5 Rupees

Ceylon's post-independence Central Bank issued this series beginning in 1950, the institution itself having been established only in 1950 under the Monetary Law Act — meaning this note belongs to the bank's earliest years of operation. Bradbury Wilkinson's New Malden facility handled the bulk of British colonial and Commonwealth currency printing through this period, and the quality of intaglio work on these early Ceylon issues is notably high.

The P#51 series ran across several dates into the mid-1950s. Date-specific examples from 1952 are less commonly encountered than later printings.