114 Dr. Hoernle— 0/1 some Ancient Nepalese Coins. [March, 



port flourlslied when prince Mahendra, tlie son of A^oka, sailed by the 

 place from Patalipiitra, on his religious mission to that Island, From 

 this post, Fa Hian, the Chinese pilgrim, took shipping to return to his 

 country vid Ceylon and the Archipelago, in the 5th century. His 

 countryman Hwen Thang visited it in the 7th century. The ancient 

 Buddhist town and harbour is now about forty miles from the sea, 

 lying buried deep under the silt of the Delta. It would not be amiss 

 for me, I think, to refer the clay figure under consideration to some time 

 in the Buddhistic history of Tumlook. The image strongly resembles 

 the females of Buddhist sculpture. The size makes it a doll, the orna- 

 mentation and attitude give it the air of a dancing-girl. But I believe 

 it is neither of these characters. Most probably it was a household image ; 

 but I am not in a position to offer a pronounced opinion. I would sug- 

 gest a comparison with the Bhuvaneswara temple female figures, and 

 the figures of other Buddhist places, and could form a definite conclusion 

 only by the result of such a comparison." 



The Philological Secretary said that the coins sent by the Babii 

 were of a well-known kind of which a large number had been sent to the 

 Society some years ago. There were, however, among those now sent 

 by the Babii, some which were in a particularly good state of preserva- 

 tion. They were round and square coins, bearing a variety of Buddhist 

 emblems on both sides, such as the bodhi tree, elephant, chaitya, swas- 

 tika, and others. They have been already described and figured by 

 Prinsep in his Indian Antiquities (ed. Thomas), Vol. I, pp. 84, 86, 

 plate lY, fig. 8, 22. The terracotta figure (see Plate III) was that of 

 a female fully dressed and profusely bedecked with jewels. It was the 

 finest specimen of this kind of terracotta work that he had ever seen ; 

 but he would not venture to say how old it might be, though, of course, 

 it could not be modern. 



3. Note on some Ancient Nepalese Coins. — By Dr. Hoernle. 



Dr. Rudolf Hoernle read the following note on some ancient cop- 

 per coins from Nepal r — 



" At the May meeting of last year I exhibited some ancient copper 

 coins from Nepal which had been forwarded by Mr. V. Smith (see Pro- 

 ceedings for May 1887, pp. 144-147). I was then under the impression 

 that that was the first public notice of coins of that description. I have 

 lately, however, come across an earlier notice, by Mr. Cecil Bendall, 

 which I regret had quite escaped my memory. It is published in 

 volume XXXYI of the Journal of the German Oriental Society of 

 1882, and is also referred to on page xxxix of the Introduction to 

 Mr. Bendall's Catalogue of Buddhist Sanskrit Manuscripts in Cambridge 



