1882.] G. B'ldie— The Pagoda Coins of Southern India. 141 



The President reported that Dr. J. Scully had been elected a Mem- 

 ber o£ the Natural History Committee; and that Mr. J. Wood-Mason, 

 the Natural History Secretary, had left India. 



A vote of thanks was unanimously passed to Mr. Wood-Mason for 

 his valuable services as Natural History Secretary for the past 8 years, 

 and for the care and attention he had devoted to the editing of the 

 Society's Journal, Part II. 



The Seceetaet reported that the following coin had been acquired 

 under the Treasure Trove Act : 



A Silver Coin found in a village of the Manpur Pergunnah. 



The following papers were read : 



1. On the Pagoda or Varaha Coins of Southern India. — By Dr. G. Bidie, 

 Government Central Museum., Madras. 

 (Abstract.) 

 The unit of the monetary system of Southern India in old times was 

 the ^o\^ fagoda, subdivided xnio fanams and cash. Latterly from political 

 causes, which are discussed in this paper, the varieties of these coins 

 became very numerous, so that their discrimination at the present day 

 is a matter of some difficulty. Taken as a whole, the pagodas afford 

 most valuable and interesting information regarding the early political 

 history of India south of the Kistna. Their value in this respect was 

 long overlooked, and no systematic attempt was made until recently to 

 form a permanent public collection of the series. Owing to this neglect, 

 many of the older forms are quite unknown to numismatists, and there 

 is little prospect of making good the defect. As regards those that have 

 been preserved, very little information of a reliable kind has been recorded 

 and the few facts that remain refer mostly to the more modern forms 

 and are scattered in local histories, travels, &c., which sometimes contain 

 incidental allusions to the currency of the day. 



To numismatists who have been accustomed to study old European 

 coins or those of the Muhammadan sovereigns of India, the Madras pagodas 

 appear particularly puzzling and uninteresting, as they do not always bear 

 the name of the sovereign who struck them, and never give any informa- 

 tion as to the place or date of mintage. The derivation of the name 

 pagoda is discussed, and that given by Bartolomeo, who lived in Southern 

 India from 1776 to 1789, adopted. The forms of the pagoda of which 

 there are specimens in the Madras Museum are divided into the following 

 groups, arranged according to dynasties and in chronological order : (1) Bud- 

 dhist Coins, (2) Chalukya Coins, (3) Nonambavadi Coins, (4) Coins of the 

 Gajapati Dynasty, or Elephant Lords, (5) the Lingaj^at Pagoda, (6) Vija- 

 yanagar or Bijanagar Pagodas, (7) the Gandikota Pagoda, (8) the Chital- 



