Fig. 9. One of twenty small Sassanian copper coins. They have a good head on the obverse, and a very rudely executed fire altar on the reverse.
Fig. 10. A gold coin of one of the Sassanian kings of Persia, supposed to be Sapor (Shapûr). The name and titles are very distinct, in the Pehlevi character. It is remarkable that the usual supporters of the fire altar, two priests or kings, are omitted; unless, indeed, the rude ornaments on each side are intended to represent human figures holding swords. A silver Sassanian coin, delineated in Hyde’s Religio Veterum Persarum, has similar supporters.
All these coins are from Khoju oban, the ruins of an ancient city, thirty miles N.W. of Bokhara, where numerous gems and antiques, some of which are engraved, were also procured.[41]
Fig. 7. This is a square copper coin, from Shorkoth, a fortress twenty miles from the junction of the Jelum and the Chenab (the Hydaspes and Acesines), where Alexander lost his fleet in a storm. It is by some thought to be the fortress of the Malli, in the assault of which he was wounded. All that can be read of the inscription is ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ. On the other side the inscription is Pehlevi. This coin may be ascribed with tolerable certainty to Menander, both because it resembles in shape the coin of that prince, in Col. Tod’s plate, and because the first three letters of the word which follows ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ, have much the appearance of ΝΙΚ, or ΝΙΚΑΤΟΡΟΣ, the epithet applied to Menander, according to Schlegel, Journal Asiatique, Nov. 1828. The standing figure, however, on the obverse, and the curious emblem on the reverse, supposed by Col. Tod to be a portable altar, agree rather with his coin of Apollodotus.
Plate IV. fig. 18. This is a copper coin, procured in the neighbourhood of the Tope of Manikyala.
Obverse—A king or warrior holding a spear in the left hand; and with the right sacrificing on a small altar. (?) Epigraphe, ΒΑϹΙΛΕΥϹ ΒΑϹ ... ΚΑΝΗΡΚΟΥ.
Reverse—A priest or sage standing, and holding a flower in his right hand; a glory encircles his head; on the left the letters ΝΑΝΛΙΔ; on the right the usual Bactrian monogram, with four prongs.
This coin is of great value, from the circumstance of its being the only one out of many discovered in the same neighbourhood, upon which the characters are sufficiently legible to afford a clue to the prince’s name. In the onset, however, we are disappointed to find, that none of the recorded names of the Bactrian kings at all resemble that before us[42]: yet there can be no doubt about any letter but that preceding ΚΟΥ, which may be either Θ, Ρ, or Ϲ. By assuming this latitude in the reading, I discovered a name which would agree, as nearly as it could be expressed in Greek, with ΚΑΝΗΘΚΟΥ or ΚΑΝΗϹΚΟΥ; and should my conjecture prove correct, the discovery of this coin will be hailed as of the greatest value by all who are engaged in the newly developed study of Bactrian antiquity. The coin was at first placed with the Society by Lieut. Burnes; but, seeing its value, I thought it but just, after taking impressions and drawings of it, to place it in the discoverer’s hands, for the personal satisfaction of numismatologists in Europe. I suppose it to be a coin of KANISHKA, a Tartar or Scythic conqueror of Bactria.
According to Mr. Csoma De Körös, the name of KANISKA occurs in the Tibetan works as a celebrated king in the north of India, who reigned at Kapila, which is supposed to have been in Rohilkhand, or near Hardwar. His reign dates above 400 years after Sakya, when the followers of the Buddha religion had become divided into eighteen sects (the Sakya tribes, or Sacæ), under four principal divisions, of which the names, both Sanscrit and Tibetan, are on record.[43]
In Mr. Wilson’s Chronological Table of the history of Kashmir (As. Res. xv. p. 81.), we find Hushca, Jushca, and Canishca, three Tartar princes, who succeeded Domodara in the kingdom of Kashmir, either reigning successively or synchronously. They introduced the Buddha religion, under a hierarch named Nagarjuna, and were, according to the Raja Taringini, of Turushca or Tatar origin. The Sanscrit MS. places their reign 150 years before Sacaysinha (or Sakya Singh); but the learned translator, in a note, proves that the text was at least misunderstood, and that the passage intended to express “150 years after the emancipation of the Lord Sakya Sinha.”