1841.] Description of some Ancient Gems and Seals, Sfc, 155 



per coins (see Nos. 2, 3, 4 and 7, vol. 7. pi. 32, J. A. S. of Bengal) the 

 whole inscription being Amogha-bhutasa-maharajasa-rajnya-Kunandasa t 

 (coin) of the humble individual, the great king of kings, Kunanda. In 

 the same way we find that the title of Aprati-ratha, or the invincible- 

 in-his- chariot, which is applied in the Allahabad inscription to Samudra 

 Gupta, is repeated upon his coins : — and I have no doubt therefore that the 

 epithet of Amogha-bhuta on this seal refers to Kunanda, and that the seal 

 is of the same age as the coins. But on the coins the legends are in 

 two different characters, of one common language ; the legend of the 

 obverse being in Indian Pali; thus proving that these two characters were in 

 contemporaneous use, andlikewise from the occurrence of the Indian Pali 

 on the obverse, or principal side of the coin, showing clearly that Kunanda 

 was a native of India proper, and not of India beyond the Indus where the 

 Bactrian Pali characters prevailed. The same fact indeed may be gathered 

 from the use of Indian Pali only on the seal. But that he possessed terri- 

 tory upon the banks of the Indus is undeniably attested by the use of 

 the Bactrian Pali upon his coins, and by the localities in which they 

 have been discovered, some of which are to the westward of the Indus, 

 even as far as Kabul. Such being the extent of his territory, it now 

 only remains to ascertain at what period a prince named Kunanda reign- 

 ed over Northern India and the Punjab. In the first place then we 

 know by the shape of the letter m that this seal must be anterior to the 

 period of the Guptas, and the same may be said for the coins, on which 

 also we have the additional evidence from the forms of the h and n, 

 that Kunanda cannot be later than Asoka. The occurrence of Bactrian 

 Pali on his coins is likewise in favor of this early date, for that charac- 

 ter appears to have fallen into disuse towards the close of the second 

 century after Christ, or perhaps a quarter of a century later, when the 

 followers of the Brahminical faith, with the assistance of the Agniculas 

 (whom I believe to have been the fire worshipping Sussanians) had gain- 

 ed the ascendancy in India over the votaries of Buddha. The use of 

 the Pali termination Sa, for the Sanskrit Sya, proves that Kunanda was 

 a Buddhist, and this is still further confirmed by his title, which whe- 

 ther it be read as Amogha-bhuta, the humble mortal, or as Amaya-bhuta, 

 the guileless mortal, which is perhaps the preferable reading, is in strict 

 accordance with the professed meekness and lowliness of a zealous 

 Buddhist, and is at the same time utterly at variance with the grandiloquent 

 titles assumed by the arrogant Brahmanists. We have thus deduced 

 that Kunanda, who ruled over Northern India even beyond the river 

 Indus, was a Buddhist Prince, and that he flourished certainly not later 



