The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s2.193

c10.s2.193

the Paropamisadae; this follows from the fact that Apollodotus, besides being king in Barygaza, was also king in Gandhāra, and therefore must have ruled everything between the two. His rule in Gandhāra is proved by the appearance of the humped bull of Siva on both his round and square silver coins,¹ for the two types which are certain are the Zeus of Kapisa and the humped bull of Pushkalāvatī, the capital of Gandhāra.² He must also have ruled Taxila and the kingdom between the Indus and the Jhelum of which Taxila was the capital, for Menander’s sphere did not come west of the Jhelum, Bucephala being his most westerly town (p. 245). But one of the great difficulties in reconstruction has been that the coin-type used by the Greeks for Taxila was unknown. The modern view is that it was the *pilei* (caps) of the Dioscuri;³ but even if this be true—it seems very conjectural—it cannot apply to the period before Eucratides, whose coinage first introduced the Dioscuri and their *pilei* into India as coin-types. The Taxila type ought to be discoverable on Taxila’s own coinage. That coinage uses several types, among them the lion and the humped bull, but infinitely the commonest type is the elephant;⁴ indeed the elephant, though a common type on early Indian coins, is so particularly associated with two towns, Eran and Taxila, that it has been thought to possess a local significance.⁵ Now Apollodotus’ round silver coins show on one side Siva’s humped bull, with the ‘footprint of Nandi’ on its hump,⁶ and on the other an elephant, and the conjunction of these two types is imitated by subsequent kings who ruled both Gandhāra and Taxila—Heliocles and the Sacas Maues, Azes, and Azilises⁷—and I suggest that the elephant here is the missing type of Taxila on Greek coins and signifies that Apollodotus, as he must have done, ruled that kingdom as well as Gandhāra.