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Art. XVIII.—Two Plates of Coins, presented to the Royal Asiatic Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2011

Extract

The accompanying two plates of coins present a type which is quite new to the numismatic world, if we except two or three specimens published in the second part of Vol. I., of the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, from the collection of my ingenious and indefatigable friend Colonel Tod, who has left no branch of Indian antiquities unexplored or unadorned. We are informed that he met with these coins in the whole of the district from Oujein to Cutch, as far as the Indus, and he ascribes them to the Balhara sovereigns, mentioned by the Arabian travellers of the ninth century, as translated by Renaudot, who conceives these princes to be the same as the Zamorin. In this attribution I must differ with Colonel Tod for several reasons, independent of one to which I shall now confine myself, and which is to be found in the text of the above work; viz., that the drachms coined by the Balhara princes are said to weigh one-half more than the Arab drachm, whereas the coins in question do not even reach the weight of this last.

Type
Original Communications
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1987

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References

page 275 note 1 This is the Chinese pronunciation; they are considered by De Guignes and others to be the Jetæ, or Getæ.

page 275 note 2 Although history is silent on this subject, in itself sufficiently obscure, there is every probability that the Yue-Chi were the ultimate destroyers of the Greek power in India. They had already subverted the Bactrian empire, or at least occupied the provinces of which it was formed, and the country which they afterwards subjugated in India, is exactly that which had been subdued and ruled by a branch of the Greek dynasty of Baetria. This braneh, amongst whose kings we find the names of Apollodotus, Demetrius, and Menander, was opposed to the Bactrian government, which was looked upon as that of usurpers; indeed, it was owing to these dissensions that the Bactrians were so much weakened as to fall an easy prey to the Scythians on one side, and the Parthians on the other. This occurred ahout 134 a. c. How long the power of the Greeks in India survived the downfall of their brethren in Bactria, can only be conjectured. Some information may perhaps be hereafter gleaned from coins;* hitherto, the only ones discovered are of Apollodotus and Menander. Colonel Tod has published copper coins of these princes, and Colonel Miles had the good fortune, in 1826, to recover two silver drachms of Apollodotus in the very district in which Arrian mentions them to have been current in his time.

Colonel Tod has also published four medals of Indo-Grecian kings, but they unfortunately only set forth the titles, without the names of the prince; they have every appearance of belonging to a later age than that of the three kings named above, the Sigma and Omega Σ Ω being written c ω.—See Strabo, , p. 516Google Scholar; also Trogus, , Prolog., 41Google Scholar, and Justin, lib. 41, cap. 6.

* Since penning the above, I rejoice to think that this presentiment, which I cherished ten years ago, is now likely to be realized by the extraordinary discoveries resulting from the researches of Messrs. Masson, Venturaa Swiney, Burnes, and others.

page 278 note 1 By a singular coincidence, Col. Tod has commenced from the same point, a circumstance which adds considerably to my confidence in its correctness: he does not mention his reasons for doing so.

page 278 note 2 In two or three instances the dots seem to be omitted, and, in one instance, they occur in the middle of the legend.

page 279 note 1 The Chinese have no sciences, and their religion, and most of their laws, are derived from the Indians; Nay, they are of opinion that the Indians taught them the worship of idols. Renaudot, 's Ancient India, p. 36.Google Scholar

We have already seen that these Indians were the Yue-Chi, settled in India.

* See Vol. II. p. 378.