48 
HINTS TO COIN-COI.LECTO-RS 
which I have never heard any theory suggested and am 
unable to form any opinion, while on 
Nos. 19, 20. ^ 1 ' 
the obverse appear numerous symbols, 
but invariably the bovi^, the Chera emblem, on either the 
right or left. These coins are met v>^ith chiefly in Tripati, 
Salem and the Coimbatore district. 
Early in the fourteenth century arose the Yijayanagar 
dynasty, which eventually grew to be the most powerful 
that Southern India has ever known. Its capital was at 
Beejnagar (or Humpi) some thirty miles to the north of 
Bellary, and its power when at its zenith extended over the 
greater part of the south, but at the battle of Talikota 
(A.D. 1565), they fell to rise no more before the Hahomedan 
armies of the Dakhan, the raja and his descendants retiring 
to the hill forts of Pennakonda,^"^ in the Anantapur district, 
Vellore and Chandragiri. From the latter fortress " Sri 
Rang Raya, the then representative of the old house, granted 
in 1640 a deed handing over to the English the site of 
modern Madras. Unfortunately that document was lost 
during the French occupation of Fort St. George, but it is 
stated' that in addition to the grant of land, it conferred the 
privilege of coining money, on the condition that the English 
should preserve on their coinage the ' representation of that 
deity who was the favorite object of his worship.' " 
How these conditions were actually fidfilled we shall see 
when considering the early English issues of Southern India. 
A tentative list of the successive monarchs of the Yijaya- 
nagar line has been published by Mr. Sewell in the second 
volume of his Archceological Survey Report of Southern 
India, and among them occur several names familiar to the 
coin-collector in this part. Like their predecessors they had 
Sewell's ArctiEeological Survey, Vol. I. p. IIP. 
Bidio's " The Pagoda or Yav^ho Coins of Southern India."' 
Marsden's " Nuniismata Orientalia," Part II, p. 739. 
