For me, the tiger, powerful and majestic, is a highlight, but there is more to see.
The side with the head was designed by
Percy Metcalfe, an English sculptor. Previous and many later coin designers were used to work with paper and sketches, but Metcalfe was used to work in three dimensions on hard materials. That shows. The portrait and the crown don't have the usual fine detail and yet, there is enough detail for your brain to come up with more. Look at the eye, for instance. There is nothing between the lids, yet your brain will construct the eye's lens. Look at his other designs
here. Here is an artist who didn't want to compete with a photo camera. He was after helping you make a picture in your own head.
Now look at the text around the head, the legend. It's the name of the king and his most important titles. What's strange is that emperor is a higher title than king. Yet, king comes first. The reason is that there was a long struggle before India lost its independence. The British acquired bits and pieces all the time, sometimes by war, at other times by making themselves inheritors of a ruler who didn't have a legitimate successor. The ruler of what is now India and Pakistan, the Moghul, lost more and more power, until there was a large popular uprising against British rule. Once again, the British won, the Moghul was deposed and his title went the the British queen. Since that time, British rulers were king of Great Britain as well as emperor of India. They just thought that Britain was more important than India, so they let the title of king come first. Today, that attitude would be called racist, but at the time, it was considered normal for colonial masters to consider themselves better than the people of the colonies they ruled. You can see that also by comparing your rupee to European coins and old Indian coins. The coin is mostly European.
On the other side, the legend is remarkable also. It is in three languages and scripts. The first part is in
devanagari. It is a script that is easy to recognise as the tops of the characters form a line. The central part is in latin script. The script on the right is Arabic and the language is
Urdu.
India is not only a big country, it is also very complicated. Indians speak many different languages and use many different scripts. Many Indians speak English as a second language, so they use English to speak with and write to Indians whose first language is different from theirs. Still, from time to time they use words and constructions you wouldn't know, but will understand. Here's an example that stuck in my mind: let's propone the meeting. I am sure you can figure that one out.
Peter
