1894.] W. Theobald —Early Local Silver Coinages in N.-W. India. 81 
in Kliorasan, and figured in Journal , Asiatic Society , Bengal , for 1842, 
page 142, only on one coin the strokes, which in that case would repre¬ 
sent fingers, are six in number. In the gem in question, which may be 
of Gnostic significance, a human hand is seen lightly grasping a human 
ear, as though designed to illustrate the lines of Virgil: 
44 Quum canerem reges et proelia, Cynthius aurem 
Vellit et admonuit.”— Ecloga, VI, 3. 
Whilst, therefore, it cannot be confidently asserted that a human 
hand is the object represented, it is not wholly impossible that this 
fantastic and obscure symbol may be the outcome of a crude effort to 
reproduce the subject of the above gem. Perhaps a larger series of 
these coins may clear the matter up. 
I would now offer a few remarks on a class of coins, only, I 
believe, hitherto recorded from the Konkan, and described by Sir 
Walter Elliot in Numismata Orientalia , ‘ Coins of Southern India,’ Vol. I, 
pages 66 and 152c. The following is the description of one of 
these coins figured on plate II, fig. 61 :—“No. 61, weight 12*8 grains. 
Transition punch-coin, found with others in the Konkau, with a bull, 
erroneously called a lion at pp. 50 and 66, superimpressed on 
the punch-marks.” Now this description is a very erroneous and mis¬ 
leading one. The coin figured seems imperfect, though they are all 
very rudely shaped, but with two specimens of my own and six lent 
to me by Dr. Codrington, I am able to fix the full weight of one of these 
pieces at J5 grains or more, and the average weight of these eight coins 
as a trifle over 14 grains. At page 50 (l.c.) we read,—“A find in 
the Konkan displayed pieces, on which an animal, perhaps a lion, had 
been impressed in the centre, and above all the others,” and again at page 
66 “We have nothing of an earlier date of which we can speak with 
any confidence, unless it be a hoard of eldlings found in the Konkan 
with the figure of a lion (?) superimposed on the earlier punch-marks.” 
Now this is all wrong. The author himself has corrected the error 
of taking a lion for a bull, but there are no punch-marks whatever on 
these coins, and although some have been double-struck, yet only on 
a single coin of my own is there any appearance which would lead 
to the conclusion of the ‘ die ’ having been applied over an older 
design ; and as regards this one coin, I believe, such was not the case. 
The term 4 eldling ’ used by Sir Walter Elliot for the 4 punch-marked ’ 
coins, or 4 puranas, ’ is also misleading, as these coins from the Konkan 
are not 4 punch-marked’ at all, but struck from dies which, though rude 
and not all alike, were certainly not 4 punches,’ nor w r as one device 
struck over another, save in the case of coins which have been 4 double 
struck ’ from the same die, as of course occasionally happens through 
