42 R. L. Mitr<a — Coins of the SJiaJi Kings. [Feb. 



James Prinsep was the first to bring to public notice this class of 

 coins, and to prepare a sketch which has since been filled u]3, bj the labours 

 principally of Mr. Thomas and Mr. Newton, with notices of nineteen kings 

 whose names do not occur in any historical record. Mr. Newton's paper, 

 in the 7th volume of the Journal of the Bombay Asiatic Society, is, I 

 believe, the latest contribution on the subject, and it is so full, having 

 been written after a very careful examination of several hundred spe- 

 cimens, that little remains to be added, as regards the coins that have 

 been already discovered. The coins before me do not contribute any 

 new name ; nor do they throw any additional light on the history of 

 the kings noticed. There are, however, some points in the decipherment 

 of the legends which suggest a few remarks. 



The first point is the title Kshatrapa which the kings assume. 



When Prinsep first read the legends, he found, after the initial title rdjna 



" of a king," certain letters which he read Tcritrinia, in others onahdkritriyna. 



Commenting upon them he said, " The second word of the title I read 



^f^i{^ for lif^iT^ Jcritrimasya, genitive of Jcritrima^ which is translated 



in Wilson's Dictionary " made, factitious, an adopted son" (for Icritrima^ 



putra). The latter sense was inadmissible, because it so happened that 



the name of the actual father was, in every case, inserted and the same 



title was also applied to him. The only manner, therefore, in which the 



term could be rendered was by ' elected,' ' adopted' — (by the people, or by 



the feudal chiefs of the country) — a designation entirely new in Indian 



numismatics, and leading to a highly interesting train of reflection, to 



which I must presently recur. Sometimes the epithet mahd is affixed — not 



to rdjd, but to hritrima, nsrdjd mahdkritrima, the ' great or sj^ecially elected 



king' — as if in these cases he had been the unanimous choice of his people, 



while in the others he was installed merely by the stronger party in the state." 



He had, however, to change this opinion when he deciphered the .Tiinagar 



inscription of Rudradama. There the reading was distinctly and most 



unquestionably wz«7i(i7c5^rt;^mj;« (Thomas' Prinsep, II, p. G3), and this reading 



has since been generally adopted. It is worthy of note, however, that the 



crucial letter in the word is the 3rd. If we read it on {m) the reading 



should be Jcritrima^ but if we take it for p (tt) the reading would be 



kshatrapa, the mechanical configuration of the first two compound letters 



being such that they admit of either reading. Now the letter p occurs 



on all the coins either as a square with the top open and a perpendicular 



stroke at the anterior corner, thus M, or as a perpendicular line with a curved 



spur at the middle on the left side, thus 4. The curvature of the spur 



varies greatly in different specimens, but the leading perpendicular line is 



constant. This is, however, not the letter that we meet in the title ; there 



it occurs like the English letter V formed of two oblique lines with the 



