Indian Bull anna

Half anna, 1950

One anna, 1950

2 anna , 1950

Circlated for a short time in the 1950s, the anna series of republic India had a bull on all the anna coins, and I still haven't been able to figure out why the bull features on them, I believe the bull is probably from the seal found at Mohenjodaro and Harappa, though it could also be there because most of our population was involved in agriculture where the bull plays an important role, in ploughing and all. The animal featuring on the anna series is called a Zebu. The zebu has been used extensively in India as a riding and draft animal. It has different subspecies and it is found in large and extensive regions of South Asia and also Africa.

The anna series was replaced by the paisa series and the naye paise. 100 naye paise were now equal to one rupee. Earlier, 16 paise made one anna and 16 annas made one rupee, with the coming of the naye paise system, the anna system became obsolete. The naye paise came to be called simply paise.

Note: Before India became a republic, and after the independence, some tokens called jain tokens were circulated to some extent as one anna and two anna coins in 1947. They had the same shape and as those of one anna and two anna shown above.

Indian coin set circa 1950s

Half anna, 1950

One anna , 1950

2 anna, 1950

1/4 rupee, 1955

Written at top: char ana meaning four annas

1/2 rupee, 1955

1 rupee, 1950

1 rupee, 1954

When India became a republic in 1950, the anna series was adopted for coinage purposes. 1 rupee consisted of 16 annas. As you can see clearly in this series, the denomination keeps on decreasing by a factor of two: one rupee, half rupee, quarter rupee(4 annas), two annas, one anna and half anna. All the fractions were consistently minted , with the one anna and two anna coins of 1955 coming under the category of low mintage coins; and are therefore rare and also having very high value. This design of one rupee was minted only in 1950 and1954, and that too only in the Bombay mint. After that one rupee coin came out only in 1962. The anna series was discontinued in 1955 and it was replaced by the naya paisa series in 1957. The designers had experimented with a one rupee coin reading "sau naye paise" meaning 100 new paise in 1960. Only 3 such pieces are known to have been minted and 1 such coin recently sold at an auction for 2.2 lakh rupees.