413 Specimens of unedited coins [May 



Obverse.— (From the Koran.) " It is he that sendeth his messenger for righteous- 

 ness" 



There is no God but God, Muhammad is the prophet of God i— The mighty sove- 

 reign Ghids ul dunya va u'din, Abu'lfateh, Muhammad bin Sa'm. 



Reverse.— This dirhem was struck in the city of Ghazneh, in the year five hundred 

 and ninety-six. 



The coin of the mighty sovereign, Moaz ul n&ser te din, abu'l dunyd va ul din 

 Muhammad bin Sa'm. 



Specimen III. 

 Among the coins discovered by General Ventura in the great tope 

 at Manikyala, and described in my third volume pi. xxi, fig. 10, and 

 page 316, were two of the Sassanian type, having Sanskrit legends on 

 the margin of the obverse. I did not then attempt to decipher them, nor 

 am I aware that their explanation has been since effected elsewhere. 



Captain Burnes has been so fortunate as to pick up three more of 

 the same curious coins, in his present journey, which are now in my 

 hands with other rare antique produce of his successful research. 



They have every appearance of having been extracted from some 

 similar ancient monument ; which is by no means improbable, for we may 

 be very sure, that full half of the fruits of the late explorations of the 

 various topes have evaded the hands of their explorers, and are scat- 

 tered about the country to be hereafter picked up gradually from 

 pilgrims or professed dealers ; for a trade will soon be organized in 

 such articles, if it be not already established. There is no harm in this, 

 as it will tend to preserve such relics from destruction ; but we must for 

 the future be on our guard against spurious specimens, which will mul- 

 tiply daily. 



Captain Burnes' discovery has been of the greatest service toward 

 the deciphering of the Sanskrit legend : his coins have helped me to the 

 general purport of the marginal writing, even if they have not wholly 

 explained its contents. I found on collating the five legends now at my 

 command, that three of them (vide PI. XXI.) were short of the others 

 by two letters, which in the most perfect of Captain Burnes' coins 

 might be clearly read as nita f^r<r :. Remembering an analogous 

 omission on one of the Gupta coins of Canouj, wherein some speci- 

 mens had the epithet vijayaja and others vijayajanita — both of the 

 same meaning, I concluded that the preceding anomalous letter on all 

 the coins must be a m, and indeed it has no small affinity to the modern 

 Nagari and Bengali j. The two preceding syllables, again, there 

 could be no doubt about ; being in all five examples ^«r, deva. Now 

 dev.<ju and devajanita, ' offspring of the gods' is the well known epi- 

 thet of the ancient Persian monarchs as well as of the Sassanian race. 

 Thus in the trilingual inscription on the Nakshi-rustam sculpture given 



