ART. II.-Note on a Coin connected with the Sáh Inscription at Girnar. With an Impression. By H. NEWTON, Esq., C.S. Presented 13th December 1860. In the Sáh inscription at Girnar in Kathiawar, of which a fac-simile was given in the Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society for April 1842, and translations have been published by Prinsep and Professor Wilson, the name of "Rájá Mahákshatrapa Rudra Dámá" is given as the re-builder of the bridge over the Palesini, previously repaired by the great Chandragupta. Among the ten Sáh kings, whose coins had been discovered in Prinsep's time, one had a legend, "Mahákshatrapa Swámí Rudra Sáh, Son of Mahákshatrapa Swámí Rudra Dáma," and this latter person was assumed by Prinsep to be the re-builder of the bridge, the date of the event relatively to the line of the Sáh dynasty being thus ascertained, if the order of the series as given by him were admitted to be the correct one. But this identification was open to the objection that the king named on the coin had "Swámí” among his titles, and we find no instance in which this title was at one time assumed and at another time dropped by the same Satrap. Mr. Thomas, who has added four new kings to Prinsep's list, has, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. xii. p. 23, remarked as under on the defect in the identification which Prinsep proposed: "For the purposes of chronological arrangement it would be highly desirable to have been able definitively to determine the position Rudra Dámá should occupy among the other members of the Sáh dynasty. This might possibly have been done, but with the necessary reservation in regard to the additional prefix of Swámí, by identifying the Rájá Mahákshatrapa Rudra Dámá of the inscription with the individual of the same title and name who figures on the coins as the father of the last monarch of the present list. There is, however, undoubtedly, a difficulty in the way of the unreserved admission of their identity in the use of the extra title of Swámi on the coins for the insertion of which there was clearly no want of room on the face of the rock whereon the inscription is engraved; and without such a convincing degree of certainty it would, of course, be useless to raise up any arguments founded on what may eventually prove a mere chance coincidence." And again in p. 51 "But as the sovereign by whose command the Girnar bridge inscription was executed is still unidentified with any individual of whom we possess money, any detailed discussion of this subject" (the relative date of the inscription and some of the Sáh coins) "would be comparatively useless, until it is determined whether it is desirable to place the king named in the inscription before, among, or after the series of princes known only from coins." The coin (see above), of which I now send impressions and casts, will set this question at rest. It was sent to me a few months ago by a friend who obtained it in Goozerat, and gives without the slightest. variation the name of the re-builder of the bridge as that of the father of the Satrap from whose mint it issued. "Rájno Mahákshatrapasa Rudra Dámá putrasa rájno Mahákshatrapasa Rudra Sinhasa." The coin is in excellent preservation, every letter being as distinct as when it left the mint. The execution too evinces a higher degree of art than that exhibited in the coins of any of the other Sáh kings, unless, perhaps, a few of Vijaya Sáhs should be excepted. But from the beautiful coin of Vijaya Sáh it differs in a very marked degree. Its characters (I take the pand sas examples) have the rounded outline of the cave inscriptions, to which they bear a far greater resemblance than those of any other Sáh coin that I have seen. Vijaya Sáh's, on the other hand, are remarkable for the complete transition from the rounded or broad-based rock alphabet to the pointed, lengthened, and laterally compressed character which may be looked on as the natural, though gradually perfected, result of the attempt to adapt a character, up to that time used only for rectilinear inscriptions, to a circular legend of very small radius, where space for the lower portions of the crowded letters was, as compared with that available for the upper portions, necessarily very confined. I should on this ground infer that R. M. K. Rudra Dámá reigned, and his son's coin was struck, at a time when Greek art had but lately essayed the numismatic application of the cave character, while Vijaya Sáh, Dámajata Shri, and the great Rudra Sáh, whose coins may be taken as the perfect types of the angular adaptation, belonged to a later period, although still able to command the services of Bactrian or Greek artificers, or of others little inferior. The date cannot be discovered, as the die of the obverse was larger than the coin. The tail, however, is visible of a figure-probably the first-nearly straight, and wanting the bifurcation or loop which distinguishes the lower termination of the numeral representing 300 (or). If I am right in supposing that the figure spoken of occupied the first place, the second figure was probably 10 or 70. The legend is markedly oblong-a peculiarity which I have not noticed in any other Sáh coin. The area occupied by it is also larger than that of any other well-executed coin of the dynasty that I have seen, and altogether the coin differs remarkably in appearance from all its congeners, except one to be noticed. As striking a peculiarity as any is, perhaps, that it alone, of all the Sáh coins that I have met with, gives a true delineation of the eye. The upper and lower lid and the eye-ball are here truthfully and artistically depicted. On the best coins of any other Satrap the eye-ball is but a linear curve, and the lines representing the eyelids usually occupy conventional positions. The Greek legend is bold, and, as far as it falls on the coin, distinct but undecipherable. It differs from all that I can refer to. The latter half is as under WHAAHOH There is one peculiarity in the symbol on the reverse which enables me, I think, to connect this coin with another of the series. Mr. Thomas (R. A. S. Journal, vol. xii. p. 50) has remarked that to the right of the central symbol, instead of the seven stars, "at times this stellar assemblage is resolved into a single rayed star or sun." On referring to his plates I find this variation in one coin only (pl. i. fig. 19), and that is attributed to K. Rudra Sáh, son of M. K. Rudra Sáh. The single similarly rayed coin delineated by Prinsep (Journal As. Soc. of Bengal, April 1838, pl. xii. fig. 12) evidently belongs to the same king, though Prinsep read the father's name as Rudra Dúma. The only other rayed coin that I have discovered is in Professor Wilson's Ariana Antiqua, and the legend there is quite illegible. There are then but two other rayed coins with which a comparison can be made, and they are both from the mint of K. Rudra Sáh, son of M. K. Rudra Sinha, for I infer confidently that the name is Sinha, though the upper portion of the letter which alone can determine this point is not visible on either coin. The rounded letters strikingly resemble those of Rudra Sinha's coin now described. The star, the two large well-curved half-moons, and the ampler space about the centre of the reverse (consequent on the absence of downward elongation and curved tails in the letters) are the same on these coins and on no others. There are also on the coins of both these kings, immediately behind the helmet, two small dots, which I have found on none besides except those of K. Rudra Sáh, son of Jíva Dáma, M. K. Vijaya Sáh and M. K. Dáma Jata Shri. It is not likely that several of these corresponding marks, and more especially the rayed star, should be found only on the coins of two kings separated from each other by Satraps who varied the emblem and style. The reasonable inference is that the two coins referred to are those of a son of M. K. Rudra Sinha, whose father (M. K. Rudra Dáma) re-built the Girnar bridge. The date, however, of the Girnar inscription cannot as yet be thus approximatively arrived at, for neither Mr. Prinsep's nor Mr. Thomas's figure gives a legible date on the coins of K. Rudra Sáh; and though Mr. Thomas gives another figure (18), with the same legend and a date, it is evidently altogether a different coin. A considerable step, nevertheless, has been gained since the previously suggested identification is now shown to have been incorrect. An earlier date* than that of any of the Sáh kings whose coins have yet been discovered may now, with every probability, be inferred as that at which the bridge was re-built and the inscription made, and we may now hope to ascertain that date (in the era used by the Sáh dynasty), not merely on the improbable contingency of the discovery of other specimens of the unique coin here described, but on the more probable chance of meeting with other coins of Rudra Sinha's son. * Col. Sykes has, I see, been led into an error (Journal R. A. S. of Great Britain, vol. vi. p. 477) as to the date of the Sáh inscription at Girnar, by having erroneously adopted the identification proposed by Prinsep. He says "Rudra Dáma, mentioned in the inscription, is the father of the Rudra Sáh of the coins with the Samvat 385."-Author. ART. III. On the Sanscrit Poet, Kálidása. By BHA'o DA'JI', Esq. Read 11th October 1860. KA'LIDA'SA is justly regarded as the greatest of Indian poets and dramatists. His works have been translated not only into some of the vernacular languages of India, but within the last seventy-one years into English, German, French, Danish, and Italian. They are read in the original Sanskrit with greater critical acumen, and in the translations delight a larger number of readers in Europe than in the birth-land of the poet. Native poets, commentators, and critics are lavish in their praises of Kálidása; and it is not a little to his honor that the orientalists Jones, Wilson, Lassen, Chezy, Williams and Fauche, but also that the poet, eritic, and natural philosopher,-Goëthe, Schlegel, and Humboldt respectively, have assigned him a very high position amongst the glorious company of the "Sons of Song." The four well-known lines of Goëthe in praise of S'akuntalá* may here be repeated : "Would'st thou the young year's blossom and the fruits of its decline, I name thee, O Sákoontalá! and all at once is said." Alexander Von Humboldt says:-" Kálidása, the celebrated author of the S'akoontalá, is a masterly describer of the influence which nature exercises upon the minds of lovers. This great poet flourished at the splendid court of Vikramaditya, and was therefore contemporary with Virgil and Horace. Tenderness in the expression of feeling and richness of creative fancy have assigned to him his lofty place among the poets of all nations." Professor Lassen, in his "Indische Alterthumskunde," that wonderful and unrivalled monument of literary and antiquarian research, observes :-" Kálidása may be considered as the brightest star in the firmament of Indian artificial poetry. He deserves praise, on account of *S' stands for "Sh." |