84 



Numismatic Gleanings. [No. 7, new series. 



in Bellary, the contents of which were presented by Mr. E. B. 

 Glass, the Sub Collector, in whose division they were found to 

 the Revd. Mr. Lowry of the Scottish Church, and by him carried 

 to Scotland. Some others are said to have been taken from a 

 well in the Hatghar zemindarry in Ganjam and coming into the 

 possession of the proprietor, were lost or melted up. 



From the practice of stamping the figure of the Boar or vardha 

 on the Chalukya coins, the coins themselves came to be distin- 

 guished as vardha mudra or " boar stamped" and the word va- 

 raha or vardgan to be the vernacular term universally applied to 

 the characteristic gold coin of Southern India, to which Europeans 

 gave the name of pagoda. 



But as a gold coin of the same value was probably in circula- 

 tion long before the Chalukya symbol attained such general cele- 

 brity, so the term varaha is found to have superseded other names 

 of more ancient date. In Telegu the abbreviated form of ex- 

 pressing this coin in writing is by the letter g. {^) as *?Co 

 which is invariably read " one varaha" or pagoda. This has 

 doubtless come from gad'hydnam a word of Sanscrit origin not in 

 Brown's Dictionary, but of constant occurrence in inscriptions of 

 all ages. 



In like manner the Canarese mode of writing the word varaha is 



globe or ball (equivalent to the Sans, gutika, " pilulus") which was 

 the ancient name of the small spherical coins described in No. 1. 



In Tamil, the oldest and apparently the root of all the Dravida 

 dialects, the word vardha is now expressed in ordinary writing by 

 the sign a.ir the first syllable of the word vardgan. 



But this is a modern practice. The word varaha never occurs 

 in old writings. To the best of my recollection I have not met 

 with it in any of the numerous ancient Tamil inscriptions which I 

 have collected from all parts of the peninsula. 



Whenever a sum of money is mentioned in these ancient records, 

 the denomination in which it is expressed is pon, a genuine Tamil 

 word, the normal signification of which is " gold." Even now 

 this word is occasionally used in the sense of a pagoda, in social 



syllable 



