In this guide
Silver is the one precious metal in a Tamil household that gets used rather than kept. The kuthuvilakku — the oil lamp — is lit. The tumbler is drunk from. The kolusu, the anklet, is worn every day by a child who is not careful with it. All of that handling is the reason silver is alloyed, and the reason the numbers stamped on it exist at all.
Those numbers are not carats. Silver has no carat scale — it has a fineness scale.
Silver purity is counted in parts per thousand
A silver purity number is simply the share of pure silver in the metal, counted out of 1,000 parts. 925 means 925 parts silver and 75 parts something else. That is the whole of it.
The system is called millesimal fineness, and it is the same arithmetic behind the 916 stamped on Indian gold — 916 parts gold in 1,000, which is 22 divided by 24.
Carat, though, is gold's unit. There is no such thing as 22 carat silver, and a piece described that way is being described by somebody reaching for the wrong vocabulary. Under the four-mark hallmark BIS used before July 2021, the purity mark on gold gave both together — 22K916 — while on silver it gave the fineness by itself.
The six grades BIS recognises
The Indian Standard for silver hallmarking, IS 2112:2014, permits six grades of silver jewellery and artefacts: 990, 970, 925, 900, 835 and 800. Those are the finenesses a BIS-recognised assaying and hallmarking centre will test for and mark. Nothing else is on the list.
| Number | Silver content | Also called | Where you meet it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 999 | 99.9% | Fine silver | Bars and investment coins — not a grade in IS 2112 |
| 990 | 99.0% | — | The highest grade in the BIS silver standard |
| 970 | 97.0% | — | A BIS grade; uncommon in Indian retail |
| 925 | 92.5% | Sterling | The international standard for silver jewellery |
| 900 | 90.0% | — | A BIS grade; historically a coinage fineness |
| 835 | 83.5% | — | A BIS grade; harder, used where strength matters |
| 800 | 80.0% | — | The lowest grade in the BIS silver standard |
The standard says which finenesses may be hallmarked. It does not say which fineness any particular ornament is supposed to be — a separate question, and the one that decides what you pay. For the grades one by one with their working properties, there is the full silver purity chart.
Where 999 fits
999 silver is real. It is fine silver, 99.9% pure, and it is what bullion bars and investment coins are made of. What it is not is a grade in the jewellery standard — IS 2112 runs from 800 up to 990, and 999 is not among them. Bars are a separate question with a separate standard of their own, for refined gold and silver bars of good delivery.
So an ornament advertised as 999 hallmarked silver is joining two words that do not quite go together in the Indian system. The metal may genuinely be 999. A BIS hallmark under IS 2112 will not say so.
Where 916 fits — it does not
916 is not a silver grade. It is gold's number, and it appears on Indian gold because 22 carat works out to 916 parts in 1,000. Silver's list does not contain it.
If you have seen 916 attached to silver, either the item is gold and the description is wrong, or the number has been borrowed because it is the purity figure Indian buyers recognise on sight. Neither is a reason to pay more. For the number as it properly applies to gold, what 916 and BIS hallmarking actually mean covers it in full.
Why silver is alloyed at all
Pure silver is too soft to hold a shape. A clasp drawn in fine silver springs open under its own tension. A lamp finial bends when it is lifted by it. A ring loses its round inside a year of wear.
Adding a small proportion of a harder metal — copper, almost always — gives the alloy enough stiffness to be drawn into wire, chased, soldered and worn every day. This is the same reasoning that makes Indian gold jewellery 22K rather than pure 24K, and it is not a way of quietly selling you less metal. It is what makes the object survive being an object.
The trade is not free, though. The copper that makes silver wearable is also what makes it tarnish sooner. Fine silver darkens slowly. Sterling darkens faster, and lower grades faster again. A kolusu that goes dull in a few months is usually behaving exactly as its alloy should, not failing.
925 sterling — the working standard
925 is sterling silver: 92.5% pure silver and 7.5% other metal, in practice copper. It is the fineness most of the world's silver jewellery is made to, and the one number a buyer is most likely to see stamped on a piece.
It has been the working standard for centuries because 92.5 is where the two demands meet: hard enough to hold a stone setting and survive a clasp, soft enough to be worked by hand at the bench.
A 925 stamp is not a hallmark. Anyone with a punch can press 925 into metal, and the number then means only that whoever made the piece says it is sterling. A BIS hallmark is applied by a recognised centre after the metal has been assayed. One is a claim. The other is a test. What the stamp does and does not certify is worked through mark by mark in what a 925 stamp on silver actually tells you.
What Indian silver is actually made to
Traditional Indian silver is not made to a single fineness, and no rule requires it to be. Vessel silver and ornament silver are alloyed differently because they are asked to do different things.
A heavy kuthuvilakku with a cast peacock finial has to stand up and stay standing. A kolusu on a five-year-old takes more abuse in a week than a bangle takes in a year, which is why clasp strength on children's anklets is the first thing we check at the counter. Metti — toe rings — are bent to fit while you wait, and the metal has to tolerate that. Idols, panchapatra sets and deep vessels for abhishekam sit at the softer, higher-fineness end, where weight and finish matter more than springiness.
Fineness is not a badge. It is a quantity, and on heavy articles the quantity is the argument. A 100-gram article at 925 contains 92.5 grams of silver. The same 100 grams at 800 contains 80. On a full tumbler-and-davara set or a 500-gram lamp, that gap is real money, which is exactly why the question is worth asking out loud.
Silver is sold by weight — the day's rate multiplied by grams, plus making charges that rise with the fineness of the work. Today's silver rate in Vellore is per gram (); it moves every morning and is indicative until confirmed at the time of billing.
Our own practice, as a benchmark for what to expect anywhere: the purity of the specific article goes on the bill, weighed in front of you.
Silver hallmarking is voluntary — and that is the difference that matters
Hallmarking is compulsory for gold in India. It is not compulsory for silver.
The quality control order behind it is the Hallmarking of Gold Jewellery and Gold Artefacts Order, issued in June 2021, and gold is the whole of its subject — BIS's own brief scopes it to 14, 18 and 22 carat gold jewellery and artefacts. What it has never reached is silver. BIS does run a silver scheme — launched in 2005, under IS 2112 — but its own criteria for silver hallmarking centres say it plainly: hallmarking of silver jewellery and artefacts is done on a voluntary basis. No law obliges a jeweller to.
The practical consequence is the single most useful thing on this page: on silver, the absence of a hallmark tells you nothing.
On gold, a missing hallmark in a covered district is a signal worth acting on. Most of the silver sold perfectly legitimately in India carries no BIS hallmark at all — the same missing mark means opposite things on the two metals.
There is a plain economic reason behind that. BIS charges for hallmarking per article, not per gram. Its published charge is ₹35 an article for silver and ₹45 for gold, taxes extra, with a minimum of ₹150 on a silver consignment — and not a rupee of it moves with the weight. On a heavy gold ornament that vanishes into the bill. On a pair of metti weighing a few grams it is a real share of what the item is worth, which is why small silver is so rarely sent for hallmarking, and why nothing sinister should be read into it when it has not been.
Where a silver piece has been hallmarked, BIS's published criteria for silver centres call for four marks: the BIS logo, the fineness grade, the assaying centre's symbol and a letter for the year of marking — the pattern gold used before the six-digit HUID replaced it. BIS's own brief scopes that four-marks-to-three change to gold jewellery and artefacts, so on silver ask whether a HUID is present rather than assuming it; where one is, it checks in the BIS Care app exactly as a gold HUID does. Older and imported silver also carries stamps that were never BIS hallmarks at all: town marks, maker's initials, workshop punches, covered in the marks you find on old and antique silver.
The difference that matters
Hallmarking is mandatory for gold and voluntary for silver. On gold, a missing hallmark is a red flag. On silver, it is ordinary — so judge silver by the stated fineness, the weight taken in front of you and the bill you are handed, not by the presence or absence of a stamp.
What to ask at the counter
Because the mark cannot do the work for you on silver, the questions have to. None of them should surprise anybody behind the counter.
- What is the fineness of this piece? A specific number, not "it is good silver".
- Is that fineness going on the bill? A number spoken and a number printed are different things.
- Is the article hallmarked, and if so does it carry a HUID? If it is not, that is a fair answer — ask it anyway.
- Is the weight being taken in front of me? On silver, where the metal is the bulk of the price, weight is the price.
- What rate is being applied today, and what are the making charges? Silver making charges vary widely with the work — a plain tumbler and a chased lamp are not the same job.
Any jeweller worth buying from answers all five without hesitation — and a shop that treats the questions as an insult has told you something useful.
For a piece you already own rather than one on the counter, two companion pages go through the methods: how to know whether silver is genuine and the tests a jeweller runs, and what each one measures. The short version of both, so that nothing here oversells them: the home tests that circulate online — the magnet, the ice cube, the smell, a drop of acid on a scratch — can sometimes catch a crude fake, but not one of them can tell 925 from 800. Weak evidence, honestly held.
Questions we are asked
Is 925 silver real silver?
Yes. 925 is sterling silver — 92.5% pure silver, the remaining 7.5% almost always copper, added for strength rather than to dilute the value. It is the standard most of the world's silver jewellery is made to.
Is silver hallmarking compulsory in India?
No. The order that made hallmarking mandatory applies to gold jewellery and gold artefacts only. BIS has run a silver scheme since 2005 under IS 2112, but on a voluntary basis: a jeweller may have silver hallmarked and is not required to.
Is there such a thing as 916 silver?
No. 916 is a gold number — 22 carat gold is 916 parts gold in 1,000. The grades IS 2112 lists for silver are 990, 970, 925, 900, 835 and 800. If you see 916 on something sold as silver, ask what is meant and get the fineness written on the bill.
What is the difference between 999 and 925 silver?
999 is fine silver, 99.9% pure, and used for bars and investment coins rather than jewellery. 925 is sterling, alloyed with 7.5% copper so that it can be worn and worked. 999 is not one of the six grades IS 2112 lists for silver jewellery, which run from 800 up to 990.
Does old family silver need a hallmark before I can sell or exchange it?
No. Silver hallmarking is voluntary, so most older Indian silver carries no BIS hallmark and that is entirely normal. What matters is the tested fineness and the weight, both taken in front of you and written on the bill before anything is agreed.
Send us a photograph of the mark
If there is a number stamped on a silver piece and you are not sure what it is telling you, send us a clear photograph on WhatsApp and we will read it for you.