1899.] 
Section I.—Goins and Seals. 
7 
The letters which I read juthabi or yuthabi (or jathubi) are puzzl¬ 
ing. Their forms, as seen on some of the coins, are clear enough and 
are shown in the subjoined Woodcut No. 4. Thus (a) is seen on 
& b o cL & 
Var. II, No. li, (6) on Var. II, No. 12, (c) on Var. II, No. 4, (d) on 
Var. I, No. 1, (e) on Yar. I, No. 4, and (f) on Yar. II, No. 8. Of these 
(a) signifies juthabi , (b, c, d) signify jutha, (e) signifies yutha , and (/) 
signifies juthu. The form of the syllable bi never varies. In (a) and 
(/) the vowel u is formed in an unusual way, but similar to its forma¬ 
tion in ( d ) of Woodcut No. 5, below. I would venture to offer the 
following explanation, which must be understood to be altogether tenta¬ 
tive only. I would suggest that the legend might be the equivalent of 
the not uncommon title Sanskrit Prthvi-rdja or Pali-Prakrit Putluivl- 
rdja or Puthuvi-raja , i.e., 1 King of the earth.’ 2 The complete title on 
the coins, accordingly, would run Sanskrit Mahdrdja-prthvirdja , or 
Pali-Prakrit mahdrdja-piUhavlrdja or malidrdya-puthavlraja. In Prakrit, 
as is well-known, the initial consonant of a conjunct word may be 
elided, and the resultant hiatus-vowels may be contracted: in the 
present case 0 apu° may be changed to °aii°, and contracted to °o° or even 
to °u°. We thus obtain the form of the title mahardj-uthablraja or 
maharay-uthablraja , with the provincialism of hardening v. This 
explanation postulates a somewhat advanced stage of Prakrit phonetic 
change ; but the existence of such a stage in Khotan at the period of 
these coins is rendered probable by the change of j to y in the form 
maharaya. 
2 I was disposed at one time to find some confirmation of my snggestion in the 
Chinese Pi-qi-pi-lien, which, according to Abel Remusat’s Histoire de la Ville de 
Khotan, p. 30, was the royal title of Khotan, and which I thought might represent 
the Sanskrit Viqva-raya (for Viqva-raja) or ‘king of the world,’ a synonym of 
Prthviraja. The context in Remusat seemed to imply that Pi-qi-pi-lien was the 
title of the Khotanese Kings from ancient times up to the beginning of the 7th 
century A.D., when the ’ We'i-si family ( ibidem , p. 35) succeeded the Wang family. 
But from what Prof. Sylvain Levi kindly writes me (15th February, 1899) it appears 
that Pi-qi-pi-lien was only the proper name of a particular king of the Wang family 
which reigned in the 6th and 7th centuries, A.D. Pi-gi-pi-lien, accordingly, is more 
likely to be the Chinese transliteration of some Turki name, similar to Mekelien. 
