
1865.] Ancient Indian Weights. 59 
may reasonably be referred to the independent conceptions of primitive 
magic ; as, whatever may have been the religion of the various grades of 
men in its higher sense, it is manifest that even the leading and more 
intellectual rulers of the people retained a vague faith in the efficacy of 
charms ; almost all the tales in Persian or Arabic authors bearing upon 
Alexander’s intercourse with the unconquered nations of India, turn 
upon their proficiency in the black art ;—traditions sufficiently war- 
ranted by the probability that he, a Greek, would readily seek revela- 
tions of this kind, even as he sought the knowledge of the art of the 
Chaldees. 
So also with their own home legends—-one half of the revolution 
wrought by Chandra Gupta’s advisers is placed to the credit of magic, 
and the Nandas, whom he superseded, appear to have been special 
proficients in sorcery. If this was the state of things in India in 
those semi-historical times, may not we adopt the parallel of other 
nations, and assume that, as so many crude hierarchies grew out of 
archaic divinings, these Indian symbols, in their degree, may well 
have been emanations from a similar source, and have run an equal 
race into the higher dignity of representing things held more sacred ? 
—as such, their later reception into a series of the typical adjuncts of 
a faith formed vn situ, need excite no surprise, 
In concluding these papers on Indian Weights, and completing 
somewhat hastily the illustration of the introductory system of Indian 
coinages, I am anxious, as the inquiry may end here, to furnish a final 
and, I trust, a convincing argument against those who affirm that 
Alexander taught India how to coin money—by meeting them on 
their own ground, and producing a very perfect piece of an Indian 
king, a manifest emanation from the gradational advances of indigen- 
ous treatment, minted contemporaneously in a part of the country 
Alexander did not reach. Additional interest will be felt in these 
coins, when it is known that there are strong grounds for believing 
that they bear the name and superscription of Xandrames, the king 
of the Gangetic provinces, who was prepared to meet Alexander 
should he have ventured to advance towards the Jumna. 
The first suggestion for this identification only occurred to me a few 
days ago, on reading the newly-published French translation of the 
8 
