1854.] Coins of Indian Buddhist Satraps. G79 



Coins of Indian Buddhist Satraps, with Greek inscriptions. — By 

 Major A. Cunning ham, Bengal Engineers. 



Of the numerous coins bearing Greek legends which, during the 

 last twenty years, have been found in Cabul and the Punjab, the 

 greater number belong to the series of pure Greek princes, who 

 ruled over the Indian provinces of Alexander the Great. The 

 remainder belong to their Scythian conquerors ; to Hyrkodes and 

 Kadaphes ; to Moas and Azas ; to Barano, Hoerke and Kanerki ; 

 and to their Indo-Parthian contemporaries, to Vonones and his 

 brother Spalhores, and to Gondophares, his brother Orthagnes,* and 

 his nephew Abdagases. 



Amongst all these coins, certainly not less than thirty thousand 

 in number, and which range over a period of more than three cen- 

 turies, not a single specimen has hitherto been found bearing a pure 

 Hindu name in Greek characters. And yet in the Punjab at least 

 we might have expected to have found some remains of a partially 

 Hellenized currency of the descendants of Taxiles and Poms. Of 

 the great competitor of Alexander, we only know that he was a 

 descendant of Gegasios,t or Jajdti, which proves that he was of the 



* The coins of this chief are extremely rare. His name occurs only in the 

 Greek legend as OPQArNHC, or OP0ArN ; but in the Pali legend he styles 

 himself f I *"1,P& &• Gondophara Sagaba, "the full brother of Gondophares." 

 Sagabha is the Pali form of the Sanskrit ^TJTKJ, Sagarbhya " of the same womb," 

 which is now represented by the Hindi Saga-bhai. Abdagases calls himself the 

 bhdta-putra, or brother's son" of Gondophares. The coins of Vonones always 

 present the name of his brother on the reverse — thus : Maharaja -bhrata dhamiasa 

 Spalahorasa, u (Coin) of the king's brother, the just Spalhores." 



f This fact is preserved by Plutarch, de Fluviis, in voce Hydaspes. When 

 Porus was assembling his troops to oppose Alexander, the royal elephant rushed 

 up a hill sacred to the sun (the present Balndth-ki-Tila or " hill of the sun god)," 

 and in human accents exclaimed " O great king, who art descended from Gogasios, 

 forbear all opposition to Alexander, for Gogasios himself was also of the race of 

 Jove." The hill was afterwards called " the hill of the elephant," which I take 

 to be another proof of its identity with Balnath ; for this name is in most of our 

 maps written Bilnaut, and is commonly pronounced Bilndth or Belndlh, which I 

 suppose the Macedonians, who had just come through Persia, to have mistaken for 

 Fil-ndth or PiUn&th— the elephant. See Hodgson, Geography, Vet. Vol. II. 



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