Jainism Early Faith of Ashoka

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

Page 34

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BACTRIAN COINS AND INDIAN DATES.
The whole question as to the relative rank of the princes, whose names figure conjointly in the above legends, reduces itself concisely to this contrast, that the sub-king invariably calls himself Baoileús on his own proper coins, but on these exceptional tributary pieces, where he prefixes the image and superscription of a superior, he describes himself as Baoileúovtos. These alien Satraps were effective kings within their own domains, but clearly bowed to some acknowledged head of the Bactro-Greek confederation, after the manner of their Indian neighbours, or perchance included subjects, who so especially regarded the gradational import of the supreme Maharajadhiraja, in contradistinction to the lesser degrees of regal state implied in the various stages of rája, mahárája, rájádhirája, etc. These binominal pieces are rare, and, numismatically speaking, “occasional," i.e. coined expressly to mark some public event or political incident, like our modern medals; coincident facts, which led me long ago to suggest? that they might have been struck as nominal tribute money or fealty pieces, in limited numbers, for submission with the annual nazaráná, or presentation at high State receptions, to the most powerful chief or general of the Græco-Bactrian oligarchy for the time being.
There is a curious feature in these binominal coins, which, as far as I am aware of, has not hitherto been noticed. It is, that the obverse head, representing the portrait of the superior king, seems to have been adopted directly from his own ordinary mint-dies, which in their normal form presented
1843; Lassen, Ind. Alt., 1847; Gen. Cunningham, Numismatic Chronicle, vol. viü. N.e. '1868, p. 278, et seq., ix. 1869, p. 29; Mr. Vaux, Numismatic Chronicle, vol. xv. N.e. p. 15.
1 Journal Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. XX. p. 127; Numismatic Chronicle, N.e. vol. ii. p. 186.
2 I have long imagined that I could trace the likeness of Antiochus Theos on the ohverse of the early gold coins of Diodotus (Prinsep's Eesaye, pl. xlii. 1; Num. Chrow. vol. ij. N.ß. pl. iv. figs. 1-3). I suppose, however, that in this case the latter monarch used his suzerain's ready-prepared die for the one face of bis precipitate and perhaps hesitating coinage, conjoined with a new reverse device hearing his own name, which might have afforded him a loophole of escape on his right to coin" being challenged. Apart from the similarity of the profile, the contrast between the high Greek art and perfect execution of the obverse head and the coarse design and superficial tooling of the imitative reverse device, greatly favours the conclusion of an adaptation, though the motive may have been merely to utilize the obverses of existing mint appliances of such high merit.