Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c10.19

c10.19

Several Greek coins² issued in Syria and in the adjacent countries to its east, some bearing the name of Seleucus I and others those of Seleucus I and his son Antiochus I jointly require a brief notice here on account of their Indian association of a somewhat remote character. The first group of these have on the obverse the head of a horned horse to right inside a dotted border, while their reverse shows an Indian elephant. Another class of coins in the same series bear a laureate head of Zeus on the obverse and Pallas Athene driving in a chariot drawn by four elephants on the reverse. The Greek legend ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΣΕΛΕΥΚΟΥ on the reverse side of both the classes proves that they were issued after 306 B.C. when Seleucus I assumed the royal title for the first time. A few of the latter class of coins, coarser in style and execution, are usually collected from the extreme north and north-west of India, showing thereby that though they were not actually minted in India, they might have been in circulation in this region. The other group of Greek coins, more or less similar in type to the second class of such coins just noticed,—on the reverse is shown a fighting Athena riding in a car drawn by either two or four elephants, bear the Greek legend ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΣΕΛΕΥΚΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΑΝΤΙΟΧΟΥ. The elephant device in all the above types of coins seems to have some remote connection with one of the terms of the treaty concluded by Seleucus I with Chandragupta Maurya; according to it the former bartered away the provinces of Paropanisus, Aria, Arachosia and Gedrosia along with his claims to the Punjab and other Greek conquests in northern India for five hundred war elephants. This particular war arm proved so decisive a factor at the battle of Ipsus where Antigonus the formidable rival of Seleucus was overthrown, that it became one of the favourite dynastic devices of the Seleucidae. The head of a horned horse, another favourite device of the same, was perhaps commemorative of Bucephalus, the famous charger of Alexander the Great, in whose honour the Macedonian emperor founded a city named Bucephala on the bank of the Jhelum in the Punjab.