The Development of Hindu Iconography c8.11.3

c8.11.3

but when we find the devices on certain coins of Kanishka and Huvishka delineating the features of either of these divinities definitely described by the die-cutters as such, it will not at all be presumptuous to conclude that these forms are some of those in which the two abovenamed gods used to be plastically represented during the period. It will then be interesting to compare their early features with the peculiar traits of the extant icons of a later period. We find the figure of an enthroned deity, with the figure of an elephant or the forepart of an elephant with its trunk upraised in front of it, on some coins of Eukratides, Antialkidas and certain other Indo-Greek rulers; on a particular coin-type of Antialkidas, we find the same deity walking by the side of the elephant striding to right with its trunk upraised. On some coins of Maues the same god seated on throne is shown to place his hand on the head of the personified vajra (thunderbolt). It has been proved by me that these coin-devices are nothing but the various ways of representing Indra (very easily identified by the Greeks with their Zeus) who was the tutelary deity of Śvetavatālaya or Indrapura, a locality in the neighbourhood of ancient Kapiśā, on the basis of certain observations of Hiuen Tsang and an explicit statement in the Mahāmāyūrī.¹ This point can be substantiated further by a reference to the coin-types of the Greek city-states;