were 400 panas in the suvarna. The small and 1 panas were consequently equal to

the suvarna.

sums of 2

and t. of

The scale of Indian copper coins was as follows:

By comparing these weights with those of the copper coins of the Seleukidæ already given, it will be seen at a glance that the pana was but a trifle greater than a dichalkon, and that the quarter pana or kakini was a close equivalent of the lepton. The two systems of the copper money were thus in complete harmony. I am therefore quite satisfied that the old Hindu panas and kákinis passed current freely along with the chalki and lepta, as change for the Greek drachmas and oboli; and I have no doubt that cowree shells played an important part in all the daily purchases of the common people, just as they do now. The following table shows the comparative values of Greek and Indian money of all the usual denominations:

Having thus shown how happily the principal pieces of Indian money would have fitted in with all the denominations of Greek money of the Attic scale, it now remains only to establish the fact, which I have hitherto assumed, that the Hindus were in actual possession of a real coinage at the time of Alexander's expedition. Wilson thought it "likely that the currency of the country consisted chiefly, if not exclusively, of lumps of gold and silver, not bearing any impression, until the Hindus had learned the usefulness of money from their Bactrian neighbours, and from their commerce, especially with Rome." 18 He then adds, "at the same time it seems likely that they had a sort of a stamped coin even before the Greek invasion." He is led to this conclusion chiefly by the fact "that the different tables, which are given in their law books, of the several values of gold and silver refer to weight, not to number." But this argument is of little value; for we know that the money of every country refers to weight.

18 Ariana Antiqua, p. 404.

40

20

Was not the Roman as a pound of brass ?—and what was the Greek drachma or the Hebrew shekel?-and when the Roman soldier received his stipendium, and when he expended it, did he weigh the pieces or count them? And yet do not all the Latin expressions regarding monetary transactions, such as impendium, pretium pendere, &c., refer directly to weight?

Wilson was perhaps influenced by James Prinsep's early opinion that the Hindus derived their knowledge of coinage from the Bactrian Greeks.19 But this was his first hasty deduction put forth in 1832, before he had seen any really ancient Hindu coins: for, three years later, with Stacy's rich collection before him, he no longer " contended that the Hindus had no indigenous currency of the precious metals. On the contrary, he thought that evidence would be found, in the coins he was about to describe, that they circulated small pieces of a given weight, that stamps were given to them varying under different circumstances, and that many of these earliest tokens exhibit several stamps consecutively impressed on the same piece, until at last the superposed impressions, not those of a die but rather of a punch, came to resemble the devices seen on the Indo-Scythian coins, in company with which they have been found buried in various places," as at Behat. But he still ventured to uphold that from the time the Greeks entered India " may be assumed the adoption of a die-device, or of coined money properly so called, by the Hindus."20 This view he propounds still more distinctly a few pages further on.21 "It is an indisputable axiom that unstamped fragments of

19 Bengal Asiatic Society's Journal, i. 394.

20 Ibid., iv. 621.

21 Ibid., iv. 626.

silver and gold, of a fixed weight, must have preceded the use of regular coin." He therefore assigned the highest grade of antiquity in Indian numismatology to those small flattened bits of silver or other metal, which are found all over the country, "either quite smooth, or bearing only a few punch marks on one or both sides, and generally having a corner cut off, as may be conjectured, for the adjustment of their weight."

In this last passage Prinsep describes the numerous silver pieces, appropriately named punch-marked by himself, which are found all over India from Kashmir to Cape Kumâri, and from Sistân and Kabul to the mouths of the Ganges. But he omits all mention of the thick copper coins of Taxila and Kabul, with an elephant on one side and a lion on the other, which formed the prototype of the coinage of the Indo-Grecian kings Pantaleon and Agathokles. These are true coins, impressed with a single die on each side. 22 It is true that the reverse die is frequently smaller than the blank upon which it was struck, yet this was also the case with all the famous old tetradrachms of Athens, and the well-known didrachms of Corinth, and it may still be seen on the money of Philip the father of Alexander. But there are numerous other coins found at Taxila, and more rarely at Kabul, which are struck upon one side only, from which I infer that they are older than those with types on both faces.23

But if the Hindus derived their knowledge of die coinage from the Greeks, as argued by Prinsep and Wilson, I would ask "which are the first specimens of their diestruck money?" They cannot be the square copper

22 See Ariana Antiqua, Pl. xv., figs. 26 and 27.

23 For three specimens see Ariana Antiqua, Pl. xv., figs. 28, 29, and 30; but I possess many others of different types.

coins of Taxila stamped with the elephant and lion, because these rude pieces of about 180 grains, and with one or more corners cut off, are quite foreign, both in their shape and in their standard, to any known Greek coins. The types also are native, and the elephants are more like the real animal than any of the representations on the coirs of the Greek kings of Syria. But there is one variety of these coins, which instead of the lion has a galloping horse on the reverse, a type which was most probably imitated from the copper coins of Euthydemus. Indeed, a single specimen of this type in the British Museum has a Greek monogram under the horse, and consequently this particular coin must have been struck some time after the Greeks had established themselves in Kabul.

My conclusion is that when the Greek dominion was first established by Pantaleon in 246 B.C., the square copper coins bearing the elephant and lion formed the native currency of Taxila and Kabul, which were immediately imitated by Pantaleon and Agathokles. Some time afterwards, or about 200 B.C., the people of Taxila may have copied the galloping horse from the round copper coins of Euthydemus, to which, in the unique specimen here represented, they added the Greek monogram for Taxila itself. Admitting that these coins are contemporary with Euthydemus, I contend that those previously mentioned with the types of the elephant and lion must have been