1845.] Unpublished Coins oj the Indo- Scythians. 431 



possibly baffle us for a long time. The chief difficulty, however, lies in 

 the loose and cursive manner of the writing, in which many letters of 

 similar forms are represented by characters of the same shape. 



In the present short inscription the only doubtful letters are in the 

 lower line. The upper line reads simply Gomangasa, " of the anointed 

 body (or limb)," from jftiff gom, to anoint, and ^pjr angga, the body 

 (or a member of it). In the lower line the first letter on the right is cer- 

 tainly k, (I write with two electro-type facsimiles of the original lying 

 before me) ; the second looks more like n than any other letter ; the 

 third is t ; the fourth is tu or to, according to my alphabet ; and the 

 last is clearly 5 : thus forming kanatatusa, which is the Pali form of 

 the Sanskrit kanyatratrasa, " the supporter or cherisher of maidens." 

 The whole inscription is therefore Gomangasa kanatatusa, " (Stupa or 

 Tope) of the anointed body of Kanyatratra." 



The gold coins extracted from this Tope by General Ventura declare, 

 in my opinion, most unquestionably, the age of the monument. They 

 belong to OHPKI or Hoerki, whom I identify with Hushka, a Tartar 

 sovereign of Kashmir just before the beginning of the Christian era. 

 In General Court's inscription the Tartar prince Kanishka is mentioned 

 with the title of Maharaja ; and this title is also found in a second 

 cylinder inscription. From these instances I infer, that when a tope 

 was erected over a royal personage, his royal titles were inserted ; and 

 that in the absence of any title, we may judge that the tope was built 

 over either a relic of Buddha, or the ashes of some eminent follower. 

 Bhagawa himself particularly mentions the merits to be acquired from 

 building thupa (topes) over relics of Sawaka or Chakkawati Rajas. In the 

 present instance therefore I believe that the great Manikyala tope was 

 built over a Sawaka (Sanskrit Srawaka) or lay votary of Buddha, named 

 Kanyatratra ; and that General Court's smaller tope was built over the 

 relics of Kanishka himself. 



I can find no authority for the erection of topes over the relics of the 

 Buddhist priesthood, although we possess the names of no less than 

 twenty- seven of the chief priests or patriarchs of the Buddhists, from the 

 death of Sakya Sinha to a. d. 499. I find that in b. c. 62 to 28, the 

 patriarch of Western India was named Kia-na-shi-pho, probably Kanya- 

 sibha, " the praiser of maidens." There is some similarity between this 

 name and that of Kanyatratra, " the cherisher of maidens ;" but in the 



