70 Ancient Indian Weights. [No. 2, 



convert every one into eight.* When I quoted the tradition and the 

 numismatic fact in juxtaposition, I little surmised how much .more 

 closely the two might be connected, or that instead of the latter afford- 

 ing a mere illustration of the former, that the surviving metallic 

 witnesses would suffice, with the slight introductory testimony, to put 

 a man's memory on trial for forgery twenty centuries and more after 

 date. But so it would seem : the Brahman Chanakyaf confesses, 

 through his own advocates, that in his desire to subvert the rule of the 

 Nandas, he seduced sons from their father's palaces, and " with the 

 view of raising resources," to have had recourse to the more than 

 questionable expedient of depreciating, or properly speaking forging, 

 coins of the ruling monarch, which, however, under the ultimate test 

 of the old money changers, would soon have found their level. The 

 copper coinage of the day was probably beyond any very ready power 

 of transmutation, but if the silver currency is to afford a modern " pix," 

 the Brahman must have worked to advantage, as there may be seen in 

 the cabinets of the British Museum, at this present writing, a piece 

 purporting to be of Krananda, with fair legends and full spread of 

 surface, though of tenuity itself, which should in ordinary equity have 

 weighed somewhere over 40 grains, but which on trial barely balances 

 17" 7 grains Troy.J 



* Num. Chron. N.S., iv. pp. 127, 128. 



f Mahawanso, p. xl. " Opening the door [of Nanda's palace at Palibotbra] 

 with the utmost secrecy, and escaping with the prince out of that passage, they 

 fled into the wilderness of Winjjlid. While dwelling there, with the view of 

 raising resources, he converted (by recoining) each haliapanan into eight, and 

 amassed eighty kotis of kahdpand. Having buried this treasure, he commenced 

 to search for a second individual entitled (by birth) to be raised to sovereign 

 power, and met with the aforesaid prince of the Mdriyan dynasty called Chanda- 

 gutto." 



X This of course is an extreme instance, but it is not a strained example ; and 

 although the piece, which I refrained from quoting previously, is damaged, and 

 has lost its oxydised film, it is by no means worn, or anything like a coin which 

 we might legally refuse for want of the king's emblems. The best coin of the 

 class still weighs 38-2 grains. (Num. Chron. N.S., iv. p. 128.) 



