Art. XVIII.—Two Plates of Coins, presented to the Royal Asiatic Society

Abstract

The accompanying two plates of coins present a type which is quite new to the numismatic world, if we except two or three specimens published in the second part of Vol. I., of the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, from the collection of my ingenious and indefatigable friend Colonel Tod, who has left no branch of Indian antiquities unexplored or unadorned. We are informed that he met with these coins in the whole of the district from Oujein to Cutch, as far as the Indus, and he ascribes them to the Balhara sovereigns, mentioned by the Arabian travellers of the ninth century, as translated by Renaudot, who conceives these princes to be the same as the Zamorin. In this attribution I must differ with Colonel Tod for several reasons, independent of one to which I shall now confine myself, and which is to be found in the text of the above work; viz., that the drachms coined by the Balhara princes are said to weigh one-half more than the Arab drachm, whereas the coins in question do not even reach the weight of this last.