The Development of Hindu Iconography c19.s6.4.2

c19.s6.4.2

Gardner, while commenting on the devices appearing on the coins of these alien kings, observes, ‘When we reach the issues of king Maues, we find a wealth of most remarkable and original barbaro-Hellenic figures, a figure resembling Tyche, holding in one hand a patera, in the other a wheel, who seems to be the original of the still more outlandish figure of Azes’s coins.’¹ Another instance of syncretism is to be found on a coin-device of Azilises, successor of Azes. Whitehead, while describing it in the *Punjab Museum Catalogue* (Vol. I, p. 136, Pl. XIII, Fig. 336), draws our attention to the syncretic panoply of the deity and characterises it as ‘a decidedly pantheistic type’. The syncretism at first lay no doubt in the fusion of Hellenic and non-Hellenic elements (*cf.* the use of the word ‘barbaro-Hellenic’ by Gardner in the extract quoted above). A great part of the latter was undoubtedly Indian, though it is very difficult to sort it out. But from the time of the Indo-Parthian king Gondophares, in some of whose coins the Indian deity Śiva has been recognised (in Chapter IV it has been conclusively shown by the present writer that Śiva appears for the first time on some square copper coins of Maues), the Indian element came to predominate by stages.