Indian Antiquary Vol 28

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 69

FEBRUARY, 1899.]
INDO-CHINESE COINS IN THE BRITISH COLLECTION.
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is not probable that the Chinese statements about the written characters refer to the IndianKharosthi script. They rather indicate a modified form of Indian-Brahmi. The Kharoṣṭbî, as seen on the Indo-Chinese coins, does not merely "resemble the Indian model," but is identical with that once current in North-Western India and Eastern Afghanistan. Hiuen Tsiang was a Buddhist monk, and on his travels he resided in Buddhist monasteries, and came in contact almost exclusively with Buddhist culture. The Indian-Brahmi was the home-script and the peculiar script of Buddhism, and was carried by them wherever they went. It went with them, as we know from the Bower and Weber Manuscripts to Kuchar, and it is equally probable that it went with them to Khotan. The introduction of Buddhism into both these places may be traced back to as early a time as the first or second centuries B. C. In both places, as the Chinese note, the Indian Brâhmi developed "slight alterations,"15 known to us in Kuchar as the peculiar Central-Asian Brâhmi.16 Hiuen Tsiang, in the passage above quoted seems to distinguish between the spoken and the written language of Khotan. By the latter, which he calls "the mode of forming their sentences," and which he says "resembles the Indian model," I presume he means Sanskrit or Pâli, such as was used in Buddhist literature, and which can have been known only to a very limited class of people, the Religious and Learned. The "spoken language," which I take to have been that of the general population. must have been the Uighur Turki, and this, as Hiuen Tsiang says, differed "from that of other countries," i. e., China and India. This view is confirmed by a remark of Sung-yun (518 A. D.) respecting Yarkand. Of this town he says, "their customs and spoken language are like those of the people of Khotan, but the written character in use is that of the Brahmans," , . e., the Indian Brâhmi. Moreover, Fahian (400 A. D.) reports expressly with regard to the whole of Eastern Turkestan, that though the people speak different Turki (Hu) dialects, "the professed disciples of Buddha among them all use Indian books and the Indian (Sanskrit) language."18 None of these Chinese Buddhist pilgrims appear to have noticed the existence of the Kharosthî script, whether in Khotan or in its Indian home-land. The only script of the Semitic class which Hiuen Tsiang noticed, he does in connection with the kingdom of Kesh, 19 and this script cannot have been the Kharosthî, though it may have been allied to it. Possibly in their time, Kharosthi had practically ceased to exist. In Khotan, at the time of the Indo-Chinese coins, it was evidently the secular official script of the native Government, though not quite exclusively so, as is shown by the Kharosthi manuscript found near that town by M. Dutreil de Rhins and containing a portion of the Buddhist Dhammapada.20 It does not seem probable that, after the severance of the Indian connection of the Uighur kingdom of Khotan, the use of the official Kharosthi script survived for any great length of time. Its forms, as seen in the Dutreil de Rhins Manuscript and on the Indo-Chinese coins, are much alike, and both are identical with that form of it which prevailed under the Kushana (Yuechi) kings in India, that is in the first and second centuries A. D. Though its form remained practically unchanged for a century or two longer in its home-land, it is very improbable, to judge from the parallel case of the Indian-Brahmi, that this would have been the case in a foreign country like Khotan. It is not probable, therefore, that the Indo-Chinese coins can be placed later than the end of the second century A. D. They show, as already remarked, four, if not five, different regal names. Four or five reigns, at an average of 20 or 25 years, occupy a period of about 100 years. This brings us to, at least, the year 173 A. D., as none of the coins can have been struck before 73 A D. The initial date is certain; the terminal date must be near the end of the second century. The period 73-200 A. D., therefore, is a safe date to give to the Indo-Chinese coins of Khotan.
16 With regard to Kuchar, see Hiuen Tsiang's remark, in Beal's Buddhist Records of the Western World, Vol. I,
p. 19. 1 See a description of it in my Report, in the Journal, As. Soc. Beng., Vol. LXVI (1897), p. 242, LXII, p. 4. 17 See Beal's Buddhist Records of the Western World, Vol. I, p. lxxxix.
1 See ibidem, Vcl. I, p. xxiv.
See Comptes Rendus de L'Académie des Inscriptions, Vol. XXV (1897), pp. 251 ff.
19 See ibidem, Vol. I, p. 38,