58 



JOURNAL, E.A.S* (ceylon). [Vol. VIII. 



that they should be forgeries, and the inscription from which 

 this seal is copied contains the aspirated bh), I may point 

 out that even if they belong to the second century A.D., 

 their age will not affect the date of the coins on which the 

 same symbol is found. The design was repeated on these 

 coins for a long period after Christ. 



The fact* of this symbol's being thus cut on the G-al-lena 

 rocks appears to me to be decisive as to the country to 

 which the coins bearing it belong. A design borrowed from 

 a foreign coin would be quite meaningless at the end of an 

 inscription in Ceylon , purporting to record a royal gift ; 

 and it seems probable that the mark or symbol was either 

 copied from . a Simhalese coin, or was well-known as the 

 royal seal. The great numbers of the kahapanas mentioned 

 in the Mahavamsa also prove (if the statements are to be 

 believed), that coining was carried on in the Island. We 

 can hardly assume that coins of Indian origin were in such 

 profusion in Ceylon. 



It needs merely a glance at these ancient coins and the 

 later Simhalese coins (or the beautiful photographs of them 

 in Professor Rhys Davids' volume), to convince any one of 

 the immense falling off— both in drawing and engraving the 

 design on the money— which had taken place by the 

 middle of the 12th century. While the figure of the 

 monarch on the recent coins is almost more like a quadruped 

 than a biped — not to mention a king — the representation 

 of the sovereign on all these old coins is well-proportioned, 

 and, to a considerable extent, graceful. This difference in 

 the appreciation of the proportions of the human figure, and 

 in the ability to transfer this appreciation to the design on 

 the coins, indicates the lapse of a very long interval of time 

 between the latest specimen of the oblong money (No. 3) 

 and the earliest specimen of more modern money, the 

 1 Lamkeswara' coin of Parakrama Bahu. The difference in 

 the two coins is too great to be bridged over by a less period 

 than many centuries ; and this is confirmed by the relative 

 position in which the ancient coin was discovered. 



On a review of the whole available evidence, and especially 

 remembering the position of one coin in the very bottom of 

 the lowest stratum of the remains, it seems to me that, in the 

 present state of our knowledge of Simhalese numismatics, 



