The Development of Hindu Iconography c11.45

c11.45

B.C. to the end of the first century B.C.' (Allan). These are the coins of Sūryamitra and Bhānumitra in the series described by Cunningham as ‘Pañcāla Mitra’; in the former, the god is represented ‘as a ball from which rays radiate; below it is the symbol, and the whole is placed on a platform, as usual between two pillars with cross-bars,’ while in the latter he is also shown as ‘a radiate globe placed immediately on a railed platform between two pillars’ (Allan, *CAI*, pp. cxviii-cxix, 193, 195, 197). The relationship between the name of the issuer as well as the deity reproduced on these coins has already been emphasised; now, what is most interesting is that we find here an unmistakable evidence of the Brahmanic symbol for the sun used in sacrificial rites as a regular object of worship (Pl. II, fig. 8). The *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa* tells us that in piling the fire altar, a disc of gold was placed on it to represent the sun (*S.B.*, VII, 4. 1. 10); in Sūryamitra’s coins, the symbol upon which the rayed disc of the god is placed is very likely the summary representation of the fire altar, which is conspicuous by its absence in the coins of Bhānumitra. Now, there can be very little doubt that at the time when these coins were being issued, the Vedic sacrificial system had been much mixed up with far-reaching religious changes, and thus it happens that the sun-symbol appears in the rôle of an *arcā* or an image on these coins. As regards the anthropomorphic representation of this god on coins, we do not find any such on the early indigenous coins of India; but figures of the sun in human form are met with on certain coins issued by the alien rulers of India like the Indo-Greeks and Kushans. These figures of the Sun god, however, are associated with non-Indian cults of the ancient Greeks and Zoroastrians, and known by such names as Helios, Mihira, etc. A few of them should be noticed here, for they furnish us with instances of some parallel forms on the one hand, and cases of distant alien prototypes of some variety of Indian Sūrya figures on the other. The figure of Helios riding on a four-horsed chariot appearing as the reverse-device on the coins of the ephemeral Bactrian Greek King Plato, probably a sub-king of the line of Eukratides, has its parallel in the figure of the Indian Sun god driving in a chariot drawn by four horses as carved on one of the railing pillars at Bodh Gaya. There is some faint resemblance between these two Indian and non-Indian representations of the god, but it can, on no account, be suggested that the coin device of Plato could ever have served as the model of the Bodh Gaya relief. But the figure of the Sun god depicted on the obverse side of a bronze coin of Philoxenus deserves special notice here. It has been described by Gardner in this manner, ‘ Sun god, facing, radiate, clad in chiton, himation and boots; holds in l. hand long sceptre; r. extended.’ A comparison of this figure with that of Helios or Mihira on the coins of Kanishka and Huvishka will fully prove that such a type of representation of the god like the former must have served as the prototype of the latter. The North-Indian sun icons of the Gupta or earlier periods, again, were close adaptations of such alien forms of the deity, as the peculiar type of sun cult prevalent in parts of northern, eastern and western India was a modified form of the east Iranian sun cult of ancient times.¹