1865.] Ancient Indian Weights, 59 



may reasonably be referred to the independent conceptions of primitive 

 magic ; as, whatever may have been the religion of the various grades of 

 men in its higher sense, it is manifest that even the leading and more 

 intellectual rulers of the people retained a vague faith in the efficacy of 

 charms ; almost all the tales in Persian or Arabic authors bearing upon 

 Alexander's intercourse with the unconquered nations of India, turn 

 upon their proficiency in the black art ; — traditions sufficiently war- 

 ranted by the probability that he, a Greek, would readily seek revela- 

 tions of this kind, even as he sought the knowledge of the art of the 

 Chaldees. 



So also with their own home legends — one half of the revolution 

 wrought by Chandra Gupta's advisers is placed to the credit of magic, 

 and the Nandas, whom he superseded, appear to have been special 

 proficients in sorcery. If this was the state of things in India in 

 those semi-historical times, may not we adopt the parallel of other 

 nations, and assume that, as so many crude hierarchies grew out of 

 archaic divinings, these Indian symbols, in their degree, may well 

 have been emanations from a similar source, and have run an equal 

 race into the higher dignity of representing things held more sacred ? 

 — as such, their later reception into a series of the typical adjuncts of 

 a faith formed in situ, need excite no surprise. 



In concluding these papers on Indian Weights, and completing 

 somewhat hastily the illustration of the introductory system of Indian 

 coinages, I am anxious, as the inquiry may end here, to furnish a final 

 and, I trust, a convincing argument against those who affirm that 

 Alexander taught India how to coin money — by meeting them on 

 their own ground, and producing a very perfect piece of an Indian 

 king, a manifest emanation from the gradational advances of indigen- 

 ous treatment, minted contemporaneously in a part of the country 

 Alexander did not reach. Additional interest will be felt in these 

 coins, when it is known that there are strong grounds for believing 

 that they bear the name and superscription of Xandrames, the king 

 of the Grangetic provinces, who was prepared to meet Alexander 

 should he have ventured to advance towards the Jumna. 



The first suggestion lor this identification only occurred to me a few 

 days ago, on reading the newly-published French translation of the 



8 



