The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s7.303

c10.s7.303

Whether the elephant represents Maues’ Indian kingdom,³ or whether it be the elephant of Taxila (pp. 163 *sq.*), symbolising his capital—there is no third alternative—is not very material, for in either case the meaning is clear: Maues, having conquered Gandhāra, is at pains to assure his new subjects in the usual way that he will respect both their religions; coins of this kind, as I have said before, are only the dead residuum of what were once living proclamations and acts of State. It is material here that there is a series of coins struck by Kujula Kadphises⁴ after the conquest of the Paropamisadae which show on the obverse a seated Buddha with one hand raised in benediction, and on the reverse a standing Zeus, which must be the Zeus of Kapisa; these coins afford a close parallel to the Maues coins, for in each case Buddha is associated with the god of the city of minting, in the one case the elephant-god of Kapisa and in the other Siva of Pushkalāvatī; it may be worth notice that Wima Kadphises after his conquest of Gandhāra called himself a follower of Siva.⁵ It was a standing difficulty when M. Foucher wrote⁶ that the earliest Buddha-statue on a coin was that on a coin of Kanishka,⁷ which is fairly late; we now have a regular sequence—Maues, Kujula Kadphises, Kanishka.