632 ^ Lassen on the History traced [No. 103. 



Cabulian characters on the coins disappear in western India^ 

 together with the dominion of the foreigners, the following 

 conclusions seem still to result. First, the Cabulian charac- 

 ters on the coins occur in the Punjab, not because a native 

 alphabet was unknown there, but in consequence of the foreign 

 dominion, which transplanted thither from Cabul, carried on 

 its coins along with it, to the east, its peculiar characters. 

 Secondly, it is doubtful, whether the dominion of the foreigners 

 descending from the Caucasus, found in western Cabulistan, this 

 alphabet alone in use, or employed in common with an Indian 

 one. To us it appears probable, from the foregoing remarks, 

 that these foreigners did not import the alphabet with them 

 from Bactria. At the very place where the intercourse of trade 

 brought into contact the east and the west, India and Iran, it was 

 most easily possible that an alphabet, introduced from the west, 

 such as we must admit the alphabet on the coins on our 

 previous investigation to be, may have been in use in common 

 with Indian letters, unless we be disposed to attribute to the 

 Paropamisades the invention of an alphabet of their own. 

 Whether there were indeed an Indian alphabet there, we shall 

 not question -, the coins of Agathokles and Pantaleon, however, 

 prove, that an Indian alphabet, if not in western Cabulistan, 

 prevailed at least more to the eastward ; had this not been the 

 case, why should they have used Indian characters ? But these 

 characters disappear with those kings, and retreat proportion- 

 ately with the extension of the dominion of Menandros to the 

 eastward. 



I do not here extend these remarks, as the era and the 

 abode of Agathokles and Pantaleon are still uncertain ; I shall only 

 add, that I can place them neither with Mr. Raoul-Rochette in 

 Bactria at the head of all those princes, nor with Mr. K. O 

 Mueller remove them to India Proper. 



But the following fact will prove, how correct it is to con- 

 sider the characters on the coins as foreign to India. Upon the 

 ancient Buddhist coins, discovered* in the ruins of the town 

 Behat on the banks of the Jumna, there occurs the title "Pil^lu 



* As. Trans, iii. 227. 



