1 Kasu - Krishna Devaraya

Krishna Devaraya's reign is considered the political and cultural apex of the Vijayanagara Empire, a period when the kingdom controlled much of peninsular India and extracted enormous revenue from the spice trade passing through ports like Calicut and Pulicat. The kasu was the workhorse denomination of that economy — struck in enormous, largely uncounted quantities at multiple production centers, which accounts for the significant variation in flan quality and fabric seen across surviving examples.

Die alignment and planchet preparation were inconsistent by design, not accident. Attribution to Krishna Devaraya specifically relies primarily on typological sequences rather than explicit mint records, as the empire left no centralized documentation of its copper coinage output.