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JUNE, 1910.)
ARCHÆOLOGICAL NOTES FROM BURMA.
185
etc., and, for this purpose, may be attached to the Archæological Department in India. At other times they will be employel at headquarters in working up materials collected during their tours. While on tour, the holders of the scholarships will be entitled to travelling allowance at the rates admissible under the Civil Service Regulations.
(iii) The scholarships will, in the first instance, be awarded for one year. In the case of promising students, they may be extended by the Director of Public Instruction for a further period not exceeding two years, and the amount in that case may be raised by the Director to Rs. 125 a month, if the work done justifies the increase.
(iv) The first of these annual scholarships will be tenable from 1st August 1909, and applications should reach the Director of Public Instruction by 1st July 1909."
These liberal rules seem to be well adapted to effect their purpose, and we hope that suitable candidates will apply.
During the year "the collection of coins in the Phayre Provincial Museum was catalogued. Including pieces of silver bullion, it consists of 76 typical coins, which have been claseed according to nationality as follows:
Arakanese, 16; Burmese, 8; Indian, 48; Siamese, 1; Chinese, 2; and European, 1.
Burmese ocinage dates only from the reign of Bodawpaya (1781-1819 A.D.) and few Burmese coins are, therefore, extant. Both Arakanese and Burmese coins, however, appear to have been primarily intended for a commemorative purpose, being struck in the first regnal year of kings, or to be deposited in the relic-chambers of pagodas. Their use as currency was an afterthought, borrowed from India, where the idea that coinage for currency was an act of the State arose after contact with Western nations."
The Rangoon collection is merely a nucleus, and notwithstanding the scarcity of Burmese and Arakanege pieces, is capable of much enlargement. The coius of Siam and the adjoining countries should be added, but there is no use in including casual specimens of European and Chinese mintage. The Rangoon cabinet should be given & special local character, and miscellaneous rubbish should be excluded.
Mr. Rellard of Sagaing submitted impressions of two silver coins or medals, supposed to be about a thousand years old. The obverse device is simply the trident of Siva, and that on the reverse the discus of Vishnu.
Certain discoveries of sculptures at Prome, according to Mr. Taw Sein Ko, "have established three most important facts :"
(i) That the North-Indian variety of Buddhism, whose vehicle was Sanskrit, prevailed at Prome;
(ii) that there was intercourse between Prome and Northern India when the latter was ruled by the Guptas (319-606 A.D.), whose toleration of Buddhism is well-known;
(iii) that authentic Burmese history based on sculptures and inscriptions, which has hitherto been limited to the eleventh century A.D., has now been pushed back for at least four hundred years, i.e., to the seventh century A.D.
Mr. Taw Sein Ko's third proposition shows that the work already so largely effected for India is beginning to be done for Burma. It is not very long since students were accustomed to regard the regular history of India as beginning with Mahmud of Gbazni in A.D. 1000 : but the discoveries of the last half century have rendered possible a fairly complete narrative of historical events in Northern India from B.C. 500, and in Southern India, where the materials are less abundant, great progress has been made in piecing together the fragments of the story of the earlier dynasties. I bave no doubt that systematic study of ancient Burmese monuments and inscriptions will produce a similar result, and that twenty or thirty years hence it will bo possible for somebody to write the Early History of Burma,
