300 Specimens of Ceylon Coins. [April, 



possession, kindly transmitted the coins themselves, allowing me to 

 retain the duplicates. Mr. Turnour also generously presented me 

 some coins lately dug up in the ruins of the old city of Montollee by 

 Mr. Gifford, Assistant Surveyor General. So that, including the 

 gold coin sent me six years ago by Sir W. Horton himself, and the 

 coins in the Society's Cabinets from Dipaldinna (which are of the same 

 class precisely), I am now in a condition to issue a full plate of this 

 type, preserving a degree of chronological order in their arrangement. 



The device on all these coins is the same ; a rude standing figure or 

 raja on the obverse, holding a flower in the left hand, and an instrument 

 of warfare in the right. The skirts of the dress are rudely depicted 

 on either side of the body, and the fold of the dhoti falls between 

 his legs, which being taken for a tail, has led some to call him Hanu- 

 man, but I think without reason : there are 5 dots and a flower to the 

 right. On the reverse the same figure is more rudely depicted in a 

 sitting attitude. The mode of expressing the face is altogether 

 unique in the history of perverted art. 



Fig. 1, the gold coin sent me by Sir W. Horton, has the inscrip- 

 tion 'Jff ^i3r3?^ Sri Lankeswara on the side of the seated raja. 



This name 1 presume to be the minister Lokaiswara of Mr. Tur- 

 nour's table, who usurped the throne during the Sholean subjection 

 in the eleventh century, (A. D. 1060 ;) but he is not included among 

 the regular sovereigns, and the coin may therefore belong to another 

 usurper of the same name who drove out the queen Lilavati' in A. D. 

 1215, and reigned for a year. The Ceylon ministers seem partial to 

 the name : one is called Lankana'th. 



Fig. 2, a copper coin, copied from Marsden, but found also in 

 Mr. Lizar's drawings, though I have not seen the actual coin. The 

 name is ~^\ f3*TR 37^ Sri Vijaya bdhu. (Marsden makes the last 

 word 3T<^ gada, erroneously.) 



There are several princes in the list of this name : the first and 

 most celebrated was proclaimed in his infancy in the interregnum 

 above alluded to, A. D. 1071, and reigned for fifty years. He expel- 

 led the Sholians from the island and re-established the Buddhist supre- 

 macy. 



Fig. 3, a copper coin, given to me by Capt. Ord. One is engraved 

 in the Researches, and is doubtingly interpreted Sri Rama ndtli by 

 Mr. Wilson. From many examples, however, it is clearly ^ WofW^Tas 

 Sri Pardkrama bdhu. The first of this name was crowned at Pollonna- 

 rowe, A. D. 1153, and sustained for 33 years the most martial enter- 

 prizing and glorious reign in Singhalese history. 



