220 



Numismatic Gleanings. 



[no. 6, new series, 



XIII. Numismatic Gleanings. By Walter Elliot, 



Madras Civil Service. 



No. J. 



Although considerable attention has been paid of late years to 

 the investigation of the Hindu and Mahomedan coins of India, 

 numismatologists have confined their researches chiefly to those oc- 

 curring north of the Nerbudda and in the trans Indus provinces ad- 

 jacent the N. West frontier. But whilst the writings of Prinsep, 

 Professor Wilson, Cunningham, Thomas, and others, give ample 

 details of the historical results deducible from the ancient coins 

 which have been discovered in Upper India and Bactria, scarcely 

 any notice has been taken of those of the south. 



A principal cause of this neglect is probably to be found in the 

 comparatively uninteresting character of the coins themselves. 

 Although sufficiently numerous and of very diversified types, they 

 rarely present an intelligible legend, and hardly ever a date. 



As subjects of historical inquiry therefore, their value is propor- 

 tionably small. Something however may still be gleaned from 

 them by the patient investigator of past events. The localities and 

 extent of range in which they are found, the variations in the ty- 

 pical symbols of a series, and the occasional occurrence of a name 

 or title, afford data for drawing conclusions, which in the dearth of 

 historical records are far from unimportant. 



Southern India presents the extraordinary spectacle of a people 

 who have carried the art of composition to a high degree of cul- 

 tivation without having produced a single work of a really histo- 

 rical character. The clieritras, pattiyams, katfhas, van'sdvalis, dan- 

 dakavilesy mdhatmyas which profess to record historical facts are 

 little better than mythological romances, filled with chronological 

 extravagancies and preternatural fables, 



