Issued under Sir Bartle Frere, Chief Commissioner of Sindh
Scinde Dawk, half anna, red wafer
Asia's first postage stamp, pressed in sealing wax.
- Artist
- Issued under Sir Bartle Frere, Chief Commissioner of Sindh
- Date
- 1 July 1852
- Medium
- Embossed red sealing wax on paper
A disc of red sealing wax pressed onto paper and embossed with lettering round the rim, SCINDE DISTRICT DAWK, and the merchant’s mark of the East India Company at the centre. The value is half an anna.
Bartle Frere, the Company’s Chief Commissioner in Sindh, copied Rowland Hill’s English reforms: one cheap rate regardless of distance, paid in advance. Mail went by horse and camel from Karachi up the Indus to Sukkur. These stamps, issued on 1 July 1852, were the first adhesive postage stamps in Asia.
The wax was a poor choice. It cracked and crumbled, and the stamp was soon replaced by an uncoloured embossing on white paper, hard to see in dim light, and then a blue one. All were withdrawn after October 1854, when stamps valid across India came in. Forgeries are common; the simplest test is that a genuine Scinde Dawk is embossed, not printed flat.