1890.] 
207 
FimcJi-marlced coins of Ilindnstan, ^c. 
15. TllKJfiE JJALL8 014 yi'HEKES. Mg. 153. 
This is another symbol of Nature worship and stands for the male 
triad of the Indian religion. It also originates in the remotest antiquity 
as it is the precise horaologue of the next symbol which exemplifies the 
Assyrian form of the same idea. It occurs on terra-cotta whorls from 
Troy (Troy, Plate XXII, fig. 319) though on the whorl the dots are 
farther apart, being ranged round the central perforation. In modern 
times this religious symbol has degenerated into the sign of a pawn- 
broker’s den. This symbol occurs as the central ornament on the Cross 
at Koils, (S. S. S. Vol. II, PI. XXXII,) and also on the cross at Kildal- 
ton, (S. S. S. Vol. II, PI. XXXVI,) and the slight variant of it No. 15i, 
(fig. 154,) no less than six times on the reverse of the same stone (PI. 
XXXVII, 1. c.). This variant also occurs singly on an archaic stone at 
Balneilan, Banffshire, (S. S. S. Vol. II, PI. CIV,) where we can only 
suppose it is introduced as a symbol, for its esoteric meaning, as it 
stands alone and does not owe its existence to any necessity of orna- 
mentation or elaboration of design. 
16. Foue spheres in a square. Fig. 163. 
This is an extremely ancient symbol and occurs like the last, on 
terra-cotta whorls at Troy (Schliemann XXII, figs. 317, 318 and 322, 1. c.) 
The four dots are differently arranged in each instance, in figs. 317 and 
318 they occupy the four ai'ms of a cruciform figure; in fig. 322, they 
intervene between four curved arms radiating from the centre. In an 
extremely ancient* cornelian bead from the Panjab in my possession, 
pierced like a bead (that is through its gi-eatcst diameter) and not like 
a whorl in a direction vertical thereto, there occurs in the centre a 
* Some of those beads are figured in a short paper by myself in the Proceedings 
of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for October 1809. There is no good series of these 
most curious beads in the British Museum, where considerable soeptioiam and lack 
of information still exists thereon, and tho assertion of mine that the pattern is 
engraved in tho stone previous to the application of the pigment is regarded by Mr, 
Pranks as ‘nonsense.’ Unfortunately for this ex-oathedril verdict founded on negative 
ground, I have specimens showing undoubtedly that such was the course pursued, 
though not perhaps universally, and I take the present opportunity of reiterating the 
assertions made by myself twenty years ago, though they do not seem to have 
penetrated sufficiently deep for acceptance in quarters where such knowledge might 
have been looked for. I specially commend the note, appended to my paper on these 
heads to Mr. Frank’s notice, before he commits himself to the idea of their being 
not older than the 1 5th century, I am aware that agates can be variously stained 
by chemical solutions and otherwise, and the art may have been known to soTne 
extent by the makers of these beads, but nothing can invalidate the fact, that on 
some beads, the pattern has been also first cut into stone. 
