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ART. XXVII.-Counter-marks on early Persian and Indian Coins. By E. J. RAPSON, M.A., Late Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge.

THE addition of a counter-mark to a coin already current has usually served one or other of two distinct purposes. It has occasionally merely denoted the ratification or re-sanction of a currency already legal; it has more frequently been used to show some change in the conditions of a currency—as, for instance, a change in its value as legal tender, or its circulation in a different country or under a different government. The true interpretation of many ancient counter-marks would no doubt add considerably to our knowledge of the world's history. Unfortunately their evidence is generally of that kind which suggests a great deal more than it can prove; and it must be confessed that their contribution to knowledge has been disappointingly small.1

The silver coins, or sigloi, struck by the princes of the Achæmenid dynasty of Persia from the reign of Darius (B.C. 521-485) to the end of the dynasty in B.C. 331, afford one of the best known examples of the practice of countermarking in antiquity. In this instance, the practice is strictly confined to the silver coinage. No example of a counter-struck gold Persian coin-daric or double-daricis known. Of the numerous marks found on the silver coins, numismatists have been inclined to regard some as letters and the others as symbols distinctive of the various provinces of the great Persian empire in which the imperial coinage was current. The latest authority, M. Ernest Babelon, in plate xxxix of his great work, "Les Perses Achéménides,"

1 For the literature of ancient counter-marks see Engel, Revue Numismatique, 1887, p. 382.

has published a collection of these marks, and on p. xi of his preface he gives reasons for attributing several of them to certain countries-viz. Lycia, Pamphylia, Cilicia, and Cyprus -in which the custom of counter-marking is known to have obtained. That M. Babelon's attributions are extremely probable, if indeed they are not absolutely certain, is shown by the occurrence of precisely the same marks, formed in precisely the same manner, on certain coins of the countries mentioned. The only doubt which can be entertained is whether the Persian imperial coins and the coins of these countries may not equally have obtained their counter-marks from some common and as yet undetermined source.

My object, in the present paper, will be to show that there was one province of the Persian empire-the province of India, that is to say, territory on both sides of the Indus, including much of what is now known as the Panjab and Sind-in which counter-marked weights of metal constituted the recognized form of coinage, and that to this province some of the counter-marks in question, whether interpreted as letters or as symbols, may very plausibly be referred.

The Persian occupation of North-western India lasted for about a century and three-quarters. It began during the reign of Darius, probably c. 500 B.C., and lasted till 331 B.C., when, after the battle of Arbela, the whole empire of the Achæmenids acknowledged the sovereignty of Alexander the Great. Evidences of extensive intercourse during this period between the centre of the Persian empire and its Indian satrapy are abundant on all hands; and it must not be forgotten in this connection that the fact of a regular commerce, also during this period, between India and the West-Greece, Phoenicia, and various cities of Asia Minor-is well established. It is, therefore, quite possible that the influence of India may be traced not only on the coins of Persia, but also on the coins of other Western states-for instance, the very states mentioned by M. Babelon. But, in the present paper, we must confine our attention to Persia and India. Of the intimate relation of these two during the Achæmenid period, there can be

no doubt. Not only have we the evidence of writers like Hecataeus and Herodotus, but we have the more tangible evidence of architectural remains in Northern India, which show the predominating influence of Persian art. From the fifth century B.C. onwards the wealth of India becomes proverbial in all literature. The stories in Xenophon's Cyropædia, for example-worthless as that production is as a history of the times of Cyrus, it may still be quoted as evidence for the ideas of Xenophon's time-show that the Persian king regarded India as an unfailing source of riches. This wealth, as Herodotus has shown, consisted in gold dust; and in exchange for this, the commodities of the West, and silver among them, came in great quantities to India. General Sir A. Cunningham ("Coins of Ancient India," p. 5) has shown by quotations from the Periplus maris Erythryaei that "the merchants made a profit by exchanging their own money for Indian gold. Gold was

cheap in India, being as 1 to 8 rates of silver, whereas in Persia the rate was 13 of silver." And what was true at the date of the Periplus (probably the latter part of the first century A.D.), was undoubtedly true at an earlier period. This fact of the attraction of silver to India accounts for the large number of ancient silver coins still found there. These coins are of various kinds, the two most noteworthy varieties being Athenian and Persian; but undoubtedly the Persian coins vastly outnumber all the others. Probably no great collection made in the Panjab has not included several specimens, and dealers in the Panjab have repeatedly submitted them to the British Museum for purchase. Several specimens in the collection of the British Museum were transferred from the India Office collection, and therefore presumably came from India, while the Indian origin of others is extremely probable, though, unfortunately, only the name of the collection to which the coins belonged, and no note of their actual provenance, has been preserved.

The most striking confirmation of the fact that Persian sigloi circulated freely in the Indian satrapy would-if its