Este texto está publicado en inglés. El museo no lo ha traducido y prefiere decirlo antes que ofrecer una traducción automática.
What are Hoysala and Vijayanagara gold coins?
They are the gold coinage of two southern Indian states — the Hoysalas, from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, and Vijayanagara after them until the seventeenth. Both struck small, thick gold pieces by punching a die into a globule of metal. The largest, the pagoda, is about the size of a fingernail; the everyday fanam is smaller than a lentil and still carries a full deity figure.
The habit museums teach is to look at coins as a series. It is the wrong habit for this material. A Vijayanagara fanam is four millimetres across and half a millimetre of that is legible; you learn nothing from a tray of forty of them and a great deal from one under magnification for five minutes. The numismatics gallery shows them accordingly.
Punched, not struck
A European hammered coin is made between two dies, and the design covers the flan because the flan is flat. A South Indian gold coin was made by dropping a globule of gold onto a lower die and driving a punch into it. The metal spreads outward as it is compressed, so the centre takes the die fully and the edges receive less and less of it.
That is the single most important fact for a viewer. When a fanam looks like half a picture, this is usually not wear. It is how it left the mint. Judge these coins by the sharpness of the centre and not by the completeness of the image.
What is on them
- Hoysala. The dynastic emblem — a warrior confronting a tiger — appears on the larger denominations, with a legend in Nagari naming the ruler or a title. The types are few and the standard is high.
- Vijayanagara. A wider iconography: Venkateshwara standing frontally, Balakrishna seated, Shiva and Parvati together, the boar and dagger of the imperial emblem, and Hanuman and Garuda on some issues. Reverses generally carry a two- or three-line legend.
- Weight. The pagoda holds close to three and a half grams with unusual consistency across centuries and successor states, which is why it was accepted so widely and why the word survived into European trade records.
Why gold, at this size
A gold coinage of very small denominations only makes sense in an economy where gold circulates at the level of ordinary transactions. South India had one, sustained by both mining and long-distance trade, and the fanam is its signature: the smallest unit worth striking in the most valuable metal, made in enormous numbers, in a form that could be carried in a fold of cloth.
The same metal, worked by the same regional traditions and often to the same weight standards, turns up as ornament in jewellery. Coins were also frequently pierced and worn, and a coin necklace is a monetary document as much as an ornament.
Looking at one
- Find the centre of the punch. Read outward from it.
- Identify the figure before you look for the legend; the figure is bigger.
- Check the edge for a piercing or a solder scar — evidence it was worn.
- Weigh it, if you can. On this material the weight is the most reliable single piece of evidence you will get.