104 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [N.S., XVII, 
coins, he read the name T'apuristan (the country of Tabaristan) , 
together with some other proper names and numerals. Some 
of the coins had only Pahlavi legends, while others have legends 
both in Pahlavi and Kufic characters; some of the proper 
names are Arabic, others are Persian. e deciphered the 
term afziit, which is of such frequent occurrence on the later 
Sasanian coins. He also read, on the earlier Arab coins, the 
names of the governors. 
The decipherment of the legends on Sasanian coins now 
began to receive more attention from oriental scholars. B. Dorn 
devoted to the subject several papers which were published in 
the ‘ Bulletin de le classe historico-philologique de |’ Académie 
Impériale des sciences de St. Pétersbourg’ (Vol. I, 1844, pp. 107- 
reading BH for bagi, which had been proposed by De 
From this time till 1881, he published in the same journal, 
in the ‘ Mélanges Asiatiques’ and in the ‘Z.D.M.G.’ (1867), 
a series of articles on Sas&nian numismatics, explainin 
numberof points, some of which still remained doubtful, parti- 
cularly those arising from the legends on the reverse. 
A. Krafft published, in 1844, a valuable review of Olshaa- 
sen’s pamphlet in the ‘ Wiener Jahrbiicher fiir Literatur’ (Vol. 
they belonged ; and especially endeavoured to settle their 
chronology, by aid of the coins on which numbers referring to 
an era are found, placing the commencement of this era in A. 
645. He likewise deciphered the legends on the Pahlavi coins 
of the Vienna collection 
The result of the works of Olshausen and Krafft was to 
fix in a definite manner the method of reading the Pahlavi of 
he expressed his admiration and at the same time published new 
pieces of his own which he deciphered by aid of the indications 
of Olshausen, 
