Thank God That Things Happen For a Good Reason

After many years of research and examination of evidences, I finally decided that I had done enough. I could now begin to put together my book on the coining journey of Bhutan. The delays have been monumental, given the conflicting reports on Bhutan’s coinage.

I believed that I had them all sorted out, only to realize that there was yet another problem that had almost escaped my attention.

Historians put the date of Bhutan’s coinage from 1790 to 1910. Thus I had finalized my dates accordingly. Then to my consternation I discovered that the starting date of our coinage should be 1711. If that were not enough, this morning as I was putting the dates to some of the hammered coin varieties, I realized that the dates are yet again wrong. Wrong because as of the beginning of monarchy in 1907, the posts of Punakha Dzongpoen, Wangdue Dzongpoen and Daga Poenlop ceased to exist. Only the posts of Choetse Poenlop and Paro Poenlop exist to this day. Thus the abolished regional rulers ceased to have authority to hammer coins.

Consequently, my following dates pertaining to the three Dzongpoens’ coins would be wrong. It is now being corrected as follows:

Corrected dates

Trongsa Poenlop’s coining date for the hammered variety should actually be upto 1910. However, I am keeping it at late 1800 since around that time Trongsa Poenlop Jigme Namgyel began to hammer a different variety of coins called Norzang Phubchen – in silver and copper. Beginning with this coin, every coin – in except one coin variety - the Cooch Behari alphabets were entirely done away with. These coin varieties hammered until 1929 is distinct from earlier hammered coins.