Additions to Bad Hart Numismatics [July, 



Obverse. A fine youthful head and bust of the king wearing a plain 

 steel helmet, with the bands of the diadem protruding behind. On the 

 area above and below — bA^Iaeys MErA2 etkpatiahs in the nomina- 

 tive case. 



Reverse. Busts of a man and a woman looking to the right : hair sim- 

 ple and without diadem ; legend above haioKaeoys, below KANAOAIKH5. 



Supplying the word vios, we have here the parentage of Eucratides 

 developed in a most unexpected way : ' The great king Eucratides, son 

 of Heliocles and Kanlodice.' The former is a well known Greek 

 name, but it is evident from the absence of title and diadem that he was 

 a private person, and yet that his son having found his own way to the 

 throne, was not ashamed of his unregal origin. The name of his mother, 

 Kanlodike however, is unknown and is decidedly not Greek. From the 

 sound I have little hesitation in hazarding that it is the Sanskrit name 

 3f*T^ufwT Kamalddhikd, — meaning * superior to Kamald, or Venus, 

 (alias < fairer than the lily.') This name in the vernacular of the present 

 day would be pronounced exactly as the Greek legend has it, kaunla 

 a lity, Jcaunladhiki, and I think, bearing in mind our other evidence of 

 the state of the vernacular dialects in the date of Asoka, there can 

 be little doubt of such being the correct derivation of the anomalous 

 name thus adopted into the Greek. 



Eucratides then was the son of a Greek officer married to a lady 

 of the country, whom we may set down as of Hindu parentage and 

 language ; and we may thence argue that a dialect mainly derived 

 from the Sanskrit was then used in Bactria, or at least in the Panjab, 

 as in the present day, though now diluted to a large extent with Persian 

 and Arabic introduced along with the Muhammadan religion. 



In further proof of this position, we can now also adduce a Pali in- 

 scription in the old character procured by Captain Burnes from the 

 northern side of the great chain of mountains, near Badakshiin ; (which 

 will be published in Plate XXXV. of the next number,) to say nothing 

 of the Pali reverses of the Agathocles and Pantaleon coins from the 

 same region, 



The natural inference is that we should seek the explanation of the 

 legends on the reverses of the Bactrian coins rather through the medi- 

 um of Pali or Zend, as I attempted in 1835, than as has been preferred 

 by M. Jacquet of Paris, through the medium of Syriac and Chaldaic, 

 with what success I have not the means of judging*. 



* It will be proper here to notice that in 1836, M. Jacquet, obligingly for- 

 warded to me a lithographed page of his readings of the Bactrian alphabet and 



