Saturday, 8 February 2014 00:00
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By D.C. Ranatunga
Coins continued to be used during the colonial era starting with the arrival of the Portuguese in 1505. Their occupation of the Maritime Provinces coincided with the return of Western currencies after 800 years.
Greek and Roman coins had reached the island through international trade earlier after which it was the Portuguese who brought European currency. When they arrived, gold paodi, gold panam, silver panam and larins were in circulation.
The first coins to be issued by the Portuguese were known as ‘GiniMaessa’. These were exclusively for transactions within Colombo. They had the Portuguese Coat of Arms imprinted on the face along with the letters CL (for Colombo) and GA (for Goa – the Portuguese headquarters in India). On the other side was the year of issue and the inscription ‘Gini Maessa’.
By the time the Dutch took control over the coastal areas in 1658, they had already occupied several other areas including Batticaloa (1638) and Galle (1640) and signed a treaty with King Rajasinghe II under which currency could only be issued with the sanction of either the King or the Dutch government. Printing, producing, publicising, minting counterfeit coins or circulations were declared illegal unless approved by the King or the Dutch Government.
For a few years the Dutch continued to use the Portuguese currency for their transactions until it was found that counterfeit coins were being circulated in large numbers. They then collected all the Portuguese coins and stamped them with the seal of the Dutch East India Trading Company or VOC (Vereenigde Oost0Indische Comlagnie) which was operating from Galle.
Warnings were issued that no one should accept any Portuguese coins that did not have the seal. Shortly afterwards counterfeit coins with the VOC seal appeared and they had to work hard to stop the circulation of such coins. They also took steps to ban the transportation of copper coins and by 1722 declared that no silver coins could be taken out of the country.
The coin mostly used was one called the Duit – a small copper coin – the value of which was a ‘Thutu’. Finding that they were too small for transactions when a large number had to be counted, strings of coins were introduced in numbers of 8, 16 and 24. This measure too proved unsuccessful. Meanwhile, several types of coins used in different parts of the Netherlands began to be used in transactions.
It was only in 1781 that the Dutch established the first coin minting factory in Colombo. It was located at Kayman’s Gate. Two types of coins were minted. A vine-pattern was running through both sides of one type of coin. In addition to the two Thuttu coins (one a thuttu and the other ‘thuttudeka,’ another special Thuttu coin was also minted, the value of which was higher.
Another type Dutch coin was the Rix-Dollar – ‘Pathaga’ in Sinhalese – which was made of silver. The Dutch also introduced the silver one Rupee coin. On the face of the coin was mentioned that it was ‘The Colombo Dutch Company’s coin’ and the back, ‘Lanka Island Currency’ was mentioned in Arabic.
A new development took place on 17 March 1785. That was the authorisation of the printing of banknotes equivalent to 25,000 pathaga. The first series of Sri Lanka’s bank notes was issued on 10 May 1785. The bank notes were valued at 50, 100, 500 and 1000 pathaga. More were printed later. The notes had the signatures of three Government officials. However, the printing of counterfeit notes began in no time. In 1793 the Dutch demonetised the old notes and the new bank notes.
