1 Copper Unit

The Kongu Cheras were a regional power centered in the Kongu Nadu territory of present-day Tamil Nadu, distinct from the ancient Chera dynasty of the Sangam period despite sharing a dynastic name. Their copper coinage circulated in a region that had long been contested between the Cholas, Pandyas, and various Vijayanagara tributary chiefs, and by the late 14th and early 15th centuries the dynasty was operating in the shrinking political space between Vijayanagara expansion and local nayaka consolidation. Mitchell's Western India reference places this type firmly within that fragmented regional minting tradition.