1878.] K. Mitra— 0;t a Coin of Toramdna. 193 



here it is indicated by a hook hanging behind. This hook has been repeatedly- 

 found to stand for i, and it gradually lengthened till it became the modem 

 ikara in Nagari writing. Dr. Mitra was disposed therefore to take it for an i, 

 making the syllable di. Assuming then, the inherent vowel of the preceding 

 •r to be a long one, he got ddi " first," and, linking it with the next two 

 letters, the result is ddirdja or " the first king", the founder of the 

 family. The next two letters ^ and ?r should in that case be taken for pu- 

 tra " son" — " the son of the auspicious first king Nayasena." The omission 

 of the u under p is not material, but the spur for r under the t is not com- 

 mon (under the first word S'ri it is distinctly shown,) but without assuming 

 the omission no sense can be extracted from pata. The letters ^ and m 

 with dots over them may safely be taken for rdjna, the genitive singular of 

 rdjan^ 2b\m^.' The name of the son is Taramana, which, there is no 

 reason to doubt, is the same with Toramana, the sovereign whose name 

 occurs in the History of Kashmir and in the Iran boar and the Gwaliar 

 inscriptions. The letter r of the name is very faint and indistinct. The 

 last four letters call for no remark. The first three, ^ t|! and ^r, are 

 unmistakable, and the last, (^) though somewhat smudgy, is suggested 

 by the context. The result is rananatha, " the lord of war." The restored 

 version according to this reading would be : — 



S'ri JSfayasenddirdja-putra-rdjna Toramdna ranandtha. 



And in English " (The coin) of the king Toramana, the lord of battle, 

 son of the auspicious first king Nayasena." 



This interpretation, however, is open to a serious objection. In the 

 History of Kashmir, Toramana is described to be the son of one S'reshtha- 

 sena and not Nayasena, and, unless the latter be accepted as an alias of the 

 former, the interpretation must be wrong. Dr. Mitra was disposed to be- 

 lieve that the two names belonged to the same person ; but if this be inad- 

 missible, it would be necessary to take the letter ^ to be a remnant of Deva, 

 and^«^« to be the remnant oi j^ati a 'lord,' the meaning of the whole beino* 

 thus rendered — 



" (The coin) of the auspicious (S'ri) king Toramana, the divine (deva), 

 the master of kings (rdjapati), the lord of battle (ranandtha), who had jus- 

 tice for his army (nayasena).'' As the word Toramana cannot be con- 

 verted into an epithet, the words Nayasena Deva cannot be taken to be the 

 name of the king. Thus whatever interpretation is accepted the coin must 

 be attributed to Toramana, and a strong proof of this is afforded by the 

 coin described by Mr. Thomas in his edition of Prinsep's Essays (II, p. 339) 

 as an '' unpublished and unique" specimen, which, in weight, character and 

 devices, closely corresponds with the specimen now under notice. The only 

 difference between the two lies in the inscription ; but as Mr. Thomas' spe- 

 cimen was very imperfect, and nothing beyond the name could be satisfac- 



