South Indian Inscriptions

COINS

The Lakshmi type introduced by Gangeyadeva became popular in North India. It was imitated by the Chandellas of Jajjhauti, the Gahadavalas of Kanauj and the Tomars of Delhi. It was also introduced in distant Kashmir. See, for instance, No. 7 in Pl. XXXV, Numismatic Chronicle for 1937. This coin has on the reverse the figure of the four-armed seated Lakshmi as on the coins of Gangeyadeva. Allan ascribes it to Sri-Harsha of Kashmir (1089-1101 A.C.).

The Coins of the Kalachuris of South Kosala

The first coin of these king to be published was that in P1. XXXIX, facing p. 654 in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. V(1836). It was a copper of Prithvideva from the collection of Cunningham. It had the king’s name on the observe and ‘the figure of a four-armed god1 crushing a demon’ on the reverse. Prinsep read the legend correctly, but ascribed the coin to the king whose name occurs ‘in the Dihli list as having reigned at Lahore in A.D. 1176-1192’. A hoard of 56 gold coins2 was next discovered in 1892 in the former State of Sarangarh, and some time later, three coins3 of the same type were found in the bed of the river Ang in the State of Patna. All these coins were sent to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, where they were examined by Dr. Hoernle. His report on them appears in the Proceedings of the Society for 1893, pp. 92 ff. and 141 ff. The coins were of three kings, Jajalladeva, Prithvideva and Ratnadeva. All the coins were round in shape. They had the particular king’s name on the obverse and the same device on the reverse. Hoernle at first took the device to be the standing figure of Hanuman, but later on changed his opinion and thought that it represented an elephant, a horse or a bull. As more than one king bore each of these names, Hoernle conjecturally ascribed the coins to Jajalladeva I, Ratnadeva II and Prithvideva II.

The coinage of this Kalachuri branch was next noticed by Cunningham in his Coins of Mediœval India(1894), pp. 73 ff. In this work Cunningham described the gold coins4 of the three kings mentioned above, as well as two unique copper coins which he had acquired in 1835 and 1885. He identified the figure on the copper coins as that of Hanu-man, but he was not certain about the device on the gold coins which he described as a number of shapeless objects surrounded by a circle of dots. Prof. Rapson, who edited Cunningham's work published posthumously, thought that the confused type on the reverse might perhaps be intended to represent a lion, facing right, rampant.5 In his Catalogue of coins in the Indian Museum, pp. 254 ff., Vincent Smith has described only the gold coins of the aforementioned three kings. He follows Rapson in taking the device on the reverse to be the figure of a rampant lion. Since then some hoards of gold coins of these kings have been discovered from time to time in Chhattisgarh. The largest of them was of 600 gold coins discovered in 1921-22 at Sonsari in the tahsil and District of Bilaspur. It contained the coins of both the large and the small size of all the three kings together with
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¹This god is of course Hanuman, though Prinsep did not identify him at the time.
²This hoard contained 26 coins ( 9 large and 17 small) of Jajalladeva, 29 coins (all small) of Ratnadeva, and one coin (large size) of Prithvideva. Coins of the large size weigh about 60 grains, and those of the small size about 15 grains.
³All the three coins (two large and one small) were of Jajalladeva.
⁴In his descriptive table on p. 76 and in Pl. VIII, in C.M.I., Cunningham labels three of these coins (Nos. 9-11) as those of copper. But this is incorrect; for, as he has himself stated, the coins were from the British Museum and were found in 1893. Cunningham has also quoted Hoernle’s opinion about the device on them. They were, therefore, identical with the coins discovered in 1892, which were sent to the Asiatic Society of Bengal for examination. Some of them were apparently presented to the British Museum later on. As stated above, all these coins were of gold. 5C.M.I., pp. 75-76, n. 45.