An Introduction to Sikh Coinage

I have been collecting Sikh coins for over forty-five years now, and the thing that drew me in from the beginning was not the metal or the rarity — it was the story. Every other Indian coinage names a king. The Mughal rupee carries the emperor's title. The Maratha coins name the Chhatrapati. Even the East India Company stamped its authority on every piece it issued. But a Sikh rupee? It names no king. No ruler. No dynasty. Only the Guru.

That single fact — that the most powerful state in northern India for half a century chose to place the Guru's name on its currency instead of the Maharaja's — tells you more about Sikh political philosophy than any history book can. Maharaja Ranjit Singh ruled an empire of fourteen mints, from Kashmir to the Khyber. He never once put his own name on a coin. Neither did any of his successors.

This is a brief introduction to that story — told through the coins themselves.

1710 – 1716

Banda Singh Bahadur — The First Coins of the Khalsa

It all begins with Banda Bahadur. A Bairagi ascetic named Madho Das met Guru Gobind Singh at Nanded in 1708. The Guru transformed him entirely — he received amrit, took the name Gurbaksh Singh, and was sent northward to Punjab with five arrows, a nagara drum, a nishan sahib, and a handful of hukamnamas addressed to the Sikh sangats. His commission: punish the oppressors of the Khalsa. The Guru departed this world on 7 October 1708. Banda was already on his way.

Within two years, Banda had swept through the Mughal administration of eastern Punjab. He sacked Samana, destroyed Sirhind — the city whose Faujdar had executed the younger Sahibzade — and established his capital at Lohgarh (Mukhlisgarh) in the Shivalik foothills. And then he did something no Sikh had ever done before: he struck coins.

Only two types are known — Year 2 and Year 3 of his brief reign. Of the Year 2 rupee, a single specimen is recorded. These are the rarest coins in Sikh numismatics, and their legends are remarkable. Written entirely in Persian — the language of the empire he was displacing — they carry the following couplet:

Read those words carefully. No Mughal emperor is named. Instead: the Sword of Nanak. The victory of Gobind Singh. The coin issued by the Khalsa — not by a king but by the collective. For the first time in Punjab, the emperor's name was gone from the currency, replaced by the Guru's authority. This was not just money. It was a declaration.

Banda was captured in 1715 and executed at Delhi in June 1716. His coins survived him — and every Sikh rupee that followed carries their seed.

1765 – 1799

The Misls — A Confederacy Strikes Coins

After Banda's execution, the Sikhs spent nearly fifty years in the wilderness. There was no Sikh state, no capital, no treasury. What there was instead was the Dal Khalsa — a loose confederacy of eleven Misls (confederate bands), each led by a Sardar, holding territory across Punjab by force of arms and guerrilla warfare. They fought the Mughals. They fought Ahmad Shah Durrani. They fought each other. But on one day each year, at the Sarbat Khalsa assembly at Amritsar, they acted as a single body.

In 1764, the Dal Khalsa destroyed the Mughal fort at Sirhind — the same city Banda had sacked fifty-four years earlier. The following year, at Vaisakhi 1765, they issued their first collective coinage from the Lahore mint. And they did something extraordinary: the coins bore no king's name. Not the Misl Sardar's name, not any individual's name — only the couplet of the Gurus. It was a collective coinage issued in the name of the Panth.

Two distinct couplets appeared on the Misl-period coins. Understanding them is the key to reading any Sikh coin:

The Gobindshahi Couplet

The earlier of the two, derived directly from Banda Bahadur's legend. It was used on coins struck at Lahore from 1765 onwards, and continued in various forms throughout the Sikh Empire.

Deg Tegh Fath — these three words are the beating heart of the Sikh political ideal. The deg (cooking pot) represents charity and the feeding of all; the tegh (sword) represents sovereign power and the defence of the weak; fath is victory granted by the Guru. It is an entire political philosophy compressed into three words, and it appeared on nearly every Sikh coin struck between 1765 and 1849.

The Nanakshahi Couplet

From 1775, coins struck at Amritsar began carrying a new couplet — the Nanakshahi. Where the Gobindshahi invoked both Gurus, the Nanakshahi placed the emphasis on Akal — the Timeless — and on Amritsar as the seat of the Khalsa:

The reverse typically read Zarb Sri Amritsar ji — struck at the holy city of Amritsar — along with the Vikrama Samvat date.

The Misl-period coinage is among the most unusual collective coinages in history. No single ruler claimed it. The various subseries — distinguished by small symbols and marks that we still do not fully understand — may represent different Misls or different periods of control at the mint. Attributing specific Misl coins to specific Misls remains one of the great unsolved puzzles of Indian numismatics.

1799 – 1849

The Sikh Empire — Fourteen Mints, One Couplet

In 1799, a young Sardar of the Sukerchakia Misl named Ranjit Singh rode into Lahore and took the city. He proclaimed himself Maharaja in 1801. Over the next two decades, he unified the Sikh domains into the most powerful state in South Asia outside the British Empire — an empire stretching from the Sutlej to the Khyber, from Kashmir to Sindh.

He struck coins at fourteen mints: Lahore, Amritsar, Multan, Kashmir (Srinagar), Peshawar, Dera, Jhang, Mankera, Pind Dadan Khan, and others. Every single one of them bore the couplets of the Gurus. Not one bore the name of Ranjit Singh or carried his portrait. His four successors — Kharak Singh, Nau Nihal Singh, Sher Singh, and Duleep Singh — maintained the same tradition until the British annexation of 1849 silenced every Sikh mint.

Coin Types of the Sikh Empire

The coins of the empire can be classified into several principal types:

Type	Named After	Description
Gobindshahi	Guru Gobind Singh	Coins bearing the Gobindshahi couplet (Deg Tegh Fateh…). The primary silver coinage of Lahore, and the standard at most Empire mints. Continued at Nabha and Patiala in the Cis-Sutlej states until 1948.
Nanakshahi	Guru Nanak Dev	Coins bearing the Nanakshahi couplet. Primarily the coinage of Amritsar — the seat of the Khalsa and the Akal Takht. Also found at some provincial mints.
Morashahi	Moran Sarkar (Bibi Moran)	Coins struck in 1806 in the name of Ranjit Singh's consort, the dancer Moran. The offering of these coins was refused at the Akal Takht — one of the most dramatic episodes in Sikh numismatic history. Four types are now documented, including a previously unrecorded VS 1868 specimen.
Gurushahi	The Gurus	A broader term sometimes used for coins of the Cis-Sutlej states bearing Guru-attributed legends, overlapping with Gobindshahi usage.
Nazrana	Presentation pieces	Specially struck coins — typically heavier, better finished — produced for court presentations, temple offerings, and diplomatic gifts. Gold mohurs and presentation rupees fall into this category.

The Metals

The Empire struck coins in three metals. Gold mohurs — typically around 10 grams — were prestige pieces, struck at Amritsar and Lahore for court use, nazranas and diplomatic gifts. From 1828, Lahore also issued the distinctive butki mohurs with Waheguru inscribed thrice in Gurmukhi. Silver rupees formed the backbone of the currency — the Amritsar standard at approximately 11 grams, while the Peshawar rupee ran lighter at about 8.33 grams, a divergence that reflects the different trade networks the two cities served. Copper paisas were the everyday coinage, and unlike the silver, they often carried Gurmukhi legends alongside or instead of Persian — a significant concession to the spoken language of Punjab.

Symbols and Marks

One feature that makes Sikh coins endlessly fascinating — and endlessly frustrating — is the system of small symbols stamped alongside the legends. The most recognisable is the leaf, symbolic representation of the leafs of the Ber tree, associatd with the Sikh Guru's, right from Guru Nanak and numerous of these trees exist within the precinits of Sri Harmandir Sahib, Amritsar, and present on coins from Amritsar, Lahore and other mints. Other marks include the katar (dagger), a jhanda (flag), various floral devices, and geometric marks whose meaning we do not yet fully understand. At Amritsar, the mark system was extraordinarily complex — parallel subseries running simultaneously, changing every few years — and decoding it remains one of the outstanding challenges of Sikh numismatics.

1849

The Silence

It ended at Gujrat on 21 February 1849. The British artillery opened up at dawn — ninety-six guns against fifty-nine — and by noon the Khalsa army was broken. Lord Dalhousie annexed the Punjab on 29 March 1849. Every one of the fourteen mints of the Sikh Empire fell silent. The couplets of the Gurus would never again be struck on a sovereign coin of the Punjab.

South of the Sutlej, the Cis-Sutlej states — Patiala, Nabha, Jind — continued striking their own rupees under British protection for another century. At Nabha, the Gobindshahi couplet replaced the Durrani inscription from VS 1893 (1836). At Patiala, Gobindshahi nazranas were struck for temple offerings and presentation right down to VS 1994 — the final coin in a numismatic succession that had begun with Banda Singh Bahadur in 1710. Two hundred and thirty-eight years. Four chapters. One tradition.

The coins of the Khalsa bore not the name of a king but of the Guru — affirming that sovereignty belonged not to any man, but to the Panth entire.

If you would like to explore further, head over to SikhCoins.in — I have been building that site since 2003, and it now carries over 1,300 coin images, detailed pages on every period discussed above, and some original research that I hope contributes something to the field. This is a subject I have spent my life with, and there is always more to discover.

Read the Full History on SikhCoins.in ↗

All coin images referenced in this article are from the SikhCoins.in collection.
© 2026 Jeevandeep M Singh · Ludhiana, Punjab