374 Lassen on the History traced [No. 100. 



are much better adapted to a separate treatise, which may be 

 published in time. 



Here we shall merely call in question the view under which 

 these monuments are deemed Buddhist. Buddhistic coins, exhi- 

 biting on the obverse the old Indian characters which occur on 

 the columns of Asoka, and on the reverse those characters we are 

 here illustrating, have been indeed discovered in India, but never 

 in the topes. Hence appears it very surprising, that Buddhist 

 kings should have had buried with them, various coins of the 

 Romans, of the Sassanides, of the worshippers of Mithra, and 

 even such as allude to the worship of Shiva and Vishnoo, exclud- 

 ing entirely (their own or) Buddhist coins. 



We shall take from these inscriptions only what is confirmed 

 beyond doubt. They first prove, that the native characters, 

 adopted upon the coins by the Graeco-Indian kings, out of re- 

 gard to their subjects, were not only retained under the govern- 

 ment of the first Indo- Scythian, but also continued to the period 

 of the Sassanides; for in the topes Sassanian coins, furnished 

 with Pehlvi, and Deva Nagaree legends, are discovered among 

 the coins of Kadphises, and Kanerki. The characters of our 

 coins therefore were still in use under the Sassanides, even after 

 the time when the Kanerkes dynasty had abolished the use of 

 the characters upon the coins in their empire. 



The inscriptions, moreover, bear witness to the writing being 

 used for other purposes than for inscriptions on coins ; probably, 

 however, by kings only of foreign descent, and who reigned 

 on the borders of India. On this hereafter. 



Lastly, with regard to the language ; as the termination 6 

 frequently recurs, and the word Mahdrdjo* was discovered by 

 Mr. Prinsep in the larger inscription of Manikyala, evidence is 

 afforded, that we. fall in here also with the Indian language ; 

 the inscription at Jellalabad contains purely Indian words in 

 Pracrit. 



Upon monuments of a later period than that of the Sassa- 

 nides, no traces of the characters upon our coins have yet 

 appeared. 



* As Trans, in. pi. xxxiii. second line, iv. p. 336. 



