1 Kasu

The Madurai Nayaks ruled as governors under the Vijayanagara Empire before asserting effective independence following Vijayanagara's collapse after the Battle of Talikota in 1565. By the mid-seventeenth century, Madurai operated its own mint with minimal external oversight. The kasu was the base unit of a currency system that ran parallel to, and often competed with, Portuguese and later Dutch trade currencies circulating along the Coromandel Coast.

Attribution within this series remains genuinely difficult — die workmanship varied considerably between mints at Madurai and Tiruchirapalli, and the seventy-year span assigned to most specimens reflects that uncertainty rather than confirmed production dates.