the Asiatic Society for that year. Several collectors then placed their cabinets at my disposal; and with the purchase of a second collection from Kandahâr and Sistân, I was able to prepare during the years 1840-41-42 no less than fifteen lithographed plates of all the known coins of the Greek and Indo-Scythian Kings of Bactriana, Ariana, and India.

While this work was in progress, I published, in 1842, a second notice of new Bactrian coins, in which I first made known the names of the Greek Kings Straton, Telephus, Hippostratus, Nikias, and Dyonysius, of the Greek Queen Kalliope, and of the Scytho-Parthian Kings Arsakes and Pakores. In these two papers I gave the true symbols of the Arian letters d, g, and ph, from the Native legends of the coins of Gondophares, Abdagases, and Telephus, and the true symbol for the compound letter st from the coins of Straton and Hippostratus. These discoveries were followed up by finding the title of Strategasa, for the Greek Stratégos or General, on the coins of the Aspa Varmma, which bear the name of the great King Azas on the obverse, and that of his Hindu General on the reverse. "These," as Prinsep truly said, "are the most precious to the student of Indian history," for they prove that the military discipline of the Greeks was still in use nearly half a century after their dominion had passed away.

At the same time I found that the reverse legends of the coins of Queen Agathokhia, which had puzzled Prinsep and Lassen, contained only the titles and name of Straton, who must, therefore, have been her husband. Continuing my discoveries, I obtained the true value of the Arian bh from the words bhrâta-putrasa, or "brother's son," which, on the coins of Abdagases are the equivalent of the Greek Adelphideós. Following up this clue I next discovered the symbol for gh on the coins of the Native King Amoghabhuti.

About the same time I assigned one of Prinsep's series of imitations of the Indo-Scythian money to its proper country Kashmir, by identifying the coins of no less than eighteen of the Hindu Rajas, from Toramâna to Jaga Deva, who ruled from about A. D. 500 to 1200. This discovery was published in the Numismatic Chronicle for 1843. A few years later, in 1847, I was able to assign another series of some

extent, but of later date and of less interest, to the Hindu Rajas of Kangra.

In 1845, in a notice of some new coins of the IndoScythians, I first published the reading of the name of the great Kushan tribe of Indo-Scythians on the coins of Kujula, and in the Manikyâla inscription of General Court. At the same time I added a genuine Buddhist type to the known coins of Kanishka.

In January and February 1851, Lieutenant Maisey and myself explored a large number of Buddhist stupas, or topes, in the Bhilsa District. In the same year I submitted a short account of our discoveries to H. H. Wilson, which he published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. At the same time I prepared a detailed account of all the stupas that we explored, with translations of several hundred short inscriptions. This work, which was completed in 1851, was not published until 1854, under the title of "The Bhilsa Topes." Twenty years have since passed, many of them years of rare experience in archæological investigation, and I see no reason to alter the dates which I then proposed of the third century B. C., for the erection of all the principal topes, and of the first century A. D. for the sculptured gateways of the great stupa.

These dates have been generally accepted; in fact, I am not aware that they have been disputed by any one save H. H. Wilson.* His arguments I will now examine at length, as it seems to me to be very important that there should be no doubt as to the age of these remarkable monuments, whose sculptures are so valuable for the illustration of Indian art. In justice also to myself I think it is absolutely necessary that I should take notice of the objections which have been publicly brought forward in a lecture on Buddha and Buddhism, by so eminent an oriental scholar as Horace Hayman Wilson.

He begins by stating that I make the age of the great Bhilsa tope as old as Asoka, "its being as old as Asoka, depending upon the identification of Gotiputra, the teacher of Mogaliputra, who presided, it is said, at the third council

*Royal Asiatic Society's Journal, Vol. XVI., "On Buddha and Buddhism," by H. H. Wilson, pp. 250-251,

in B. C. 241, a statement altogether erroneous, as Mogaliputra, Maudgala, or Maudgalâyana, was one of Sâkya's first disciples three centuries earlier." In this passage it is Wilson's own statement that is "altogether erroneous," and not mine; and I now repeat my former assertion that Mogaliputra did preside at the Buddhist synod held in the reign of Asoka. The mistake which Wilson has here made is a strange one for an oriental scholar, as he not only ignores the detailed history of this council given in the Mahawanso,* but stranger still he confounds Mogalâna or Maudgalyâyana, the disciple of Buddha, with one of his descendants, for Mogaliputra bears the same relation to Mogali that Will's-son, or Wilson, does to Will.

A little further on he falls into another error, equally great, and almost as strange as that just noticed. He objects to the date of the Bhilsa topes, which I had inferred from the inscriptions on the relic caskets, because "no legitimate conclusions can be drawn from inscriptions of this class as to the date of the Sânchi monuments," as the presence of relics in any monument is no more a proof of its antiquity, than would the hairs of Buddha, if ever dug up, prove the ShwêDagon of Rangoon to have been built in his day.' Here the professor has entirely lost sight of the one great fact on which I relied, that the inscriptions on the caskets are engraved in characters of Asoka's age. On this fact alone I argued that the stupas which contained these relic caskets must be as old as the reign of Asoka. Having ignored this fact altogether and tilted against an argument which I never used, he then proceeds to say that the topes of Ceylon appear to be of an earlier date, if we may credit the tradition which ascribes the erection of the Ruanvelli mound at Anuradhapura to King Dutthagâmini, who reigned 161 B. C. to 137 B, C." So that, in the opinion of one of the most eminent Sanskrit scholars, a tradition is of more historical value than a self-evident fact, the truth of which has been admitted by every one except Wilson himself.

Having thus settled to his own satisfaction that the topes of Ceylon, which could not have been built before the

* It seems almost superfluous to refer to the Mahawanso for a fact which is so well known; but as Wilson has publicly asserted that Mogaliputra was a disciple of Buddha himself, and has branded my statement as "altogether erroneous," I refer the reader to the 3rd Chapter of Turnour's Mahawanso for the proceedings of the First Buddhist Synod under Mahakassapo; to the 4th Chapter for the Second Synod; and to the 5th Chapter for the Third Synod, held during the reign of Asoka, under the guidance of Mogaliputra.

conversion of the Ceylonese to Buddhism by Mahindo, the son of Asoka, are older than the great Sânchi stupa, which, as I have pointed out in my Bhilsa topes, almost certainly gave its name to the hill of Chetiyagiri which was known by that name before the birth of Mahindo, Wilson continues his remarks as follows: "A somewhat earlier period than that of the Indian stupas may be assigned to another important class of Buddhist monuments, the cave temples belonging to that persuasion, but they also, as far as has been yet ascertained, are subsequent to Christianity." Thus, according to Wilson, the cave temples of Western India, in which not a single inscription of Asoka's period has yet been found, are older than the Sânchi stupa, the railings of which are literally covered with inscriptions of Asoka's age.

But although the points to which Wilson so strangely took exception are not inaccurate, there are in my Bhilsa topes several undoubted errors, of which, perhaps, the worst is my making the five Kings of Magadha, whose names are mentioned by Hwen Thsang, form a continuation of the great Gupta dynasty. Their true period would appear to have been seven hundred years prior to Hwen Thsang's visit, or about 66 B. C. Accordingly I look upon these five Kings as the immediate successors of the Sunga dynasty in Magadha, and the predecessors of the Guptas, while the Kanwa Kings of the Purânas were their contemporaries in North-Western India. Following out this view, I now place the building of the great temple at Bodh-Gaya in the first century B. C.

In the same year, 1854, I published a notice of the "Coins of Indian Buddhist Satraps with Greek inscriptions," in which I made known the symbols for the Arian letters ch and chh and rm,* and applied the discovery of the former to prove the Buddhist faith of the Scythian King Kozola Kadaphes, who calls himself on his coins Sachha dharma thidasa, the "supporter of the true dharma."+ Here, again, I was met by the adverse and erroneous criticism of Wilson, who

Ch is found in aprati-chakra, "invincible with the discus," chh in chhatrapa or Satrap, and rm in the two Hindu names, Aspavarmma and Indra Varmma,

+ I have adopted the reading of thidasa from Professor Dowson, in lieu of pidasa, which was my original rendering.

London Athenæum, 15th March 1856.

objected that "the legends of these coins had not been satisfactorily read; and he especially objected to the reading of the word Kshatrapasa or Satrap, the letters of which were very doubtful, and no other evidence being found to prove that this title had ever been borne by a Hindu prince. The statement that no other evidence had been found is strangely incorrect, as Prinsep had found the title in the Girnar bridge inscription of Rudra Dâma, a Hindu prince, and Wilson's own translation of this inscription, afterwards furnished to Mr. Thomas,* contains the title of Mahakshatrapa applied to Rudra Dâma. The Satraps whose coins I brought to notice in this paper were Zeionises or Jihoniya, and Raziobalos or Râjubul; and I may add of the legends of their coins, which Wilson declared "had not been satisfactorily read," that every single letter was rightly assigned.

In the same paper I first made known the names of the Scytho-Parthian Kings Orthagnes and Sasi, or Sasan, both of whom claim on their coins to be connexions of the great King Gondophares. I also added my mite towards the identification of Chandra Gupta Maurya with Sandrakoptos by bringing to notice a fragment of Euphorion, the librarian of Antiochus the Great, which makes "the Indian Môrias live in wooden houses," and the statement of Hesychins that "the Môrias were Indian Kings."

In November 1861 I began my explorations as Archæological Surveyor to the Government of India, and the results of my four years' work form the subject of the present volumes, in which are recorded the discovery of many ancient cities, of which the most famous are Taxila and Sangala in the Panjâb, Srughna, Ahichhatra, Kosâmbi, and Srâvasti in the north-west, and Nâlanda in the east.

In 1862 I discovered the names of the Macedonian months, Artemisios and Apellaios, in two of the Ariano Pali inscriptions from Afghanistan. This discovery was also made independently by Professor Dowson; and, although objected to by Babu Rajendra Lâl, it has since been fully confirmed by the further discovery of the names of Panemos and Daisios in other inscriptions. The name of Panemos occurs in the well known Taxila inscription of the Satrap

Prinsep's Essays on Indian Antiquities, II., 68.

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