542 Third Memoir of the Ancient Coins. [Sept. 



cult to conceive how Indian artists could have arranged in Greek 

 characters such words as A6P0, miopo, <t>APO, OKPO, &c. The respect 

 so obviously shewn to the Greek language may suggest the opinion, 

 that coinage was considered eminently a Grecian art, and corrobo- 

 rates the notion that the Macedonians introduced it into these parts 

 of Asia. 



The several devices of the Bactrian coins, whether Greek or Indo- 

 Scythic, are interesting from their variety, and instructive from the 

 information they convey as to many points, particularly the religion 

 of the times. Of the Greek, some display the deities of the classical 

 Grecian mythology, as Jupiter, Minerva, Apollo, Hercules, &c. repre- 

 sented in the attitudes, costumes, and with the attributes commonly 

 assigned to them in the West ; — some have animals, as elephants, hors- 

 es, bulls, camels, &c, from which may be implied localities of rule ; 

 others have warlike devices, as horsemen at charge, seeming to indi- 

 cate the personal character of the prince, and others appear to 

 commemorate some remarkable incident in his career, as victory pre- 

 . senting a chaplet, or a figure trampling upon a vanquished foe. The 

 Indo-Scythic coins have universally devices, whose accompanying in- 

 scriptions, as fully and satisfactorily shewn by Mr. Prinsep, prove to 

 be personifications of the sun and moon. It may excite surprise that 

 the peculiar religion to which such personifications refer, should have 

 been so exemplified on the coins of princes, whom we have consider- 

 ed of the Buddhist faith. It was, nevertheless, the religion of old 

 standing in these countries, the supremacy over which, if acquired by 

 Buddhist or Indo-Scythic princes, will have been acquired, as supre- 

 macy ever is, by conquest. Of this ancient religion, besides the evi- 

 dences furnished by coins, we have that afforded by the temples and 

 places of sepulture. That the Buddhist faith also prevailed, while agree- 

 able to historical record, is not contrary to hypothesis ; and the con- 

 querors of that persuasion may, from policy, have placed on their coins 

 the emblems of the national religion of the vanquished. As Buddhism 

 will also have gained ground by a correspondent decline of strength in 

 the religion which preceded it, it is natural that superstitions and ob- 

 servances of both should be blended. 



The regions spreading from the source of the Oxus have claims to 

 be considered the birth-place of that peculiar form of the Mithriac 

 religion, which was at one time adopted in all the countries between 

 the Indus and the Bosphorus — and of which vestiges are still seen in 

 the temples and sepultures of its votaries. Persia presents the superb 

 proofs of it in the wonderful ruins of Persepolis, and Afghdnistdn dis- 

 plays them at Bamidn. Numerous are the places of minor considera- 



