It provokingly happens that the nine rájas immediately preceding BHÍMSI, in TOD's list, are omitted as an uninteresting string of names; thus shutting out a chance of recognizing many of the petty names of our coin list. We must in consequence pass over Dánapúla dèva, Kripá, Vadásur, &c. and retrograde to Samanta dèva. This name is one of those on the inscriptions from mount Abu (Arbuda)*, the 18th of the Guhila family, to whom an actual date is also assigned, namely A. D. 1209. The objection to this is, like that to Bhima, that the date is too modern for the alphabetical type; moreover, from TOD we learn, that it was RAHUP of Mewar who was attacked by SHEMSH UL-DÍN (Altamsh), in 1210-20, and this name we have recognized in the more modern Nágarí on several of the horseman coins. There are other Samanta (Sinha) dèvas in the Anhulwára line of Gujerát of an earlier period, both in the Ayin Akberí, and in the native chronicles; indeed, BANARÁJA himself, the founder of the Chohán race at Anhulpur, was the son of a SAMANTA SINHA, fixed by ToD in A. D. 745 and it is worthy of particular note, that the first prince restored to the Gujerat throne, near two centuries after the overthrow of the Balháras by the Parthians, is called in the Ayin Akberí, "SAILA DE VA, who was previously living in retirement at Ujjain in A. D. 696." Now the name on the coin which I have assumed as the most ancient of the series, and therefore placed at the top of Plate XVI., is SYALAPATI DE VA, a name apparently taken from the country where he ruled†; but which might easily be converted, either with or without intention, into S'AILA DE VA, a title denoting dominion or birth among the mountains. In conclusion, it should be borne in mind, that both the Mewar and the Gujerat lines are of one family, that of the Gehlote or Sesodia tribe, to which, though arrogating to itself a descent from the Sun, the Persian historians uniformly ascribe a Parthian origin. May not this be received as a good foundation for the Indo-Scythic device on their coinage; or on the other hand does not the latter fact, supported by historical tradition, go far towards the corroboration of the extra Indian origin of the Mewár dynasty? Plate XLIX. Saurashtra Coins. In antiquity the present series doubtless should take precedence of those depicted in the three last plates; perhaps it should rank next to the Behat or Buddhist group, for it has an important symbol in common with them. My only reason for delaying to notice it until the last, has been the hopes of receiving a further accession of *As. Res. vol. xvi. page 322. + Syálakoth, the fort of Syála near the Indus, was once attacked by the armies of Mewár. specimens from Lieutenant BURNES, who lately forwarded me several coins, and afterwards wrote me that he had come on a further treasure of them in the course of some excavations in Cutch. A few specimens of the new accessions, selected by Mr. Wathen at Bombay, did not add much to the variety with which I had already become acquainted from the collections of KERÁMAT ALI and MOHAN LáL, of Lieutenant CONOLLY, and especially of Colonel STACY. Some of these I have before made known: other varieties have been long since published in Colonel ToD's plate of coins in the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, but there are many entirely new in the plate I am now about to introduce to my readers. some of the enough to convince an in vain seek such accu In the first place, however, I am pledged to prove that the type of this series of Indian coins is a fourth example of imitation of a Grecian original. The very style and beauty of the profile on earlier specimens, (figs. 1, 3, 10,) might be artist or a sculptor of the fact, for we might rate delineations of the human features on any genuine Hindu coin ; witness the degradation to which the very same device soon arrives under its Hindu adoption. But a comparison with the coins of the Arsakian and Sassanian dynasties of Persia, which are confessedly of Greek origin, may go farther to satisfy a sceptic on this point. The mode of dressing the hair belongs exclusively to Parthia: none of the genuine Bactrians even have it, and in the whole of our IndoScythic acquaintance, it will only be seen on the medals of KODOS, engraved as figs. 11, 12, and 13, of Plate XXV. of the present volume. In him the likeness is perfect, and him, therefore, I would deem the progenitor of this Saurashtra group, so similar in size, weight, metal, and contour of the head. The marked distinction between the two is confined to the reverse. Here a long Devanagarí inscription, encircling a curious monogram, is substituted for the standing figure with his hitherto uninterpreted motto, MAKAP........ ΡΔΗΘΡΟΥ. Apropos of this seemingly impossible Greek combination; even while I am writing this passage, the explanation starts to my imagination, like an enigma or puzzle laid aside for an interval, and taken up by chance in a position in which its solution strikes palpably on the eye, and the wonder arises how it could have escaped detection at the first! It may be remembered, that in describing the various mottos on the reverses of the Kanerki and Kadphises group, in my last notice, I remarked a curious instance of the word OKPO "the sun," being changed into ΑΡΔΟΚΡΟ, the great sun*." * Mr.V. TREGEAR writes tome, that he has just met with a duplicate of the gold APAOKPO coin, plate L., fig. 6. It was stated to have been dug up by a pea 66 Now AOPO was also one of the original simple denominations of the same class, supposed to be of a like import with Mithra, or the sun. By the rule of mutations, the addition of APAA or APTA, great, would lengthen the initial vowel of this word, or change it into an H, and produce the compound form Apaнepo, "the great Athra.” Giving a Greek termination and putting it, as usual, in the genitive case, we shall have ΜΑΚΑΡΟΣ ΑΡΔΗΘΡΟΥ, of the blessed ard-Athra." This is the very expression existing on the coin, supplying only a single letter, A, which is cut off through the imperfection of the die. Hear we have a happy illustration as well of the connection between the several groups and their respective objects of worship, as of the gradual and necessary development which these interesting researches are calculated to produce. Further, on conversing, this moment, with a pandit from the Panjáb, I learn that the sun is called in the Pushtu language, Ait, I, or Ayat चायत ; corruption, he says from the pure Sanscrit Ifa Aditya, whence may be derived in a similar manner Ait-war or etwár, the common Hinduí expression for Sunday. To all of these forms, the similarity of the Zend word Athro is obvious, and we need therefore seek no refined subtlety in admitting it to worship as the etherial essence of the sun, since it can with so much more simplicity be understood as a common denomination of the solar orb itself. It should be remarked, that the effigy of APAHOPO, like that of AOPO, has flames on his shoulders. a I will not stop to inquire whether the change from the Sanscrit OKPO (Arka) to the Pushto or Zend APO (Aita) has any possible connection with a parallel charge in the family designation of the Saurashtra princes, who were in the first centuries of the Christian era marked by the affix Bhatárka, (cherished by Arka,) but afterwards, for a long succession of reigns, were known by the surname of A'ditya; but will proceed to describe the immediate contents of the plate now under review. Figs. 1, 2, 3, are placed at the head of the series, because in them the head bears the nearest analogy to its prototype. In fig. 1, indeed, the letters behind the head may be almost conceived to belong to KWAOT. In the centre of the reverse is the so called chaitya symbol : which, had it only occurred on these descendants of a Mithraic coin, I should now be inclined to designate a symbol of the holy flame, sant in the Juanpur district, along with 50 others, which were immediately com. mitted to the melting pot. I may here take occasion to notice, that the pilgrim who sold the three coins of KADPHISES in the bazar of Benares was not a Mar. hatta, but a native of the Panjáb. |