Jainism Early Faith of Ashoka

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

Page 18

BACTRIAN COINS AND INDIAN DATES.
required. Subjoined is a rough facsimile and technical de scription of the coin of Plato.
Silver. Size 1.2. Wt. 258 grains.
STERI BAN.
ATLANTAINS
Obv. Head of king to the right, with helmet ornamented with the
peculiar ear and horn of a bull, so marked on the coins
of Eucratides. Rev. Apollo driving the horses of the Sun. Monogram No. 46a,
Prinsep's Essays. Legend. BAZIAENZ ENIMANOTE HAATANOZ. Date at foot, PM2=147 Selucidæ (or B.c. 165).
My first impression on noticing the near identity of the obverse head with the standard Numismatic portraits of Eucratides, and the coincidence of the date with that assumed, by our latest authority, as the year of the decease of that monarch, was that Plato must have succeeded him ; but the advanced interpretation of the dates, above given, puts any such assignment altogether out of court, and necessitates a critical reconstruction of all previous speculative epochal or serial lists of the Bactrian succession.
In the present instance the adoption of the helmet of the Chabylians 3 by Eucratides and Plato may merely imply that
1 The woodcut here given was prepared for Mr. Vaux's original article on this unique coin of Plato, in the Numismatic Chronicle, vol. xv. D. 1.
* Gen. Cunningham, N.C. vol. viii.o.s. 1843, p. 175, and vol.ix. N.S. 1869, p. 175.
s The Chabylians had small shields made of raw hides, and each had two iavelins used for hunting wolves. Brazen helmets protected their heads, and above these they wore the ears and horns of an ox fashioned in brass. They had also crests on their helms.” - Herodotus vii. 76; Rawlinson, vol. iv. p. 72; Xenophon Anab. y.