It is a most illuminating fact that gold, formerly exported from India, disappears from the coinage of Europe at about this very period, while silver is reduced to the meagre Carolingian _penny_ standard. [Illustration: Fig. 6. Kanarese Script: _Mayili kāsu ippatu_, “A token of 20 cash.”] VI THE COINAGE OF SOUTHERN INDIA The difficulties of the historian in tracing the fortunes of the numerous clans and dynasties which contended for sovereignty in the south from the third to the fourteenth century have been enumerated by Vincent Smith in his _Oxford History of India_. Even fewer guide-posts mark the path of the numismatist. Legends on South Indian coins are rare, and, when they occur are short, giving simply the ruler’s name or title: dates are rarer still. As in the early coinage of the Greeks, the heraldic symbol or cognizance serves as the stamp of authority; the fish, for example, is so used by the rulers of the Pāṇḍya dynasty. But in India we receive little help from contemporary records; and the habit, which conquerors indulged, of incorporating on their issues the cognizance of vanquished peoples, and the extensive imitation of popular and well-established types, worse confounds the confusion. In assigning coins to dynasties reliance has often to be placed upon the evidence of find-spots, a dubious method at all times, but least unsatisfactory for copper, which seldom circulates freely beyond the country of its origin. Again, the isolation of the southern peninsula is as marked in the development of the coinage as in political history. With the sole exception of the elephant pagodas of the Gajapati dynasty, imitated by Harsha-deva of Kashmīr, there is no certain point of contact between the south and the north after the third century A.D. Finally, the currency of the south has not received that attention from scholars which has been bestowed upon the more attractive money of the north. A careful systematic study, in conjunction with the historical material now available, would doubtless throw considerable light upon it and its strikers.