*Scinde Dawk* first issued on
1 July 1852, bore the Merchants' Mark of the British East India Company in a design embossed on wafers of red sealing wax impressed on paper.
*Scinde Dawk* was a very old postal system of runners that served the Indus Valley of Sindh, an area of present-day Pakistan. The first adhesive postage stamps in Asia, the forerunners of the adhesive stamps used throughout India, Burma, the Straits Settlements and other areas controlled by the _British East India Company._ The name derives from the words _“Scinde”,_ the British spelling of the name of the province of _Sindh,_ and _“Dawk”,_ the anglicised spelling of the Hindustani word _“Dak”_ or _Post._
This was a local Indus Valley system, inefficient and inadequate for the military and commercial needs of the _British East India Company_ after their conquest of Sindh in February, 1843, following the Battle of Miani.