Polonnaruwa to Kotte Era

Polonnaruwa to Kotte Era

At that time, the Mahabharata had four main languages ​​belonging to the Dravidian language family of South India, namely Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, and Tamil. It seems that there have been a large number of dynasties of emperors that have arisen since ancient times for the governance of India. We can see from old books that there were more than fourteen dynasties to rule South India. Chola, Pandya, Konguchera, Mandurei Sultan, Madurai Nayaka, Thanjavur Nayaka, Jinjinayaka, Bana, Sethupati, Thanjavurmaratha, Jinji Maratha, Sivaganga Raja etc.
Thus, a matter that can be clearly seen in the study of Sri Lankan coins is that the great influence of the Chola, Pandaya, Chera and Power authorities has been correlated with the use of Sri Lankan coins. Even more than the Anuradhapura period, it became more prominent during the production of coins with the beginning of the Polonnaruwa period. It appears that the face of the reigning king or the emblem of his dynasty ( the tiger, fish, bow, elephant) was printed on one side of the coin. Also, during the observation of the coins, we could see that the symbols of the gods related to the religion that the ruler believed in, or the objects of nature, such as the sun, moon, stars, water, mountains, etc., which they considered sacred, were printed on one side of the coin.
It is special that the Masu coins belonging to the Polonnaru period, which may have started in the tenth century, were maintained under a single logo for about eight centuries, that is until the Kingdom of Kandy. Although the dynasties changed from time to time during this time, it appears that the members of the Dravidian family did not change the main components of the emblems used in coinage. Especially the emblem of Vishnu on the back of the Masu coin stands out among these. It is also a common feature to mention the name of the ruler of most types of coins in their own language characters. Despite this, it could be observed that the crest of the clan or several clan crests were combined and printed on one side of the coin. Considering the weight in the production of coins, Gunja ( Abrus precatorius ) and manchadi (Adenanthera pavonina), which were considered as the basic unit of weight since ancient times, have been prepared so that many coins can be taken in multiples. Due to the lack of specific weight of Gunja and Manchadi in India and Ceylon, slight differences in the weight of the coins can be seen.

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