Though its territory lay partially in Southern India, it will be convenient to include here the coinage of the great Andhra dynasty, since several of its issues are closely connected with the currency of the north. The Andhras probably became independent about the year 230 B.C., and their rule lasted for four and a half centuries. Their coins of various types have been found in Mālwā, on the banks of the Krishna and Godavari rivers, the original home of the race, as far south as Madras, in north Konkan, and elsewhere in the Deccan and the Central Provinces. The earliest to which a date can be assigned are those bearing the name of a king Śrī Sāta, about 150 B.C. Most Andhra coins are either of billon[10] or lead, with Brāhmī legends on both obverse and reverse, and characteristic devices are the elephant, _chaitya_ (Buddhist chapel), and bow (Pl. I, 7). Sometimes the “Ujjain symbol” appears on the reverse. One issue, in lead, of Vasishṭhīputra Śrī Pulumāvi (about A.D. 130) is interesting, in that it has on the obverse a ship with two masts, and was evidently intended for circulation on the Coromandel coast. Coins have been assigned to seven Andhra kings, the latest of which, Śrī Yajña Sātakarṇī (about A.D. 184), struck not only the usual lead and billon coins, but restruck and imitated the silver hemidrachms of the satrap Nahapāna (Pl. III, 1). The Andhra lead coinage was copied by one or two feudatory chiefs in Mysore and North Kanara. [10] Billon, or potin, is a mixture of silver and copper in varying proportions. [Illustration: Fig. 2. Greek Script on Coin of Hippostratos. Cf. Pl. II, 5.] II COINS OF THE INDO-GREEKS, THE ŚAKAS AND PAHLAVAS We have seen in the last chapter how foreign influences gradually began to make themselves felt in the fabric and design of the purely native coins of the North-West. These influences gradually widened until the whole of Northern, Western and parts of Central India were affected. Through eight centuries these foreign types were reproduced on the coins of those territories; and we can observe the gradual debasement of the original models as they become less and less intelligible to successive strikers, until they disappear in the general cataclasm that succeeded the terrible inroads of the Huns in the sixth century. In the secluded kingdom of Kashmīr one type did indeed survive as late as the fifteenth century, a mere shadow of a shade, from which all form and feature had vanished. The coins included in this chapter and the next are those of the invaders who brought about this important change.