Investigation into the history of coinage in Bhutan took me on some strange journeys. And at times I have uncovered some utterly silly mistakes. Mistakes?? How can anyone possibly make such utterly silly mistakes?
Look at the following bronze coin: it was struck in 1979 and denominated at Five Chetrums:
The design was borrowed from a variation of the following coin hammered between 1790–1840, among Bhutan’s earliest coins:
Look again and you will notice that the engraver had totally altered the positioning of the “Sa” on the obverse, and the “Cha” on the reverse of the coin. If the engraver had copied the work from a master copy, how is it possible to make such a silly mistake?
The 1979 Five Chetrums coin should have been engraved as follows:
Between 1928 to 1954, and again from 1974 to 1975, the spelling of "Chetrums" was spelt correctly. Then beginning 1979, the spelling took a toss, to this day. The following 1974 coin shows the word correctly spelt:
Slowly I began to see a side of Bhutan’s history that is neither written nor transmitted orally. And then I begin to understand some inexplicable events that was never explained before.
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