54 Ancient Indian Weights. [No. 2, 



succeeding dynasties, progressive generations of men, or whether they 

 were merely the equitable revisions of contemporary jurisdictions. 

 Though more probably, as a general rule, the simple fixed weights 

 of metal circulated from one end of the country to the other, in virtue 

 of previous marks, only arrested in their course when seeming wear or 

 dubious colour called for fresh attestation : or incidentally, when new 

 conquerors came on the scene and gratuitously added their hereditary 

 symbols. The devices, in the open sense, are all domestic or emble- 

 matic within the mundane range of simple people — the highest flight 

 heavenwards is the figure of the sun, but its orb is associated with no 

 other symptom of planetary influences, and no single purely Vedic 

 conception. So also, amid the numerous symbols or esoteric mono- 

 grams that have been claimed as specially Buddhist,* there is not one 

 that is absolutely and conclusively an origination of, or emanation from, 

 that creed. The Chaitya other Scythians had before them ; the Boclhi- 

 Tree is no more essentially Buddhist than the Assyrian Sacred Tree,f 

 the Hebrew Grove,! or the popularly venerated trees of India at 

 large. § 



Equally on the other part Vedic advocates will now scarcely claim 

 the figure of the objectionable Dog,|| or seek to appropriate to Aryan 

 Brahmanism ploughs, harrows, or serpents. In brief, these primitive 

 punch-dies seem to have been the produce of purely home fancies and 

 local thought, until we reach incomprehensible devices, composed of 

 lines, angles, and circles, which clearly depart from Nature's forms ; 

 and while we put these aside as exceptional composite designs, we may 

 accept unhesitatingly as of foreign origin the panther and the vine, 

 engraved in a style of good Greek art, which overlays the mixed im- 

 pressions of earlier date and provincial imagery, and appears only to- 

 wards the end of the career of the punch-marked coins, in their north- 

 western spread, before they were finally absorbed in that quarter by 



* Sykes, "Jour. R. A. S.," v. 451 ; Cunningham, "Bhilsa Topes," p. 351, 

 plates xxxi., xxxii. B. H. Hodgson, " Jour. R. A. S.," xviii. 393. 



f Gosse's "Assyria," p. 94; Bawlinson's "Ancient Monarchies," ii. 235. 



% Smith's " Dictionary of the Bible," article "Grove," — doubts are raised 

 regarding the correctness of the translation of the word Asherah as a grove. 

 See also note in Gesenius, sub voce Asherah. 



§ Wilson, " Megha Duta," ver. 157. Ward's Hindus, iii. 204. So also Tul- 

 asi, — " Ocymum sanctum," or " Sacred Basil." 



|| Manu, iii. 92, iv. 208, x. 51, 91, 106, etc. Max Miiller, " Science of Lan- 

 guage," ii. 481. 



