Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c20.s15.2

c20.s15.2

³ I visited Karur for field study in March 1991. I was amazed to see in the glass cases of jewellery shops in the town hundreds of coins, mainly of the Cēras of the Caṅkam Age, not known earlier. I was told that all of them had been picked up from the river bed. I walked along the dry bed of the river Amaravathi and could see several small groups of tribals digging shallow pits in the sand and panning for coins and gold pieces. On an impulse, I asked one of them to dig at a point chosen by me at random. A shallow circular pit was dug to a depth of one metre when water level was reached. Out of this pit came in the next few minutes a square copper coin of the Cēra dynasty, a Roman copper coin and a gold ring made of wire!