JOURNAL 



ASIATIC SOCIETY 



Points in the History of the Greek, and Indo- Scythian Kings 

 in Bactria, Cabul, and India, as illustrated by decyphering 

 the ancient legends on their coins. By Christian Lassen, 

 Bonn, 1838. 1 



With Mithra, it appears, was connected a very peculiar poly- 

 theism, which had utterly departed from the spirit of the unfi- 

 gured worship of light, as taught by the original and true Magi ; 

 it also appears, that Mithra himself was considered in this wor- 

 ship as the solar god, Helios, as the Sol Invictus of the Roman 

 inscriptions of later periods, and that a number of deified 

 beings are grouped around him, produced by the same com- 

 bination of the religious elements of Asia Minor and of Iran. 

 This religion was more congenial to the Parthians than the 

 purer form of Magism. When under Arsaces vi, they con- 

 quered the sanctuary in Elymais, where the goddess Nanea 

 was adored, and when they appropriated to themselves its 

 treasures, they may have probably admitted the worship of 

 this goddess under the name there used.* The Indo- Scythians, 

 when in the time of Arsaces vn, and vm, about the year 

 130 b.c. they roamed and plundered throughout the Parthian 

 empire, found this worship already established, and a horde of 

 the same people maintaining themselves for some ages in a remote 

 corner of the Parthian empire, made it as entirely their own, 

 1 Continued from p. 378. vol. ix. 

 * Strabo xvi. p. 744. Vaillant Arsac. imp. p. 41. 



No. 101. New Series, No. 17 3 m 



