Indian Antiquary Vol 34

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

Page 84

78
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[APRIL 1905.
of Northern India in the days of Kanishka and Huvishka, and which refer to those princes as supreme Sovereigns. These inscriptions are written exclusively in Sanskrit or Prakrit, and intended to com memorate the setting-up of shrines and images, the digging of wells and similar pious works. The dates of these inscriptions, recorded in an identical era, prove that Kanishka was the predecessor of Havishka. The initial date of this era has not yet been definitely fixed;? but apart from the question of this era there is sufficient evidence to show that the commencement of Kanishka's reign cannot fall very far from the beginning of the second century A.D.
The find-places of the inscriptions are spread from the Peshawar Falley (the ancient Gandhāra), as far as Benares to the east and as far as the province of Malwa to the south. To the territories comprised within these limits we must add the Upper Kabul Valley and Bactria, which, according to the evidence of the coins and the Chinese records, still remained part of the Kushan empire. The extent of the latter under Kanishka may perhaps be better realized from the observation that its span from the North-west to the South-east was fully equal to the distance from Budapest to Madrid.
Perhaps even more important to us than the inscriptions are the coins of the great Kushan kings. They throw & vivid light upon the culture and religious conditions surrounding the dominant tribe. The remarkable variety displayed in the legends and types e coins of Kanishka and Huvishka is fully equalled by the profusion of the extant specimens. This latter fact is in itself a clear indication of the power and prosperity of the Kushān rule. Another observation of special interest is that Greek writing is exclusively used on their coins, though legends in the Greek language are found only on a few rare specimens of Kanishka's coinage. Since no national tradition can have bound the Kasban rulers to Greek writing, we may legitimately conclude that they chose this alphabet for their currency because the letters were generally familiar in those districts where their power bad first been consolidated, that is, in the valley of the Kabul River and in the Western Punjab.
What we read in this Greek writing merits our particular attention. In the place of the BACIAEYC BACIAEWN KANHPKOY of the few Greek coin legends we now find on the obverse s native title. In former days this was supposed to read PAONANO PAO KANHPKI KOPANO. That the word read as KANHPKI represents the name of Kanishka was already recognized by Prinsep in the thirties of the last century. The rest of the legend remained inexplicable and the object of many speculations until in my paper Zoroastrian Deities on Indo-Scythian Coins I proved that the peculiar letter occurring so often in these words and read as a "P" (r) does not represent the Greek P at all, but is a sign serving to denote the sh sound foreign to the Greek language. In form it is somewhat similar to the old Anglo-Saxon . On the basis of this discovery it was easy to demonstrate that the word KODANO stands for the tribal name of these monarchs : Kushan ; further, that the enigmatical pAONANO pao was nothing else than a fairly exact transliteration of the Middle Persian Shahanan Shah, the old Iranian title "King of Kings." Just in the same way the simple title pao, which is found on some coins and corresponds to the plain BACIAEYC, is merely
transcription of the title Shāh, which, in its Sanskrit form s'āhi, is so familiar to us from the Kusban inscriptions.
This explanation, which, I have reason to think, has since met with general acceptance among fellow-Indologists and among numismatists, has destroyed any hope we may have bad of
Yor long time it has been generally msumed on the basis of theory proposed by the late Mr. Ferguson and by Professor Oldenberg that the chronological or employed in these inscription is identical with the 10-called Saks era which starts from the year 78-79 A. D. According to an earlier Indian tradition it perpetuates the memory of the accession of some Buks or Boythian' king. Amongs recently found inseriptions of the Kuskan rulers there are, howover, several bearing dates which cannot be readily reconciled with this chronological mamp tion. Palæographical and other considerations make it appear probable that the date of Kanishka's accension may be somewhat later than the beginning of the Baka er.
• The dopper coins of Kanishka and other Kushin sovereigos ato to be got in ench numbers in the basaars of the Western Panjab, Kashmir, and Kabul that one might almost my that they bave romained in ciroulation for eightoon centuries. Gold coins of Huvishka and Kanishka also have come to light in these parts in relatively largo number.
See my monograph, Zoroastrian Deities on Indo-Beythian Coins, Indian Antiquary, Vol. XVII. (Bombay, 1888).