Back in the 1970s, K. Anjaneya Prasad, then a lecturer in commerce at V.K.R. College, Gannavaram, was watching his children play with his mother’s old bottu petti (literally vermilion box, the vanity boxes of that era, a traditional farewell gift given to a new bride by her parents when she left for her in-laws’ home) when an old copper coin fell out of it.
Intrigued by the coin’s faded markings, which seemed to be in English, but were evidently not of British origin, he took it to a colleague in the history department at the college. All his friend was able to tell him was that it was indeed a very old coin.
In the years since then, Mr. Prasad — who is now 75 years old — has been trying to find out what the provenance of the coin really is. “I approached every history faculty, libraries, museums, even Roman Catholic nuns,” he says. “I have referred to hundreds of books to find out the history of the coin.” A Professor of Numismatics at the Calcutta University had identified it as an invaluable piece of evidence to the history in the region.
Mr. Prasad showed The Hindu the coin, which he usually stores in a bank locker for safety. The text on the coin says ‘L. VERUS AVC ARMENIACUS’ on one side and ‘VRP IIII. IMPII’ on the other, which would seem to indicate a connection with Rome. “Later I found out it was a coin of Roman Emperor Lucius Verus Armenicus, one of the two adopted heirs of the Emperor of Rome, Antoninus Pius.” That would tale the coin back to the second century of the Common Era.
Mr. Prasad has no idea how his ancestors got the coin. He says that locals have found such coins in ruins in various parts of the Amaravati region. Professor M. Srinivas Reddy, head of the History department at Andhra Loyola College, says that the finding of a Roman coin in Amaravati could be explained by the Romans having trade with Dharanikota.
