South Indian Coins

The study of South Indian numismatics is a fascinating one opening up a long succession of events to be remembered and anticipated, the vicissitudes of the history of the Peninsula of India South of the Vindhyas for over two thousand years. From the time that he reads his first paper before the Madras Literary Society in 1888, he has been speaking or writing on South Indian Coins. The limited number of copies of his contributions to learned Societies or Journals has become exhausted; for year after year those who have done him the honour of visiting him and seeing his coins have been given copies of whatever he had written on the relics of a forgotten coinage illustrating South Indian history. The call came for these being collected and printed in the form of a book so that his early efforts in this still vast and unexplored field of research might be made available to students interested in South Indian coins. The sole object of the present reprint of his papers, articles and notes on South Indian coins is but to instill an enthusiasm and promote a keen desire for the reconstruction of South Indian history on the basis of such evidence as is real and not on materials as are based on mere tradition and imagination.