396 Notice of some counterfeit Bactrian coins, [No. 100. 



mind that these minute holes have been occasioned by the piece 

 having been cast, and these peculiar appearances, added to its 

 identity of type, shape, and thickness, with the copper coins, 

 prove it to have been cast in a mould made from one of the 

 commonest copper types of Azes. 



The other piece, of base metal, has been manufactured by a 

 less skilful person, for the edge betrays that the halves of the 

 mould had overlapped each other, the projecting rough parts 

 having been only partially filed away : the mouth of the mould 

 is easily discovered by the obliteration of several, letters of the 

 legend on both sides at the same place, and there is a consi- 

 derable flaw beneath the figure of the bull, the result of a large 

 air bubble in the cast metal. 



The genuine silver coins of Azes are, besides, of a different 

 type, size, thickness and make, and are easily discernible by a 

 practised eye. 



The other forgeries which I have seen are of Indo-Scythic 

 gold coins, and these from the barbarous make of the originals 

 are not so easily detected. I have met with at least twenty 

 cast coins of Kanerkas, which have a figure standing to the left 

 on the obverse ; and a figure standing to the front with a bull 

 to the left on the reverse, with the legend OKPO : and I have 

 seen four or five cast pieces with the same obverse, having on 

 the reverse a seated female figure with the horn of plenty in her 

 left hand and the legend APAOXPO. 



These spurious pieces which merely reproduce in nobler 

 metals, types and names already known, are easily detected 

 by any one conversant with the published coins of Bactria; 

 and I trust that this brief notice will be of some small service 

 to such of our countrymen in Afghanistan as may be only no- 

 vices in numismatics. 



A counterfeit of another kind, the work of an ancient forger, 

 I hope soon to lay before my readers in a notice of a plated 

 copper drachma of Antimachus. 



Alexander Cunningham. 



