The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c30.s2.5

v1.c30.s2.5

The commemorative medals struck by Antimachus show that he claimed to be the successor of Diodotus and Euthydemus; but there is nothing to indicate his relation to Agathocles who makes the same claim. The two princes may have been ruling at the same period in different kingdoms. From the recorded discoveries of the Indian coins of Antimachus, Cunningham inferred that he ruled in the lower Kābul valley (the districts of Jalālābād and Peshāwar). The reverse type in which the king is represented on a prancing horse and wearing a flat cap (*kausia*), as on the obverse of the large silver Bactrian coins, is evidently a portrait; and the same type is continued on the coins of Philoxenus, Nicias, and Hippostratus, who may have succeeded to the kingdom of Antimachus. But if these four princes really ruled over the same kingdom, its locality must be sought rather in the country of the Jhelum than in the lower Kābul valley. The coins of Philoxenus are found only to the east of Jalālābād (B.M. Cat., p. xxxviii), and those of Nicias only in the Jhelum District (Smith, *Early Hist. of Ind.*, 3rd ed., p. 243); while the types ‘Apollo: Tripod’ which are also struck by Hippostratus seem undoubtedly, in later times, to have been confined to the eastern districts of the Punjab (p. 552). The occurrence of the type ‘King on prancing horse’ on the joint coins of Hermaeus and Calliope may, as Cunningham suggested, indicate the union of two royal houses.