DESCRIPTION OF SELECT COINS. 605 



its vicinity : the mission having to make the best of their way on their 

 return. 



Mr. Erskine, in a paper in the Bombay Transactions, on the Remains 

 of the Buddhists in India, notices this building, and says of it " although 

 its origin is unknown, yet in its hemispherical form and whole appear- 

 ance it carries with it sufficient proof that it was a magnificent Dagope 

 (a Bauddha shrine) constructed at a remote period by persons of the Bud- 

 dhist faith." 



There can be little doubt of the correctness of Mr. Erskine's conjec- 

 ture as to the character of the monument. It is a well known peculiarity 

 of the Bauddha religion, to enshrine relics of a Buddha, his hair, teeth y 

 nails, &c. in solid masses of masonry,* and the caskets or boxes found in 

 the present instances may have originally contained some such exuviae. 

 The existence of a Bauddha monument is not incompatible with Colonel 

 Wilford's notion that here stood the city of Taxiles, especially as we know 

 the religion of Buddha flourished at an early age in Cashmir, and that 

 the Hindus, in the days of the Mahd Bhdrat, looked upon the people of 

 the Punjab as little better than outcastes. The city could not have been 

 Bucephala, as General Ventura supposes — for Arrian states that Alex- 

 ander built that city on the bank of the Hydaspes, at the place where he 

 crossed the river. The same authority informs us that the country between 

 the Indus and Hydaspes was governed by Taxiles, who was reasonably 

 apprehensive of the ambition of Porus, the sovereign of the country on 

 the east of the Hydaspes. But although Manikyala and Talcshasila may 

 have been the same place, the monument in question is, from the charac- 

 ter of the Coins, subsequent to Alexander and to the first Bactrian 

 princes. It is also obvious that they are of different aeras, and the monu- 



* Whence the term Dagope — or Delia— the body; Gopa, what preserves. 



M 5 



