164 



JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). [VOL. XIX. 



contact with Asia, and its upper classes having leisure as well 

 as wealth, it was natural for the Asiatic trade to improve." 



It may appear curious that the only remaining indication of 

 Roman trade should consist of small comparatively valueless 

 copper coins, and of a very small number of those of more 

 precious metal. But apart from the possibility that the bulk 

 of the trade may have been carried on by means of barter, 

 owing possibly to the unaccustomedness of the Sinhalese to see 

 coined money in large quantities, it does not seem to me, on 

 consideration, to be unlikely that the gold and silver currency 

 has practically completely disappeared. 



When the great rarity of genuine* specimens of the Sinhalese 

 gold and silver currency of the 12th and 13th centuries a.d. 

 is remembered, it is not difficult to conceive that their more 

 remote Roman predecessors may have been nearly all melted 

 down, especially when it is borne in mind that the centuries 

 which separate the issues one from another, i.e., the 6th to 11th, 

 were among the most stormy and troubled in the history of 

 Ceylon — a time when the language and the written characters 

 were changing, when the country was continually in a state 

 of civil war and was frequently over- run by invaders, and 

 when no man's life or property was safe or secure. This period 

 was the Sinhalese dark ages. 



Is it therefore to be wondered at if money, no longer current,! 

 was as rapidly as possible converted into ornaments which 

 might be worn upon the person, or melted down and dedicated 

 to the propitiation of the gods who so stonily hid their faces 

 from troubled Lanka ? 



Another point to be considered with regard to these small 

 copper coins is that raised by Captain Tufnell in his " Hints to 

 Coin Collectors in Southern India." Captain Tufnell describes 

 coins found in the Madura District, which are very similar to 



* How rare genuine specimens are I am inclined to think very few 

 people thoroughly realize. Gold " Lankesvaras " and " Vijaya Bahus " 

 are turned out wholesale in Kandy now, and are so skilfully done that 

 most of them are duly absorbed into collections. The improved 

 manufacture of late is marked. 



f This would not apply to the silver eldlings so strongly, as I believe 

 they were current through this whole period. 



