Extremely Fine, Extremely Rare in this grade.

Similar rupees have been offered in other auctions as issues of the English East India Company, struck in Bombay in the name of Charles II; however, research by Paul Stevens has completely ruled out this attribution. The coins do show a similarity with British issues of William and Mary in terms of execution, but legends on them have not yet been satisfactorily read. They appear to an inscription in a non-Persian language, perhaps a European one, rendered into stylised Farsi script. It is quite likely that they are issues of a different European mercantile company that operated on the Western Coast of India. In this context it is interesting that this coin, at the bottom of the obverse inscription, appears to have something like '…dej' which could be a part of 'Walandej', the Persianate term used to describe the Dutch.