limited East8View of the Agricultural, Commercial, and Financial Interests of Ceylon. 1817.10