`Lakshmi' Plaque - Cast metalic

SPECIFICATIONS Alloy Pb Ag? Type Struck Height 34.8 mm Width 18.0 mm Thickness 3.3 mm Weight 9.79 gms Shape oblong DieAxis O°

Obverse : goddess Lakshmi standing between two stalks of a plant Elephants on either side of head clearly visible.
Reverse : railed svastika revolving to right (clockwise). Images of two symbols on either side. Three lines below.

Twenty Lakshmi and svastika lead coins (H.30 to H.49) with heights from 13 to 47 mm ; width from 5 to 23 mm and weights from 0.5 to 16 grams that were found in Akurugoda are cataloged under Local Coins in 1999 by Osmund Bopearachchi and Rajah Wickramasinhe in the book Ruhuna. An Ancient Civilization Re-visited . The coin above was obtained directly from the same collector who provided most of the items for that book. For longer discussion and links to other Lakshmi plaques see collection.

The plaque shown above is far more metallic silver-like appearence than other Plaques in the LakdivaCoin collection or I have seen. The metal composition of coin surface looked at using edxrf showed Cu-Ni which makes me suspect it is a modern forgery using melted Lankan coins.

The coin was scanned at 300dpi and displayed at 300dpi. It was obtained in 2001 December from Mr A. Ratnayaka a collector in Katharagama, Lanka. When I confonted him in 2003 May with the fact that it is probably moderb fake, he said that he had got it from a usually reliable source.