COINS OF SOUTHERN INDIA

The author reveals that in describing Coins of Southern India here noticed he had to trust chiefly of memory which notwithstanding the cheerful aid rendered by members of his own family and by several friends often left him in doubt and perplexity. The plan he has mfollowed in this essay has been to give a slight historical sketch of the principal southern rulers who issued dynastic coinages as far as the limited means at his disposal would admit. Coinage of South India began anywhere between early 1st millennium BCE to the 6th century BCE, and consisted mainly of copper and silver coins in its initial stage. The coins of this period were Karshapanas or Pana. A variety of earliest Indian coins, however, unlike those circulated in West Asia, were stamped bars of metal, suggesting that the innovation of stamped currency was added to a preexisting form of token currency which had already been present in the Janapadas and Mahajanapada kingdoms of the Early historic India. The kingdoms that minted their own coins included Gandhara, Kuntala, Kuru, Panchala, Magadha, Shakya, Surasena and Surashtra etc.