688 Continuation of notes on Hindu Coins. [Dec. 



equivalent to gdr*, an ass.) The story is admitted into the prophetic 

 chapters of the Agni Purdna, and is supported by traditions all over the 

 country. Remains of the palace of this Vikrama are shewn in Gujerdt, in 



Ujjain, and even at Benares ! the Hindus insist that this Vikrama was 

 not a paramount sovereign of India but only a powerful king of the west- 

 ern provinces, his capital being Cambdt or Cambay : and it is certain that 

 the princes of those parts were tributary to Persia from a very early 

 period. The veteran antiquarian, Colonel Wilford, would have been 

 delighted, could he have witnessed the confirmation of his theories 

 afforded by the coins before us, borne out by the local tradition of a 

 people now unable even to guess at the nature of the curious and 

 barbarous marks on them. None but a professed studier of coins 

 could possibly have discovered on them the profile of a face, after the 

 Persian model, on one side, and the actual Sassanian fire- altar on the 

 other; yet such is indubitably the case, as an attentive consideration 

 of the accumulation of lines and dots on figs. 13, 16, will prove. The 

 distortion of the face has proceeded from an undue relief being given 

 by the die-cutter to the forehead and cheek : and this has by degrees 

 apparently deceived the engraver himself, who at last contents himself 



with a deeply projecting oblong button, encircled by dots, (figs. 16 



18) ! Should this fire-altar be admitted as proof of an Indo-Sassanian 

 dynasty in Saurdshtra, we may find the date of its establishment in the 

 epoch of Yesdijird, the son of Bahramgor ; supported by the con- 

 current testimony of the Agni Purdna, that Vikrama, the son of Ga- 

 dharufa, should ascend the throne of Mdlavd {Ujjain) 753 years after 

 the expiation of Chanakya, or A. D. 441. 



Fig. 17, is one of several very curious coins in Colonel Stacy's 

 cabinet. The obverse shews it to be a direct descendant of 15 or 16, 

 the " Chouka-dukd" of Colonel Stacy ; while the Nagari inscription 

 of the reverse is at once perceived to agree with the second, or Gaur, 

 series of the Kanottj coins. I adverted to this fact before, and stated 

 that it seemed to point to the paramount influence of the Pa'la family 

 of Kanovj from Gaur in Bengal to Gujerdt\. The inscription has the 

 lettars ^fl ^T. . . . ^f^^ probably Sri Sdmanta or Samara Pdla deva. 



Fig. 18, is a more modern variety of the Chouka-duka, on which 

 the fire altar is replaced by Nagari letters of the eleventh or twelfth 

 century. The reading appears ^ ^>T5T Sri Kanju P but it is more 

 probably ^t^rfsT Sri Kdla, for we find a Kala deVa in the Gvjerdt 

 list towards the close of the 1 1th century, whom Wilford would 

 identify with Visala deVa of Delhi. 



Figs. 19, 20. I have placed these two novelties from Colonel 

 * As. Res. ix. 155. f See observations in page 682. 



