179 
1894.] V. A. Smith — History and Coinage of the Gupta Period. 
Gujarat. No indications of decline, so far as I am aware, are dis- 
cernable in our records of the reign of Kumara Gupta T. The fierce 
conflicts with the Huns recorded in the Bhitari inscription of Skanda 
Gupta appear to have been the immediate cause of the break up of the 
Empire. 
These preliminary observations will, it is hoped, help to make 
more easily intelligible the perplexing coinages of the Later Indo- 
Scythians. 
Cunningham classes the Later Indo-Scythians in three main 
groups :— 
I. The Later Great Kusans. 
II. The Later Little Kusans. 
III. The Ephthalites, or White Huns. 1 * 
Coins of all these three groups exist in considerable number and 
variety. 
Section I. The Later Great Kusans. 
The coins of the later kings of the Great Kusan tribe (Ta-yue-ti 
of the Chinese, Tusara of the Hindu, and Toyapot of the Greek 
writers), “formed the money of the Kabul valley and the Panjab from 
the time of Vasudeva’s death, or about A. D. 180 or 200, down to the 
settlement of Kiddra Shah , or Ki-to-lo, in Gandhara, about A.D. 425. 
Ki-to-lo, the king of the Great Kusans, established his son in 
Purushdwar , or Peshawar, and thus formed the kingdom of the Little 
Yue-ti, or Lesser Kusans.” 8 
The coins of the Later Great Kusans are divided by Cunningham 
into two classes, characterized as follows :— 
Glass A. 
A numerous series of gold coins bearing the names of Kaniska 
or Vasudeva 3 * * * * in Greek letters on the margin, always accompanied by 
Indian (Nagarl) letters in the field outside the king’s spear or trident, 
1 Cunningham’s papers on the Later Indo-Scythians include one on the Scytho= 
Sassanians ( Num. Ghron. for 1893, p. 166), but the connection of the Scytho-Sassa- 
nian ooins there described by him with India is so remote that I pass them over. 
* Num. Chron. for 1893, p. 115. 
3 Cunningham invariably writes Vdsu with the long vowel. The coins figured 
by him, and every coin which I have seen, give the name under the king’s arm 
as ^ Vasu. The full name Vasudeva does not occur in Nagarl characters. I 
use the term Nagarl to mean any form of the Sanskrit alphabet. Cunningham 
uses the inconveniently vague term “ Indian.” The general description of each 
class of coins is compiled from several passages in Cunningham’s essay. 
