1888.] Babu G. Bysack — Buddhist copper coins ^ a terra-cotta figure. 113 



splash as those near would hear it, bat as a sudden short explosion, a 

 sharp thud, such as he himself had on two occasions been in a position 

 for proving, and resembling the sound of guns, the dull thud, thud, he 

 had heard actually emanating from out the sea on a calm still day from 

 right alongside the boat in which he was at the time, situated about 

 fifty miles from the north African coast, when the French were fighting 

 at Algiers in 1859 ; or the same peculiar sharp sound of the 9 o'clock 

 gun of one of Her Majesty's frigates at Saugor Roads, heard by him 

 some years ago for three successive evenings, at the Pilot station, some 

 thirty-five miles off, and that against a southerly breeze. 



So that, on the whole, the theory of the sounds in question being 

 caused by the falling in of river banks, and of their being propagated 

 even along crooked river bends, should not, Mr. Elson thought, be 

 entirely ignored nor discarded. 



2. Note on some Buddhist copper coins, and a terra-cotta figure. — 

 By Gaurdas Btsack (with a plate). 



" In April and May 1883, during my stay at Tumlook, I noticed the 

 River Rupnarayan to cut into and wash away large portions of the bank 

 below that town, leaving exposed specimens of old coins, fragments 

 of pottery, and clay figures imbedded for ages. On the tide retiring, 

 these relics happened to be picked up by the people, especially children. 

 I stopped them from this proceeding on the shore in front of the Sub- 

 divisional bungalow, where the findings were collected for me by my 

 servants. The coins thus got I now send for presentation to the Society. 

 In local opinion, they are said to have been in currency under the old 

 Hindu Rajas, but who they were, and when they flourished, nobody 

 knows. There were first the Buddhist kings, and afterwaixls the Ganga 

 Vansa princes ruling from Tumlook and Midnapore to Orissa, in the 

 ]2th century. I am not aware whether the Society is in possession of 

 any of their coins, in which case they may help to throw light on the 

 determination of the specimens sent by me. 



" As to the terra-cotta utensils and figures secured for me, they are 

 all more or less in a mutilated condition, excepting one, which being in 

 fair preservation, is herewith forwarded for exhibition to the meeting. 

 I wish I had an opportunity to compare it with similar figures found 

 elsewhere, in order to solve the mystery of its representative character. 

 But I have hardly a doubt of its great antiquity and of its being a 

 Buddhist image. As such, it leads me to refer to those times when 

 Tumlook was a great Buddhist emporium on our Delta, known under the 

 name of Tamaralipta, or sea-laved, — answering to Tambapanni (the 

 Taprobane of the Greeks) the earliest Buddhist name for Ceylon. The 



