130 y. A. Smith —Gold Goins of the Imperial Gupta Dynasty. [No. 2, 
tendencies, the adoption from the Indo-Scythians of the reverse device 
in question “ may well have been a mere act of ‘ imitation of a foreign 
design,’ irrespective of any aim at demonstration of creed.” Reverse 
devices locally vary, and are not of much significance, e. g., the Sassa- 
nians retained the Siva and Nandi device of Kadphises, and the Muslim 
Ghaznavis retained the Hindu recumbent bull on their Labor coinag-e. 
o 
(3.) The female seated on a lion, who appears on the reverse of 
four types of the Gupta coins, is plainly Parvati in her form of Durga. 
(4.) On four types the same goddess appears in the form of 
Kumari Devi, associated with her sacred bird the peacock ; and 
(5.) Skanda, the name of the last of the imperial Guptas, is an alias 
of Kumara Deva, the god of war, son of the goddess Kumari Devi.* 
These arguments seem to me to be of little weight. The interpre¬ 
tation of Ardokro or Ardochro as meaning ‘ half Siva ’ is a very forced 
one, and I doubt greatly if such a compound as rather 
could have in Sanskrit the meaning assigned to it. The name is never 
written Ardogro, whereas the title of Siva which is supposed to form an 
element of the compound is Ugra, and I do not see how the ‘ g ’ can be 
converted into k or ^5 ^or why the aspirate at the end of arddlia should 
be lost. The supposed compound ‘ Arddhogra ’ has no analogy with the 
genuine compound ‘ Arddhanari ’; it is one thing to speak of a creature 
as half-female, and quite another thing to speak of Joan as half-John.f 
The Indo-Scythian goddess may or may not be intended to represent 
Parvati, though I do not believe that she was, but I am convinced that 
her name does not mean ‘ half-Ugra,’ and that such a ‘ compound never 
existed. The name ApSoypo or ApSoKpo is probably a Scythian name, 
and not an Indian word at all. 
If the throned figure is to be identified with any goddess of the 
modern Hindu pantheon, I consider that she should be identified, as 
suggested by Wilson, with Sli or Lakshmi, the benign goddess of for¬ 
tune, and not with the terrible Parvati. 
The supposed Vaishnava tendencies of the early Guptas have been 
believed in chiefly on the testimony of the Bhitari pillar inscription, 
which, if correctly interpreted by Dr. Mill, proves Chandra Gupta II 
and Kumara Gupta to have been Vaishnava, and Skanda Gupta to have 
* J. A. S. B., XXIY (1855) pp. 489-490. 
t Cf. Wilson’s criticisms in Ar. Ant., pp. 361-362. In the Pa-Shaka coin in the 
British Museum the name of the goddess is spelled OPAOX[PO], a form which 
it is absurd to identify with ‘ Arddhogro.’ (This unique coin is described in Mr, 
Thomas’s Indo-Scythian Coins with Hindi Legends, p. 11.) General Cunningham con¬ 
curs with me in giving the name of Lakshmi to the goddess, whether seated on the 
throne or the lotus-flower. 
