Asiatic Coins

Of the various smaller modern dynasties who ruled Central Asia till the Russian conquest, the emirs of Bukhara and of Khokand are notable for their extensive issues of gold pieces, to the practical exclusion of other metals.

India.

There is no reason to doubt the independent origin of coinage in India although it was soon so much modified by Greek influence that the question was long disputed. The earliest coins are pieces of silver (Pl. VII.-7), very commonly square, and of cop per punched with various symbols on both sides; of about the same date are the square and round cast copper pieces with sim ilar but less varied symbols. These pieces circulated all over India and belong to at least the 4th century B.C. although they circulated after this date and may be somewhat earlier. Contemporaneously from the 3rd century onwards are the copper coinages of numer ous states and dynasties which show increasing Greek influence and whose few silver coins are directly influenced by the hemi drachms of the Greek rulers of N.W. India of the 2nd century B.C. The types of these are of considerable mythological and religious interest. Technically they are interesting as showing the evolution of a type from a series of separate punches to the grouping of the punches on a die.

Early in the 2nd century B.C. the Greeks of Bactria began to invade India and their coinage is remarkable for its fine series of portraits and for the number of names it records of rulers other wise unknown (Pl. VII.-I). Prakrit legends begin to appear along side of corrupt Greek; the Greek in time becomes more and more corrupt as the Greek rulers were replaced by Scythian and Kushan invaders who copied their types. The Greek deities gradually give place to Indian ones on the coins. In the middle of the 1st cen tury A.D. the Kushans founded a great empire in N.W. India ; they have left a wealth of gold and copper coins with legends in an Iranian language in a corrupt Greek character :—at this period Roman gold in enormous sums went to India every year and was recoined there. The Kushan coins (Pl. VII.-2) bear on the obverse the king sacrificing and on the reverse deities of all the religions of the time, Greek, Roman, Zoroastrian, Hindu and Buddhist. This type of king on obverse and deity on reverse became the gen eral type of North Indian coinage for the next thousand years; the Kushan coinage continued, rapidly degenerating till the fourth or fifth century, over a much more limited area ; the type was con tinued by the kings of Kashmir down to the loth century and adopted and modified by the great Gupta emperors in the 4th century. The latter struck an extensive gold coinage with long

legends in poetical Sanskrit and many interesting types, often medallic (Pl. VII.-5) in nature, but, on their coins for general currency at least, always betraying the Kushan prototype. Among the more notable Gupta coins are those that commemorate San dragupta's horse-sacrifice, or those that record his skill as a lyrist, to which he also testifies in his inscriptions. The art and correct Sanskrit legends of these coins are in keeping with the great Hindu revival of the period. In Western India a dynasty of Western Satraps of Persian origin had been ruling since the 1st century B.c. Their extensive coinage of silver only is dated and therefore of a historical value unusual in Indian or any early coinage (Pl. VII.-4). They look modern in that they bear on the obverse a bust of the ruler; they resemble Roman denarii and may have been in fluenced by them but their prototype is rather to be sought in the hemidrachms of the later Greek kings of India. This kingdom was overthrown by the Guptas at the end of the 4th century and they at once began to imitate this silver coinage not only locally but also in their own territory which seems to have had hitherto no silver coins. The barbarian Huns who destroyed the Gupta and other civilisations in the 6th century have left numerous coins, imitated from Sassanian, Gupta or Kushan prototypes. Degenerate copies of these seem to have been the coinages of Northern India till the revival of various Hindu dynasties from the loth century onwards. A notable innovation was the neat silver coinage of the Shahis of Gandhara of the "bull and horse man" type in the 9th and loth centuries (Pl. VII.-6), extensively imitated by the Mohammedan conquerors of India and the con temporary minor Hindu dynasties. The other type favoured by the mediaeval Hindu dynasties for their gold coinage was that of a seated goddess—going back to a Gupta reverse—and an inscrip tion with the king's name on the other side (Pl. VII.-7).