1851.] Indo- Scythian Princes. 141 



phinstone's Cabul, also this Journal, April, 1838, on the Siah-posh 

 Cafirs by Burnes). It will perhaps not be uninteresting, before I 

 proceed to a further identification of the Greek language than has yet 

 been attempted, as the adopted tongue of barbaric princes dominant 

 in Bactria, to make as it were a vocabulary of the Greek words in use 

 upon their coins. These, it will be seen, are partly imitations, and 

 adoptions of titles and attributive epithets in use with their prede- 

 cessors, the Greek Bactrian monarchs ; — and partly, which is very 

 curious, verbal applications of their own, sometimes in pure Greek ; 

 occasionally, as I shall show, in words misused and mis-spelled ; and 

 sometimes, in their later periods, in an unintelligible farrago of letters, 

 which either represent a wholly barbarized dialect, or else indicate the 

 ignorant attempts of a barbaric people to continue the fashion of using 

 a language, the knowledge of which had died out. The philological 

 value of these indisputable facts consists in the indication it gives us — 



1. Of the existence in Bactria of a spoken dialect of the Greek 

 current after the conquest of Alexander from the time of Theodotus, 

 B. C. 256 to that of Pantaleon B. C. 120, (v. for dates Wilson Ar. 

 Ant. C. IY. passim) — 



2. Because, as the language of established monarchy and of the 

 dominant class, it was continued on the coinage of their barbaric 

 successors — 



3. Preparing us for the occurrence of dialectic peculiarities, savour- 

 ing of Greek origin in the language of unread inscriptions or even of 

 spoken tongues with which further enquiry and investigation may make 

 us acquainted. 



The number of Bactrian monarchs whom Professor Wilson sees 

 reason to class as of unblemished Greek descent, is eighteen. The 

 attempt to adjust their chronological succession has been loosely tried, 

 but there can be no doubt that many, if not most of them, were cotem- 

 porary kings of different portions of what had been Grecian Bactria. 

 The numismatic evidence in our possession shows Theodotus* whom 

 Professor Wilson does not reckon in the number above noted, Euthy- 



* There is historic mention of a first, and second, Theodotus or Diodotus : I 

 have in this paper only looked to numismatic evidences, which afford one king 

 only of the name. 



H. T. 



