Jainism Early Faith of Ashoka

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

Page 33

BACTRIAN COINS AND INDIAN DATES.
Colonel Pearse, R.A., retains a single example of an exceptionally common class of small silver coins displaying the obverse head in identical form with the outline in the woodcut. The reverse type discloses an ill-defined, erect figure, to the left, similar in disjointed treatment to some of the reverses in the Antiochus-Kodes class, accompanied by two parallel legends in obscure Greek. The leading line, giving the title, is altogether unintelligible; but its central letters range XDIAIINX or xDIAIIKX. The second line gives a nearer approach to "Moas” in a possible initial M, followed by the letters lollaHL=uollons, potrpns, uollans, etc. All these specimens, in addition to other Kodes associations, give outward signs of debased metal, or the Nickel, which was perchance, in those days, estimated as of equal value with silver,
The interest in this remarkable coin is not confined to the approximate identifications of time and place, but extends itself to the tenor of the legend, which presents us with the unusual titular prefix of TupavvoûVTOS, which, as a synonym of BaoileÚOvtos, and here employed by an obvious subordinate, may be held to set at rest the disputed purport of the latter term, in opposition to the simple Baotlets, which has such an important bearing upon the relative positions of the earlier Bactrian Kings. The examples of the use of the term Baoileúovtos in the preliminary Bactrian series are as follows 3 :
1. Agathocles in subordi- , Obv. AIOAOTOT EDTHPOZ.
nation to Diodotus Rev. BAZIAETONTOZ ACAOOKAEOTE AIKAIOT. Agathocleg. in subordi. Oby. ETOTAHMOT EOT.
nation to Euthydemus / Rev. BAZIAETONTOZ ACAOOKAEOT AIKAIOT. 3. Agathocles in subordi- 1 Obv. ANTIOXOT NIKATOPOZ.
.nation to Antiochus Rev. BAZLAETONTOX ACAOOKAEOTE AIKAIOT. '4. Antimachus Theus in )
Obv. AIOAOTOU QTHPOZ. subordination to Dio
(Rev. BAZLAETONTOE ANTIMAXOY OEOT. dotus
Num. Chron. vol. iv. N.s. p. 209, pl. viii, fig. 7 2 J.R.A.S., Vol. IV. N.ß. p. 504; Records of the Gupta Dynasty, p. 38.
? M. de Bartholomæi, Koehne's Zeitschrift, 1843, p. 67, pl. iii. fig. 2; Reply to M. Droysen, Zeitschrift für Münz, 1846 ; my papers in Prinsep's Essays (1858), vol. i. p. xvi., vol. ii. pp. 178–183; in the Numismatic Chronicle, vol. ii. 1862, p. 186; and Journ. R. A. 8., Vol. XX. 1863, p. 126; M. Raoul Rochotte, Journal des Savants, 1844, p. 117; Droysen, Geschichte des Hellenismus, Hamburg,