1884.] V. A. Smitli —Oold Coins of the Imperial Gwpta Dynasty. 135 
mi, called Sri, is Yislinu’s salcti. She is the goddess of good luck and 
plenty...She is worshipped by filling the corn-measure with wheat or 
other grain, and thereon placing flowers. She is represented as a lovely 
and benign woman, robed in yellow, holding a lotus in her hand, and 
seated on a lotus, or beside Yishnu. Sometimes, as is likewise Yishnu, she 
is painted all yellow, and has four arms, and she holds in one of her right 
hands a rosary, and the pdki or cord in one of her left. This cord is seen 
also in the hands of Yaruna and Shva, and is emblematical of the sea, 
which girds the earth.”* 
It is impossible to read this description, and not to see that it is in 
remarkably close accordance with the delineation both of the Ardokro 
goddess, and of the lotus-throned divinity. But it is quite inapplicable 
to Parvati as ordinarily conceived, and the symbolism of the two coin¬ 
devices in question is equally inappropriate to the stern and terrible 
goddess. 
I have therefore no doubt that the goddess who is seated on a throne 
in Samudra’s coins, on a lotus flower in the coins of Chandra Gupta II 
and his successors, and also (in certain cases, as already specified), the 
divinity seated on the wicker stool, are all intended to express substan¬ 
tially the same conception, that of the benign and kindly Good Fortune, 
the bestower of happiness and plentythe same who was named Tvxrj 
and Demeter by the Greeks, and Fortuna, Ceres, Abundantia, etc. by the 
Romans. 
Although I have been at so much pains to distinguish between Par¬ 
vati and Lakshmi, I am aware that the two concepts sometimes coalesce, 
and become indistinguishable. The names and attributes of gods and 
goddesses, in India or elsewhere, are all nothing more than the feeble 
efforts of the human imagination to express by metaphor and symbol 
imperfectly apprehended ideas of the attributes of the unspeakable divine 
nature, and it is futile to attempt to draw sharp lines of demarcation be¬ 
tween these symbolical expressions. How one, and now another idea 
predominates in the symbolism, and “ in any lengthened description of 
one Hindu deity it is amost impossible to avoid mixing up its character 
and attributes with those of another.”! Hevertheless, the ideas per¬ 
sonified severally as Lakshmi and Parvati are ordinarily kept quite dis¬ 
tinct, and nothing but confusion of thought can result if the name of 
Parvati is given to a personification possessing all the attributes of 
Lakshmi. 
^ Birdwood, Industrial Arts of India, VoL. I, p. 58. 
t Birdwood, Industrial Arts of India, Vol. I, p. 59. As Anna Pur^a,’ Parvati 
is identical with Lakslimi, t5. %>. 61. 
S 
