164 
HINTS TO COIN-COLLECTOES 
been transferred to Constantinople. Another specimen in 
gold tliat I have seen now in the collection of the Eev. 
J ames E. Tracy of Tirumangalam, closely resembles on the 
reverse an issue in the British Museum of Leo III, who 
ruled the Eastern Empire at the commencement of the eighth 
century. It is to he hoped that ere long further investigation 
may reveal specimens in better preservation, from which 
some decision can be arrived at on what at present can be 
little more than conjecture.^ 
To pass from the period when the money of Home was in 
circulation to the time when the Pathan rulers held sway 
seems a somewhat excessive bound. Yet, as far as I am 
aware, during this interval, no money locally struck in a 
foreign name found currency here, though one occasionally 
comes across a Persian toman which circulated in Mysore, or 
a specimen of "hook money " or Jarin,'^ minted probably on 
the shores of the Persian Grulf and conveyed hither in the 
course of trade, or as some suppose struck in the Maldives. 
Both place of mintage and date of these strange pieces of 
money seem lost in obscurity. Usually they occur in the 
shape, as their name implies, of a fish-hook, and are formed 
of two pieces of silver wire welded together and doubled 
round into this shape. A rarer form is perfectly straight. 
" Fishhook " larins are found in larger numbers in Ceylon 
than in Southern India, but are of considerable raiity in 
both localities. 
To pass now to the times of the Pathans and Moghals 
The earliest issues of these found in any quantities in Southern 
' Finds of similar coins have also teen made at Auaradhapara and 
Colombo recentlj'. 
^ Frangois Pyrard, a Frenchman, who from 1602 to 1607 vras a captive 
in the Maldives, thus writes : " Aux Maldives on ne fait que des larins .... 
" des pieces d' argent qu'ils appellent larins do valeur de huist 
" sols on ennuiron de notre monnoye, comme j'ai desia dit, longues comme 
" le doigt mais redoubli^es. Le roi les fait hattre en son isle ct y imprinier 
" son nom on lettres arabesques." 
