The Government Museum, Egmore, Chennai, is conducting a week-long exhibition on Achyutharaya, the successor to the great ruler of the Vijayanagara dynasty, Krishnadevaraya. Exhibits, including coins and stone sculptures belonging to the 14th century AD, will be on display.
The coins of Achyutharaya, made of gold and weighing around 1.69 gm, are the highlight of the exhibition. They were discovered near Madurantakam. Vijayanagara coins were mostly Varahans and Pagodas and were sub-divided into half- and quarter-denominations.
The coins of the era, on their obverse side, carry figures of Hindu deities, animals and other symbols, and on the reverse is the king’s name in Nandi, Devanagari, Telugu or Kannada scripts. An assistant explained that the coinage generally contains deities including Hanuman, Shiva, Parvati, Lakshmi Narayana and Lakshmi Narasimha, Brahma Saraswathi and Nandi. The animals portrayed are the mythological double-headed eagle Gandhaberunda, the Varaha (boar), elephant, lion, camel, bull and horse. The symbols include the shankha (conch), chakra (discus), damaru (trident) and khadga (sword).
The coins on display have a diameter of 1 cm and have images of the Gandhaberunda on the obverse and the Nagari legend ‘Sri Prathapa Acyutharaya’ on its reverse. The Vijayanagar coinage continues to exist for nearly half a millennium — the longest of its kind in South India. The Pagodas were in vogue until the introduction of a uniform coinage in 1835.
Stone sculptures of the Gandhaberunda are also on display. The exhibition will continue till January 13.
