"The maritime traffic, to which the ship type bears witness is also attested by the large numbers of Roman coins which are found on the Coromandel Coast." (E. J. Rapson, Coins of the Andhra Dynasty, lxxxii).
| Early South Indian Coins | |
| (re-drawn and restored from Elliot, Coins of Southern India) | |
| Plate I, fig. 38 | Plate II, fig. 45 |
| |
| Kurumbar or Pallava coin of the Coromandel coast; showing a two-masted ship like the modern coasting vessel or d'honi. | Andhra coin, showing a two-masted ship presenting details like those of the Gujarāti ship at Boroboedor, and the Persian ship at Ajanta. |
The shipping of the Andhra and Pallava coins doubtless survives in the modern "masula boats" at Madras:
"The harbor (of Madras) can never be a harbor of refuge, and all that the works will secure is immunity for landing and shipping operations from the tremendous surf which is so general along the whole of the Coromandel coast. . . . Passenger traffic from the shore to the vessels is carried on by jolly-boats from the pier, or masulah boats from the shore. These latter are relics of a bygone day, when Madras was an open roadstead and when landing through the surf by any form of jolly-boat was a matter extremely difficult, if not impossible. These masulah boats are flat-bottomed barges constructed of planks sewn together with rope of cocoanut fibre, caulked with oakum, and are able to withstand better than far more solidly built craft the shock of being landed on the sandy beach from the crest of a seething breaker." (Furneaux, India, 254.)
