712 Coins of Indian Buddhist Satraps. [No. 7. 



Sasan) a more distant relation. The coins of Orthagnes are found 

 in Sistan, and Kandahar; those of Abdagases and Sasan in the 

 western Punjab. I presume therefore, that they were the viceroys 

 of those provinces on the part of the great king Gondophares, who 

 himself resided at Kabul. All the names are those of Parthians, 

 but the language of the coins is Indian Pali. Abdagases is the 

 name of the Parthian chief who headed the successful revolt against 

 Artabanus in A. D. 44. The great power of Gondophares, and the 

 discovery of a coin of Artabanus countermarked with the peculiar 

 monograph of all the Gondopharian dynasty, make it highly pro- 

 bable that the Indo- Parthian Abdagases was the same as the Par- 

 thian chief, whose revolt is recorded by Tacitus* and Josephus.f 

 This surmise is very much strengthened by the date of the revolt, 

 A. D. 44, which would make Gondophares a contemporary of Saint 

 Thomas. 



The peculiar monograph of all the coins of this dynasty affords 

 a most curious and striking proof of the prevalence of the Indian 

 language beyond the Indus. At first I thought that the name of 

 GondopharaJ was some compound of Phra or Phara which is found 

 in so many Parthian names. But about three years ago when I 

 was sketching a sugar-mill, the true meaning of the name flashed 

 suddenly upon me. I have given a sketch of the common Indian 

 sugar-mill in fig. 31, in which it will be observed that the outer 

 channels for the cane-juice are chiselled in the very form of this 

 peculiar monograph, which therefore, must be a pictorial representa- 

 tion of the compound name Gdnda-phor WIMPS', or " sugar-cane 

 crusher." I have never heard this term used, but it is regularly 

 formed, and is in strict keeping with Kdth-pJwr, the " wood-breaker," 

 and Pathar-phor, or the "stone-breaker," which are the common 

 names of the wood-pecker. 



My object however, is not to speak of Gondophares himself, but 

 of his relative Sasa or Sasan, whose coins exhibit the very same 



* Anaal. XV.— 2 



t Antiqua, XX. iii.— 2, Josephus calls the father of Abdagases, Kinnamos : Ta- 

 citus names him Sinnakes. 



X On the bust coins the name is YNAO^EPPOY : on the horseman coins it is 

 rONAO$APOT. The native legend however, is the same on both, " Gondophara." 



