________________
OCTOBER, 1879.]
ON SOME BILINGUAL COINS OF BOKHÅRÅ.
269
ON SOME BILINGUAL COINS OF BOKHÂRÂ, STRUCK IN THE IIND CENTURY
OF THE HIJRAHCONTINUATIVE OF SASSANIAN TYPES AND DEVICES. BY EDWARD THOMAS, F.R.S., CORRESPONDANT DE L'INSTITUT DE FRANCE. T PROVED my devotion to the cause of Indian to interpret. In the present case this task is
Antiquities in undertaking to bring out a easy, and the result assuring. The practice collected edition of Prinsep's Essays in 1858. obtaining among the Sassanian kings which led In tracing the sequence of his discoveries, I had them to select, on their accession, the typical very early to admit, that however original, and form of Crown and its accessories by which relatively independent Indian progress might their conventional portraits and the impress on have been in its primitive stages, the one hun- their money might be distinctly recognised, dred and odd nations adverted to by the Greek enables us to pronounce, at once, and without writers represented a considerable advance upon reference to the formal legend, from whose any such delusion as universal Indian homo- mints any given specimen was issued. The geneity. As new discoveries of the condition of leading original from which the Bokhara coins, the "old world” in the valley of the Euphrates now under review, were copied, reveals itself and elsewhere grows upon us, so we become obviously in the mintages of Varah rân V., more and more prepared to admit interchanges an example of which may be described as follows: of ideas and relative obligations, in matters Coin of Varahran V. Gor. (4. D. 417–438.) which have hitherto been claimed as the exclu- 1 No. 1.-Silver. Size 9 of Mionnet's scale. sive property of the dark land of the Hindûs. Obverse.--Head of the king, to the right, with
The present paper will, I trust, interest our his conventional castellated Crown, the centralone Parsi friends and ethnical fellow Aryans in
of the usual three points having been recalling the legends of Bahram Gor, whose reputed visit to Indian soil may, perhaps, after
removed in order to admit of the compact ingerall, prove to have been something more than an
tion of a dot, or small ball, above which is placed ancient myth : as well as in placing before them
the distinguishing half-moon, surmounted by fresh numismatic records of the revolt of
the dynastic globe, or balloon of ether Bahram Chobin, minted on the northern Pehlwi legend.-af ff wada ., slopes of the Hindu Khûsh,-whose name has
Transcript secured as prominent a place in the annals of in modern es wirely we yo uljo obey the West in Gibbon's eloquent words as has Persian. been accorded to it in the national traditions of Reverse. -The national fire-altar with attenthe East.
dant supporters, armed with spears and wearOur Muslim fellow subjects in India will
ing crowns similar to that of the king, figured equally appreciate the numismatic evidence of a
on the obverse, but the surmounting globe is now closely determined date, bearing upon the omitted. The altar presents this peculiarity that schisms and contests of their leading sects in the Ormazd's head, usually represented as rising Khorasan during the second century of the
out of the flames, is, in this case, superseded by Hijrah, as well as the secondary testimony to the head of the king himself with his identical the progress of the arms of the Faithful in Cen
crown; while the head itself is placed in a new tral Asia.
position in the body of the upper part of the I need scarcely appeal to English antiqua
altar, below the flames, and the legend on the rians to listen with patience to the discussion of
margin in like manner seems to indicate a perquestions of high paleographic importance, or to sonal connexion with the monarch in its termsfollow me in tracing the historical and geogra: "Varahran's Fire." phical developments these coins suggest as pre
Pehlei p liminary to more extended investigation.
., The first duty of a Numismatist is to en
Persian pl uly deavour to trace the prototype of the coins he has' These altars were made portable, and are so
Bee under No. 8.
