70 Ancient Indian Weights. [No. 2, 
convert every one into ecght.* When I quoted the tradition and the 
numismatic fact in juxtaposition, I little surmised how much more 
closely the two might be connected, or that instead of the latter afford- 
ing a mere illustration of the former, that the surviving metallic 
witnesses would suffice, with the slight introductory testimony, to put 
a man’s memory on ‘trial for forgery twenty centuries and more after 
date. But so it would seem: the Brahman Chanakyat+ confesses, 
through his own advocates, that in his desire to subvert the rule of the 
Nandas, he seduced sons ‘from their father’s palaces, and ‘“ with the 
view of raising resources,’ to have had recourse to the more than 
questionable expedient of depreciating, or properly speaking forging, 
coins of the ruling monarch, which, however, under the ultimate test 
of the old money changers, would soon have found their level. The 
copper coinage of the day was probably beyond any very ready power 
of transmutation, but ifthe silver currency is to afford a modern “ pix,” 
the Brahman must have worked to advantage, as there may be seen in 
the cabinets of the British Museum, at this present writing, a piece 
purporting to be of Krananda, with fair legends and full spread of 
surface, though of tenuity itself, which should in ordinary equity have 
weighed somewhere over 40 grains, but which on trial barely balances 
17:7 grains Troy.t 
* Num, Chron. N.S., iv. pp. 127, 128. 
+ Mahdwanso, p. xl. ‘‘ Opening the door [of Nanda’s palace at Palibothra] 
with the utmost secrecy, and escaping with the prince out of that passage, they 
fled into the wilderness of Winjjhad. While dwelling there, with the view of 
raising resources, he converted (by recoining) each kahdpamam into eight, and 
amassed eighty kétis of kahdpand. Having buried this treasure, he commenced 
to search for a second individual entitled (by birth) to be raised to sovereign 
power, and met with the aforesaid prince of the Mériyan dynasty called Chanda- 
gutto,” 
+ This of course is an extreme instance, but it is not a strained example; and 
although the piece, which I refrained from quoting previously, is damaged, and 
has lost its oxydised film, it is by no means worn, or anything like a coin which 
we might legally refuse for want of the king’s emblems. The best coin of the 
class still weighs 38-2 grains. (Num. Chron. N.\S., iy. p. 128.) 


