Page 12 - Standing Display

II. 1884 FIRST ISSUE OF REVENUE STAMPS & CHANGE IN SIZE OF REVENUE DOCUMENTS

Maharajah Sardul Singh 1879-1900. His first innovation in stamp duty management

The first issues were in two designs: rectangular for the two lowest values and square for other
values. With the introduction of stamps it became possible to apply the stamps to any submitted
document, including plain paper. Because the stamps were to be applied to revenue documents
instead of using the Rasoom Ka manuscript entries for additional fees the revenue documents were
now issued in a size which approximates to 23.5mm wide and 32mm in length.

The issued stamps are problematic. The descriptions in the catalogue by A. Koeppel & R.D. Manners,
“The Court Fee and Revenue Stamps of the Princely States of India”, Fiscal Philatelic Foundation, Mineola,
NY, 1983 for the one and two annas stamps with regards to paper types may be in error. Most individual
stamps have been cut from documents and still have the document paper attached. The exhibitor has been
unable to locate any laid paper varieties.

In order to understand these issues, stamps on dated documents have been studied and the individual
stamps examined using a digital microscope. As an example of the problems, oil based inked stamps are
easily identified by the intensity of the colour and the oily smell still persisting. There are also distinct
narrow letters as the watercolours have a tendency to bleed. Below are two examples of the one anna green
and a single one anna vermilion (or brown orange).
II A. OIL PRINTED STAMPS

The one anna brown orange oil ink stamp

Digital Microscope pictures of heavy and lightly inked areas, showing details of the ink with
microscopic densities of oil printing 2