'68 Ancient Indian Weigh! a. [No. 2, 



Kranarida are any test of the activity of his mints and the amplitude 

 of his treasure, he must have truly deserved the title. 



Whatever mythical conceptions may have first determined the out- 

 lines of these various coin devices, or whenever they were incorporated 

 into that religious system, it is clear that they one and all eventually 

 came to be regarded as typical emblems of the Buddhist creed.* As 

 such, there can be no hesitation in accepting their combined evidence 

 as conclusive, that the kings who set them forth in such prominence 

 two centuries after the Nirvana of Sakya-Muni, must have been votaries 

 of the faith he originated or reformed. 



If the faintly preserved similarity of the names of Xandrames and 

 Kand fortuitously led to their association in the person of Krananda, 

 and an almost obvious secpience connected him with one of the nine 

 Nandas, and alike the issuer of the coins bearing this designation, it 

 was reserved for the coins themselves to contribute the most important 

 item in the entire combination to the effect that these Nandas were 

 Buddhists, and in this fact to explain much that the whole written his- 

 tory of India, foreign or domestic, had hitherto failed to convey — the 

 exact record of the State religion at the period, thus obscuring the 

 right interpretation of the then impending dynastic revolution, com- 

 menced and accomplished, as it would now seem, for the triumph of 

 the Brahmanical hierarchy over the representatives of the more purely 

 indigenous belief. 



These considerations, however, open out a larger area of Oriental 

 national progress than the legitimate limits of the scope of the Numis- 

 matic Society may justify my entering upon, though history must once 

 again, in this case, admit a debt it owes to the archaeology of money. 

 And as antiquaries, we ourselves may frankly recognise the aid confer- 

 red by the determination of the correct epoch of these coins, in justifying 



* The association of these symbols with a somewhat advanced phase of 

 Buddhism is shown in the retention of the deer, the Bodhi-tree, the Chaitya and 

 the serpent (which is placed perpendicularly on some specimens) on the reverse 

 of a coin, the obverse of which displays the standing figure of Buddha himself, 

 having the lotus and the word Bhagavata, his special designation, in the margin- 

 al legend. (J. A. S. B. iii. pi. xxv. fig. 4., Prinsep's "Essays," i. pi. vii. fig. 4.) 



There seems to have been a current tradition in the land, regarding the real 

 faith of the Nandas, signs of which are apparent in Hiouen-Thsang's notice, 

 " Les hommes de peu de foi raisonnaient entre eux a, ce Sujet : Jadis, disaient 

 ils, le roi Nan-tho (Nan da) a construit ces cinq depots pour y, amasser les sept 

 maucres precieuses" (vol. ii. p. 427). 



