The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s7.298

c10.s7.298

The placing of the figure, then, on the reverse should alone be conclusive that it represents Buddha, or rather, from the throne and the attitude, a statue of Buddha; but whether it be conclusive or not is not actually material, for the obverse of the coin, ‘elephant running with wreath in trunk’, clinches the matter. The elephant is *not* running: he has both his forefeet high in the air, and any Indian Greek knew well enough that elephants do not run like that. The creature is *dancing*, dancing on its hind legs and offering a wreath to the seated figure. Here the second coin comes in; it has precisely the same obverse type, elephant dancing and offering a wreath, but on the reverse the place of the seated figure is taken by the humped bull of Pushkalāvatī. Elephants may offer wreaths² to kings or gods, but they do not offer wreaths to humped bulls, and what the bull, Siva’s bull, therefore represents is clear enough: it is Siva himself, the god’s symbol for the god, who in fact does not appear in person on coins till those of the Kushans; there is an earlier instance in India of an elephant offering a wreath to a god, the Zeus of Kapisa, on a coin of Antialcidas.³ This settles the question of the seated figure. The dance of the elephant, on both coins, is a religious dance before his god, like that of David before Yahweh and many another instance; he is performing an act of reverence or worship before the two beings (I must not here call Buddha a god)¹ who represented the two religions which divided the allegiance of Pushkalāvatī, those of Buddha and of Siva.²