Tin and Lead Coins from Brunei, 



By E. Hanitsch, ph. d. 

 With Plate III. 



The curious tin and lead coins from Brunei, Borneo, des- 

 cribed below, were, with one exception, exhibited at the Kuala 

 Kangsar Agricultural Show, August, 1907, by Mr. Edmund 

 Roberts, of the P. W. D., Labuan, and subsequently presented 

 by him, on behalf of Pangeran Shabander, of Brooketon, Brunei, 

 to the Raffles Museum, Singapore. They had been found in 

 an earthenware jar, buried two or three feet below the surface, 

 at Brooketon, in July, 1907. A number of coins were in the 

 jar, but most of them were seized by natives and cannot now 

 be found. Those which reached the Raffles Museum were of 

 two types only. A few months later Mr. Roberts presented 

 to the Museum a third kind of coin which he had found when 

 clearing the site for the Brunei residency, in 1906. 



The first two coins differ only slightly from each other ; 

 one of them is of a simpler design and in a less perfect state 

 of preservation, so that it may be considered as the older one. 

 It is 36 mm. in diameter, 1 mm. in thickness and weighs 

 5*9 grammes (see pi. Ill, fig. 1). It is more or less of pure tin, 

 its specific gravity being 7'5 (that of tin is 7'29). Its obverse 

 shows a recumbent buffalo, minus its horns, with erect tail, 

 the space between the figure and the edge of the coin being 

 filled up by circles, cloud-like scrolls, and dots. 



The reverse bears an inscription, in Malay characters, 

 which is arranged in what Lane Poole" calls the " mill-sail 

 pattern," a pattern which is met with on Persian and other 

 coins, the writing being placed within the four arms of the 

 sail-wheel. The division into four fields is effected by a line 

 which starts from near the centre of the coin, runs parallel 



* See O. Codrington, A Manual of Musalman Numismatics, 

 London, 1904, p. 17. 



.Jour. Straits Branch, R. A. Soc, No. 49, 1907. 



