Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7.s3.t2.2

c7.s3.t2.2

¹³² E. J. Rapson ("Counter-marks on early Persian and Indian Coins," *JRAS* 1895, 865–77) thought that some silver *sigloi* of the Achaemenian kings of Iran, dating from the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., bore countermarks consisting of *akṣaras* in Kharoṣṭhī (and Brāhmī; cf. 2.1.2 n. 20) scripts. However, Rapson's identification of these countermarks as syllables of the Indian alphabets was called into question by G. F. Hill ("Notes on the Imperial Persian Coinage," *Journal of Hellenic Studies* 39, 1919, 116–29) and is no longer generally accepted, so that they cannot be taken as specimens of pre-Mauryan Kharoṣṭhī.