Jainism Early Faith of Ashoka

Author(s): Edward Thomas
Publisher: Trubner and Company London

Page 17

BACTRIAN COINS AND INDIAN DATES.
In 1858 I published, in my edition of “Prinsep's Essays on Indian Antiquities," a notice of the detached letters OT as occurring on a coin of Eucratides (No. 3, p. 184, vol. ii.), and IT as found on the money of Heliocles (No. 1, p. 182), which letters, in their simple form, would severally represent the figures 73 and 83; but the difficulty obtruded itself that these numbers were too low to afford any satisfactory elucidation of the question involved in their application as dynastic dates.
Among the later acquisitions of Bactrian coins in the British Museum is a piece of Heliocles bearing the full triliteral date, after the manner of the Syrian mints, of PIII or 183, which, when tested by the Seleucidan era (i.e. 311--183), brings his reign under the convenient date of B.C. 128, authorizing us to use the coincident abbreviated figures, under the same terms, as ON=73 for 173 of the Seleucidan era= B.C. 138 for Eucratides, and the repeated HỊ = 83 for 183 Seleucidan=B.C. 128, for Heliocles,' a date which is further supported by the appearance of the exceptionally combined open monogram JAI(ITA), or 81 for 181=B.c. 130 on his other pieces.
The last fully-dated piece, in the Bactrian series, is the unique example of the money of Plato (bearing the figured letter date PMZ=147 of the Seleucidæ, or B.c. 165). We have two doubtful dates 5=60 and SE=65, on the coins of Apollodotus; but if these letters were intended for dates, they will scarcely fit-in with the Seleucidan scheme. Menander dates his coins in regnal years. I can trace extant examples from 1 to 8. But this practice by no means necessitates the disuse of the Seleucidan era in ordinary reckonings, still less its abandonment in State documents where more formal precision was
1 General Cunningham was cognizant of the date nr = 83 as found on the coins of Heliocles, which he associated with the year B.C. 164, under the assumption that he had detected the true initial date of the Bactrian era, which he had settled to his own satisfaction, as beginning in B.C. 246."-Num. Chron.. N. 8. vol. vii. 1868, p. 266: Ng, vol. ix. 1869, pp. 35, 230. See also Mr. Vaux's note, N.C. 1875, vol. xv, p. 3.