British Ceylon General Treasury
Colombo - Two Rix Dollar - 1806

Two Rix Dollar Currency Note with no engraving issued by Ceylon Government General Treasury in Colombo, in 1806. These notes were probably issued from from 1800 to 1808. By Regulation ? of 1830 the notes of the value of RD 2 were demonetized as from 1830 September 1.

Denomination : 2 RD English : Two Rix Dollar Sinhala : පතාග දෙකයි Thamil : இரணடு இறையால Size : 115 x 94 mm Date : 1st March 1806 Status : Signed
KM-lk# Unlisted

Front :

	පතාග දෙකයි	இரணடு இறையால		இலஙகையின அரசாடசி
ලන්කවේ ආන්ඩුව
	No ####
	COLOMBO 1st March 1806.
	Payable in Copper on demand at the General Treasury at the rate of Forty
	Eight Stivers for One Rix Dollar.
	( Rix Dollars 2.)
COLOMBO 1st March 1806.		No ####
	Exd. & Entd.
Two hand signed manuscript signatures.

Sinhala Text : Printed Top left Horizontal and Upper left Vertical
Thamil Text : Printed Top right Horizontal and Upper right Vertical
Back : Blank
WaterMark : None detected by contrast enhancement need to confirm.
Printed : Government Press in Colombo, which was founded in 1737 by Dutch and taken over by the British in 1796 (Based on Sinhala & Tamil Font).
Size : On the assumption that the size of Sinhala text font used in the Dutch Kasnoot is the same as on this note, it was estimated that this note is imaged at 250 dpi.

The wrongly written Sinhala script ලන්කවේ(sic) was missing in 1809 note reintroduced in 1814 note was corrected to ලංකවේ by 1820 note.

Note that all of "dot"s above the Thamil characters are missing from the crudely printed old Text.

These older British era Rix Dollar notes of which I have seen only this signed note, seems to have the simplicity and size of the older Dutch Rix Dollar Kas Nooten till the design included an engraving and the text expanded to be explicit. Interestingly the note mentions in English only Colombo, and not Government of Ceylon, which is printed in both Sinhala and Thamil.

Provenance: The Collection of World Banknotes formed by the Late Edward Barnby Auction image estimated at 250 dpi displayed at 50 dpi.

I thank Pathum Egodawatta of the Akuru group for recognising the Sinhala and Tamil fonts used on the currency as those developed by the Dutch Press, and from that identifying the Printer.

Warning This Note has been replicated and Sold as Replica on eBay. One of these replicas have been badly degraded to look old and sold on facebook as genuine. The hand signature is identical and at same exact location. To confirm look under very high magnification, or scan without descreen at 1200dpi. In the replica the signature ink line is clearly printed as dots.

Please contact kavan @ gmail.com if I have made errors in encoding the Thamil in Unicode.