1840.] Note on the Bameean Coins. /3 



established in Pontus from of old, may be traced indisputably to an Asia- 

 tic origin, and whose real name Mag, as given by Strabo himself, a native 

 of those regions, is precisely the Sanscrit name of the Moon. This being- 

 established, it might not be impossible that the name MAYOY, joined 

 to the word BA2IAEQ2, on our Bactri.au coin, might be an equivalent 

 for the name Apollodotus, suggested perhaps by the same motive which 

 had caused the choice of the figure of Apollo as type of the coin of Apollo- 

 dotus. Under this hypothesis, the various numismatic indices which made me 

 assign our medal to the epoch of that prince, would be fully borne out as 

 true by gaining thus their full force. This is however no more than a 

 conjecture, which I submit most deferentially to our philologists in the 

 tongues of India, through whom alone, one may hope for the solution of 

 this curious problem." 



I confess this does not seem to me to be a question referable for 

 decision to a philological test, of the nature above specified. The word 

 MAYOY may indeed be derived in the manner suggested by Mons. 

 de Raoul Rochette in the above ingenious paper, but with the Caducem 

 on the coin, the application of it would I think be more readily made 

 to Mercury, than to the "androgyne deity," or " Deus Lunus," whom 

 the writer points to as affording in the analogous shape of Apollo, an 

 equivalent to Apollodotus. The Caduceus is too remarkable an em- 

 blem to be mistaken as regards its reference : it has been found on the 

 coins of this series, only in juxtaposition with the name of Demetrius, and 

 with the mysterious word, Mayus; this coincidence enables me to suggest a 

 direct mythological meaning to the unknown term, without attempting 

 to interfere with the philological exposition of Mons. de Raoul Rochette. 

 Mercury, whose parentage is (Sophocles Electra* " fiaiag iraig" Eurip. Rhe- 

 sus, and Helen, " /uaia^og TOKog") ordinarily noted with direct reference by 

 Greek poets to his mother, is named by a purely classic author (Eurip. 

 Medea v.759) as o fiaiag ava%, a poetic license, in which however may be 

 found an approximation to a masculine matronymic, applicable to the 

 deity, and corrupted in after years, under the impure dialect of a distant 

 military colony into the word before us. Thus allowing the philological 

 theory, I am inclined to find in MAO the original of Maia, the fabled 

 mother of Mercury, and to detect in this masculine adaptation of her 

 name, not an androgyne deity, but the 



" Almae 



Filius Maiae " 



