62 Pliilologicjil Secretary — Report on old coins. [APRIL, 



Accordinsf to the Collector's letter to the Commissioner, there 

 should have been 573 coins in the lot, but I have only been able to 

 count 54)8. No number is stated in the Collector's letters to the Asiatic 

 Society of Bengal ; and it is, therefore, not quite certain what number of 

 coins was actually dispatched to the Society. Unfortunately the coins 

 were not counted immediately on arrival. They were received by me 

 in an excessively bad state, thickly coated with ancient dirt and ver- 

 digris, and looking like a heap of rubbish. I had them first boiled 

 in a sort of -puree of tamarind, then put away to soak in the same for 

 about 24 hours, and finally carefully cleaned by rubbing with towels. 

 It is possible, that in the course of this process, the missing coins may 

 have been destroyed or lost. In any case, the loss (if any) is trifling. 



They are probably coins of the class current in certain parts of 

 Ancient India, which are described and figured by the lafce Sir A. 

 Cunningham in his Goins of Ancient India, pages 54-66, plates I -III. 

 These coins existed in two distinct varieties : some were cast, while 

 others were punched with dies (single or double). The coins of the 

 present collection, with a few exceptions, belong to the former variety, 

 of cast coins. Some of them still show the protruding marks of the 

 mould in which they were cast. They are of very considerable interest 

 for this reason that no coins of this particular type has ever before been 

 found, — at least not to my knowledge. I shall, therefore, describe 

 them in detail. See Plate II. 



The best made of the coins are clearly die^struck ones. They 

 are so much worn down by usage, that the designs on most of them are 

 barely discernible. On some of them, however, sufficient remains to 

 identify them with coins of the Indo-Scythian class. The obverse 

 shows the well-known standing figure of king Kanishka, pointing with 

 his right hand down to the fire-altar ; the reverses show the figures of 

 MAO or MIIPO, A0PO (PI. I, fig. 1), and OADO (PL I, fig. 2),* as seen 

 on Kanerki coins. No trace of the legend remains ; and in its absence, 

 of course, it is impossible to be quite certain of the identity; but the 

 resemblance of the figures on both the obverses and reverses to those on 

 the corresponding Kanerki coins is very striking. The legends on the 

 Kanerki copper coins were very brief, consisting of one or two words only, 

 arranged along the margin ; they would, therefore, be peculiarly liable to 

 extreme erasion. The Kanerki copper coinage, however, was extensively 

 imitated in the later Indo-Scythian period ; and the coins here described, 

 may belong to this rather than to the genuine, contemporary Kanerki 



* Figure 2 on the Plate is made up of two coins. The reverse shows OADO; 

 the obverse shows Kanerki from another coin. 



