182 W. Theobald — Notes on some of the symbols found on the [No. 3-4, 
employed. It likewise followed that one symbol thus comes to overlap 
and obliterate an earlier one and hence the difficulty of always deter- 
mining what symbols really occur on a coin, which has undergone many 
applications of the “ punch.” These coins may therefore be considered 
as forming a class by themselves of indigenous origin, though sub- 
divided into an earlier issue of round or oval pieces, and a later one of a 
rectangular form, to which the name of ‘ domino coins ’ from their shape 
has been applied. From the gi’eater wear and corresponding loss of weight 
which the round coins have experienced. General Sir Alexander Cun- 
ningham (whose opinion on such a question may be regarded as final) 
considers that the round coins were as I have stated, issued and in 
current use, before the introduction of the rectangular pieces ; and also 
that about one-fourth of the existing punch-marked coins are round, 
and three-fourths of the rectangular pattern. Small gold coins of this 
class are known, and there was also a copper currency as well, but 
the great bulk of these coins which has come down to us is silver. 
Some coins are formed of a copper blank thickly covered with silver, 
before receiving the impression of the punches, and this cotom porary 
(if not time-honoured) sophistication of the currency is found to occur 
subsequently in various Indian coinages, in the Grneoo-Bactrian of the 
Panjab, the Hindu kings of Kabul, and later still in various Muham- 
madan dynasties of the peninsula. The plating is extremely well 
executed and of the most durable character covering the edge of the 
coin as well as its surface. I was for some time at a loss to know by 
what means this was efFected, so long ago as 500 B. C. perhaps, but I 
am told that a bright copper ‘ blank ’ dipped into melted silver would 
become coated with that metal, and this I have little doubt was the 
plan followed. By this means a number of copper ‘ blanks ’ thrown 
into a ladle of melted silver and well stirred about, would all come out 
ready for the impression of the die or punch, and it is possible that 
‘ blanks ’ thus surreptitiously prepared may have been introduced into 
the royal mint, and there struck with genuine dies, and the coins thus 
prepared substituted for an equal number of genuine pieces.* For most 
* As these plated coins are clearly of cotemporary date with the rest and 
fashioned from dies of precisely the same character as those employed on genuine 
coins, it seems by no means an undue or far-fetched assumption if we regard these 
pieces as a portion of those very coins (or identical in all respects) which the Brahman 
Chanakya, the adviser of Chandra Gupta “ with the view of raising resources, 
converted, by re-coining each Kahapana into eight, and amassed eighty Kotis of 
Kahapanas", Mahawanae, quoted by Thomas, 1. c., Num. Orient, p. 41. These 
same kahapanas or karsh^panas, were of course the coins now under consideration, 
and it seems a very just estimate to take eight plated copper ones as the number 
