62 
Philological Secretary —Report on old coins. [Aphih, 
According to the Collector’s letter to the Commissioner, there 
should have been 573 coins in the lot, but I have only been able to 
count 548. No number is stated in the Collector’s letters to the Asiatic 
Society of Bengal; and it is, therefore, not quite certain what number of 
coins was actually dispatched to the Society. Unfortunately the coins 
were not counted immediately on arrival. They were received by me 
in an excessively bad state, thickly coated with ancient dirt and ver¬ 
digris, and looking like a heap of rubbish. I had them first boiled 
in a sort of puree of tamarind, then put away to soak in the same for 
about 24 hours, and finally carefully cleaned by rubbing with towels. 
It is possible, that in the course of this process, the missing coins may 
have been destroyed or lost. In any case, the loss (if any) is trifling. 
They are probably coins of the class current in certain parts of 
Ancient India, which are described and figured by the late Sir A. 
Cunningham in his Goins of Ancient Lidia , pages 54-66, plates I —III. 
These coins existed in two distinct varieties: some were cast, while 
others were punched with dies (single or double). The coins of the 
present collection, with a few exceptions, belong to the former variety, 
of cast coins. Some of them still show the protruding marks of the 
mould in which they were cast. They are of very considerable interest 
for this reason that no coins of this particular type has ever before been 
found, — at least not to my knowledge. I shall, therefore, describe 
them in detail. See Plate II. 
The best made of the coins are clearly die-struck ones. They 
are so much worn down by usage, that the designs on most of them are 
barely discernible. On some of them, however, sufficient remains to 
identify them with coins of the Indo-Scythian class. The obverse 
shows the well-known standing figure of king Kanishka, pointing with 
his right hand down to the fire-altar; the reverses show the figures of 
MAO or MIIPO, A0PO (PI. I, fig. ]), and OADO (PI. I, fig. 2) * as seen 
on Kanerki coins. No trace of the legend remains; and in its absence, 
of course, it is impossible to be quite certain of the identity; but the 
resemblance of the figures on both the obverses and reverses to those on 
the corresponding Kanerki coins is very striking. The legends on the 
Kanerki copper coins were very brief, consisting of one or two words only, 
arranged along the margin ; they would, therefore, be peculiarly liable to 
extreme erasion. The Kanerki copper coinage, however, was extensively 
imitated in the later Indo-Scythian period ; and the coins here described, 
may belong to this rather than to the genuine, contemporary Kanerki 
* Figure 2 on the Plate is made up of two coins. The reverse shows OADO; 
*se shows Kanerki from another coin, 
