The Development of Hindu Iconography c8.11.4

c8.11.4

these, when they represented different Hellenic divinities like Zeus, Heracles, Pallas Athene, Artemis, Nike and others, were actually based on their sculptural representations current in those localities. In many cases they were tutelary deities and cult divinities of such city-states, and they made their appearance as such on the coins.² In an opposite manner, the devices appearing on the earliest indigenous coins of India shed a flood of light on the problem of symbolic representations of gods and goddesses. Coomaraswamy, while referring to the number of symbols (rūpa) appearing on the punch-marked coins "in general use from about 600 B.C. up to the beginning of the Kushan period or somewhat later," makes the following interesting observation, ". . . the importance of these symbols, many of which have remained in use to the present day, lies in the fact that they represent a definite early Indian style, amounting to an explicit iconography.”¹