Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c6.61.2

c6.61.2

The deity figuring on the reverse has been taken to be Zeus seated on throne who holds a wreath and a palm branch and has fore-part of elephant in front of him.¹ There is also a Kharoshṭhī inscription on the reverse, which reads *Kaviśiye nagara-devatā* and means "the city-deity of Kāpiśī.” Now, Kāpiśī was a Hindu town and has been referred to in one of Pāṇini’s Sūtras as a place where good wine was brewed.¹ Evidently, therefore, the divinity figuring on the coin is a Hindu one, being the *nagara-devatā* of Kāpiśī, and yet it has been so figured on the coin that it can be easily mistaken for a Greek deity and has actually been mistaken for Zeus by the numismatists, as we have seen. The term *nagara-devatā* occurs on another coin also, which unfortunately cannot be assigned to any king as the legends on it have not been preserved whole and entire. On the obverse is a goddess with the Kharoshṭhī legend [*Pa*]khalavadi-devada,² which has been taken to mean the tutelary divinity of Pushkalāvatī. Pushkalāvatī also was a Hindu city, and yet we find that the goddess on this coin wears Greek dress and a mural crown which is the emblem of a Greek civic deity. The natural inference from a study of these coins is that mere Greek dress and emblems do not stamp a deity as necessarily a Hellenic one and that a Hindu divinity may appear under Hellenic garb on Indo-Bactrian coins.