DESCRIPTION OF SELECT COINS. 593 



them Arjuna Huns, and states that about twenty of them were found in a 

 box in the palace at Seringapatam , with a memorandum in Persian, the 

 purport of which was that these Matsya, or Fish-marked Coins, were the 

 Coins of Arjuna, and were seven thousand years old. The letters are 

 termed JBdlabandi. 



According to a memorandum accompanying the drawing, these Coins 

 are attributed to Parikshit, the son of Arjuna, and successor of the 

 Pandavas on the throne of Hastinapur, an origin as little probable as that 

 assigned to them in the Persian paper. The Bdlabandi characters, which 

 term Major Moor was unacquainted with, are considered to be the old or 

 primitive Mahratta letters, and were probably a modification of Nagari . 

 What the characters on our Coin are intended for, it is not easy to guess, 

 but on the reverse of one of Major Moor's Coins, Plate 104, Figure 9, they 

 may be designed for "q^f%H ^, although very rude and unsatisfactory. 

 On the reverse, however, of his other specimen, Figure 11, is an inscription 

 similar to one on the reverse of our figure 90 — a coin assigned to Vira 

 Narasinha Deva, Raja of Vijarjanagar. In that case, these Matsya Huns 

 must abate something of their pretensions to antiquity. It seems not 

 impossible, however, that they are Coins of the Belal Rajas of Canara, or 

 even of the Wadeyars of Mysur. One account noticed in the list of Coins 

 in the Mackenzie Cabinet (Mackenzie Collection, Vol. 2, App. p. 225,) 

 ascribes them to the Pandya Rajas, or princes of Madura. 



Plate IV. Figures 82, 83, 84 and 85. 

 Gold Coins. 



Obverse.' — The anterior part of the body of an elephant. 



Reverse. — A scroll. 



These Coins arc not unfrequent, and are the work of the Gajnpati 

 princes of Orissa, who reigned from the eleventh to the sixteenth century. 



I 5 



