The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c30.s3.12

v1.c30.s3.12

In the Kābul valley he continued to issue coins bearing the type ‘Zeus enthroned,’ with which Eucratides had restruck the coins of Apollodotus (*Summary*, p. 590), and others bearing the types ‘Elephant : Bull’ which are identical with those of Apollodotus himself (Pl. VI, 8). The type ‘Elephant’ occurs frequently both on the purely Indian, and on the Graeco-Indian, coinages of the Kābul valley and N.W. India. The various mints which it denotes cannot be identified more precisely; but it may be suggested that the type, like the ‘Zeus enthroned,’ derived its origin from the elephant-deity of Kāpiça. The ‘Bull,’ on the other hand, can be shown to have been the distinctive badge of Pushkalāvatī (Peucelaotis) in the lower Kābul valley, the capital of western Gandhāra. The evidence which makes this identification certain is supplied by the gold piece illustrated in Pl. VI, 10. On the obverse is seen the goddess wearing a mural crown, the emblem of a Greek civic divinity, and holding in her right hand a lotus as the tutelary deity of ‘the City of Lotuses.’ The accompanying Kharoshṭhī legend describes her as ‘the goddess of Pushkalāvatī’: and it is quite possible that her name may lie hidden in the three illegible Kharoshṭhī characters on the left. On the reverse is the figure of a humped bull; and above and below are the Greek and Kharoshṭhī equivalents for ‘bull.’ As in the case of the city divinity of Kāpiçī, the Greek artist has represented in accordance with Greek ideas an Indian deity who was supposed to bear the form of a bull. Here once again we are indebted to Hiuen Tsiang, who, in his description of Pushkalāvatī, says: