No. 38. 1907.] EARLY COPPER COINS. 



205 



The trisula is of remote eld, and its import is unknown. It 

 has been considered phallic, and it has been thought to be a 

 form of the scarabeus. But as it occurs among the propitious 

 signs on Buddha's footprints, it may be included as an adopted 

 child of Buddhism. An example very similar to the type on 

 these coins occurs on an Amaravati carving of Buddha's 

 footprints and another on the pavement round Thuparama 

 Dagaba. 



There remain the triangular and the double triangular 

 symbols ; and these are so alike that I fancy their origin and 

 meaning is probably in both cases identical. 



Mr. Theobald, in his Paper on punch-marked coins,* figures 

 symbols very like these, and explains them as " food receptacles 

 for birds," conjecturing that they have evolved from a figure 

 of a begging-bowl placed on a post. I must confess this 

 seems a little hard to follow. Of the two symbols, the larger 

 seems to be only a more ornate form of the smaller, which is ^. 

 On the rock at Vessagiri in Anuradhapura one of the second 

 century b.c. inscriptions ends with a symbol ^ , evidently 

 closely allied to t , and perhaps not far removed from , 

 the crux ansata, which was the Egyptian hieroglyphic 

 meaning "life to come," and probably in its origin phallic. 



But whether food receptacles or no, these symbols are 

 evidently Buddhistic in Ceylon, or they would not occur, as 

 at Vessagiri and elsewhere, in the stone-inscribed dedication 

 of a cell to the " priesthood of the four quarters." 



Together with the large coins described above must be 

 included a small coin that was found near Thuparama Dagaba 

 in Anuradhapura. Unfortunately this specimen is (so far as 

 I know) unique, and is much damaged. It weighs in its 

 present state 16 grains ; but in addition to being worn it is 

 broken, and in all probability only weighs half or even less 

 than half of its original weight. I am inclined to think that it 

 probably was the \ pana of 36 grains, and thus |- of the 

 larger coins described above. 



* " Notes on some of the Symbols found on the punch-marked Coins 

 of Hindustan," by W. Theobald. — Journ. of the Asiatic Society of 

 Bengal, 1890, Part I., No. 3; 



