Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c25.s15.t2.1

c25.s15.t2.1

The silver portrait coins with bilingual legends were issued by a succession of Andhra kings from Vāsiṣṭhīputra Puḷumāvi to Vijaya Sātakarṇi, who ruled from about the end of the 1st century to the beginning of the 3rd century A.D. The coins are in an identical format and depict the bust of the king on the obverse and certain dynastic emblems on the reverse. The legend on the obverse giving the name of the king is in Prakrit written in the well-known Southern Brāhmī script of the period. The legend on the reverse is a literal rendering of the Prakrit legend in Tamil written in the Tamil-Brāhmī script of the Tamil cave inscriptions of the same period (Fig. 5.⁹). Typical of the series are the following two examples:⁷