1840.] from Bactrian and Indo' Scythian coins. 645 



used on the coins. The nameless king^ however^ appears to 

 have been too powerful to acquiesce in such a stipulation. Ac- 

 cording to Mr. Mueller^ his name, on account of its dissonance, 

 could not be well expressed in Greek. People, however, who 

 were not offended at the nominative /BaciAev, or the genitive 

 ^aaik^vtJVy would not have hesitated at obtruding a name as 

 barbarian as possible, on the Greek letters, and if the attempt 

 were unsuccessful in Greek, why was not given recourse to 

 native letters ? 



I cannot explain, why there is no name; but from the use of 

 Greek characters alone, it becomes probable, that the Soter be- 

 longed to a certain Scythian horde, which had for some time their 

 abode in a country, where purely Greek, and not native charac- 

 ters, were adopted for the coins. The nameless king, who per- 

 haps first settled his horde in Cabul and about the Indus, 

 perhaps adhered at first to the established custom by not 

 adopting native characters on his coins. At an after period, 

 however, he perhaps used them ; if indeed the coins with native 

 legends, which M. Mionnet assigns him, be really his.* 



There exist besides, coins of some other Indo-Scythian kings, 

 with regard to which it is doubtful whether they have native or 

 purely Greek legends. They bear the title '^ King of Kings,^' 

 and some of them have a horse, others an elephant, and they 

 reigned therefore partly in Bactria, partly in India. As the 

 names are illegible, we shall here only refer to the engravings 

 and descriptions of these coins ; for we must at first leave even 

 this undecided, to which of these kings the native legends belong, 

 and whether we have to adopt a separate series of Indo-Scythian 

 kings, who admitted purely Greek letters and titles, whilst 

 the Kanerki dynasty adhered to Greek characters to express 

 barbarian words. If the assertion, that to the north of the 

 Caucasus the characters on the coins were not used, be well 

 founded, we might presume, that those Indo-Scythian kings held 

 fixed dominion in Bactria alone. Now those coins yield no other 

 historical result, than that the Indo-Scythians were divided into 



♦ VIII. p. 505. pi. X. No. 85. 



