1 Kasu - Sethupati

The Sethupatis of Ramnad held authority over the Sethu — the crossing to Sri Lanka — as hereditary guardians, a role that gave them both religious prestige and practical leverage over pilgrimage traffic to Rameswaram. By the early eighteenth century they were navigating an increasingly fractured political situation, with Mughal pressure from the north and the Madurai Nayaka power they nominally served in terminal decline. Coinage like this kasu reflects local administrative continuity during that dissolution rather than any formal grant of minting rights.