Jainism Early Faith of Ashoka

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

Page 35

BACTRIAN COINS AND INDIAN DATES:
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the profile of the monarch without any surrounding legend, his name and titles being properly reserved for their conventional position on the reverse surface of his current coins. In the novel application of the head of the suzerain to a place on the obverse of a coin bearing the device and designations of his confessed subordinate on the reverse, it became necessary to add to the established obverse-device a specification of the name and titles of the superior, whose identification would otherwise have remained dependent upon the fidelity and the public recognition of the likeness itself. Hence, under the new adaptation, it likewise became requisite to engrave on the old die, around the standard Mint head, the suzerain's superscription in the odd corners and spaces in the field, no provision having been made, in the first instance, for any legend at all, and no room being left for the ordinary circular or perpendicular arrangement of the words, such as would have been spaced out under ordinary circumstances. In the majority of the instances we are able to cite, the Greek letters on the adapted obverse vary materially in their forms and outlines from those of the associated legends on the reverse, which still further proves the independent manipulation applied to the obverses of the compound pieces.
In addition to these indications as bearing upon the Bactrian proper coinage, the title of Tupavvoûvros is highly suggestive in its partial reappearance on the coins of the leading Sáh Kings Nahapana and Chastana, connecting the Scythic element geographically to the southward with the province of Guzerát, for a full résumé of which I must refer my readers to the Archæological Report of Western India,1 for 1875.
See also the short copies of my Essay on the Records of the Gupta Dynasty, London, 1876, p. 31.