Art on Lead Tokens
Coins from Ancient Ruhuna

This attempt is not the traditional line drawing of coin, but an attempt to visualize what may have been represented on the coin. Trying to interpret what the ancient Artist who made the token may have tried to illustrate on the token, to aid someone who looks at the token to see some of the detail which is otherwise missed. The ancient art that is illustrated on these lead coins can only be visualized by an artist and not with a camera which can never capture the exact stance and perspective.
Coloured Artwork which are realistic representations of the stylised drawing on coin is by Wildlife Artist Sanjaya Weeratunge.

The adopted methodology is to start with tracing the outline of an enlarged print-out the coin scan on A4 paper. When painting the artist deviates from outline as little as possible to get a realistic representation of the Animal or Human figure. In this way the drawing can be super-imposed on the coin image after appropriate scaling.

We started with 10 Tokens, which he has now completed in the COVID-19 lockdown. We fine tuned the art with Proof sent by email and he brought them to me after the curfew. The artwork has now been scanned, scaled to the size of coin, and have been posted below.

Wilfried Pieper's Line drawing of 8 of these coins from the 1999 book Ruhuna. The Ancient Civilization Re-Visited by by Osmund Bopearachchi and Rajah M. Wickramasinhe are also included for reference. Those lead tokens were obtained in 2016 from Lalith Raddella in Colombo who had purchased a selection from Raja Wickramasinghe.

When I sent this page to Wilfried Pieper for comment he said I quote "The images done by the artist are simply wonderful! I Thank him for his encouraging words which will motivate me to ask Sanjaya to paint more of the lead tokens for me.

I included 2 of the images in a lecture I gave at the 1st Newman Numismatic Portal Symposium on 2020 August 30th, and this page was reviewed by Wayne Homren in the E-sylum of 2020 September 6th.

Please send any comments to me via email kavanr @ gmail.com

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The individual webpages for each token has been linked to OBRW-ID given between each pair of images.

Obverse	OBRW-ID	Sanjaya Art	Line Drawing and comments
	R1		Leopard pouncing
	A5		Sathdhantha Elephant. The word Sathdantha is used on an Elephant which has Seven points of his body touch the ground.
	A7		The obverse of coin used on the cover page of OBRW book. Identified as a stylised lion to right, looks like a lizard as the whipped tail extends behind the hind legs at the same size of body before thinning out. The oversize paws and the pointed head looks like that of a Monitor.
	A17		Both sides of this coin used on the cover page of OBRW book.
	A22		Obv: Described in OBRW as a Maneless lion, looks more like a Deer as the legs are long relative to body. The square above is not connected to the short tail.
	E11		Lion
	E12		Obv: Described in OBRW as a lion jumping, looks like an antelope in flight. The pair of hind legs curved up, the short stubby tail, a pointed head with antlers.
	F1		Obv: Described in OBRW a lady with Mirror. Note the long plait of hair divided in two at the end, as used even today.
	F13		Plate Image of F13 in OBRW and size matches specimen. But Line Drawing and Weight of 4.135 grams does not match published Weight of 2.11 grams. Obv: Horse running right has hind legs back.
	X3		Obv: Sambar with wide antlers Rev: Brahami around dot at center

Part of the website coins.lakdiva.org.lk for detailed information about coins that circulated in Lanka since 300 BCE.