1840.] Lieut, Cunningham on Bactrian coins. 887 



When I wrote my notes upon Captain Hay's Bactrian coins, I 

 had not given any attention to the study of the Bactrian Pali charac- 

 ters ; my readings of the native legends of those coins vrere therefore 

 made according to the values assigned to the different letters by 

 my late lamented friend James Prinsep, all the observable differences 

 in my readings having been errors of the press. Had James Prinsep 

 lived, he would long before this have perfected what he had so success- 

 fully begun. Since then, however, I have examined not only all the 

 coins within my reach, but also all the engravings published in the 

 Journal des Savants, in the Numismatic Journal, and in the Journal of 

 the Asiatic Society of Bengal : and after a careful examination of them 

 all, I have been led to some discoveries which appear to me to be of 

 sufficient consequence to warrant their publication. 



The name of Undopherras on his own coins is invariably represent- 

 ed in Bactrian Pali by T5VS^ ; which Mr. Prinsep rendered by 

 Farahatisa ; he however doubted the correctness of his own reading, 

 which was based upon an assumed and false value of the initial letter. 

 On the coins of Abalgasus the name of Undopherras is written with 

 a slight variation thus, "iVl't ; the turn at the foot of the initial letter 

 being to the left instead of to the right, and the fourth letter being 

 the common r instead of the cerebral r. Now there are four syllables 

 in the Greek name, and in its Bactrian Pali equivalent there are an 

 equal number of letters, forming with inherent or written vowels the same 

 number of syllables, and consequently agreeing exactly with the Greek 

 name, thus giving us the best possible clue to the value of each of 

 these Bactrian Pali characters, which I will now examine separately. 



1st. The first letter is found also as the initial of the name of 

 Agathoclea, in which name it represents the Greek cb short. Prof. 

 Lassen has strangely supposed the initial letter to be m inflected 

 with the vowel e, making the first syllable me I In the name of 

 Undopherras this letter stands for a short u. It is found also in 

 the middle of the names of Spalurmas, and of Abalgasas, in the former 

 representing u short, and in the latter a short: for I believe that 

 Abalgasus might with equal correctness have been written Abalgysus, 

 as Megabyzus is always written. 



From these four examples of the use of this letter, there results the 

 certainty that it represented the short vowels a and u of the Greek, 



