The Greeks in Bactria and India c29: Appendix 17. The Hermaeus-Kujula Kadphises Coins
The Greeks in Bactria and India c29
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Appendix 17. The Hermaeus-Kujula Kadphises Coins
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Hermaeus’ Greek legend on his own coins, both silver and copper, which were struck in the Alexandria-Kapisa mint, is always βασιλέως σωτῆρος Ἑρμαίου, ‘Of king Hermaeus, saviour’, and the Kharoshthi legend is the corresponding Maharajasa tradatasa Heramayasa, with the ‘Zeus enthroned’ of Alexandria-Kapisa.¹ The Kadphises coins, which are of inferior style, resembling the debased copies of Hermaeus’ money issued after his death, fall into two classes. The first class² has: obverse, bust of Hermaeus diademed and Greek legend βασιλέως στηρος συ Ἑρμαίου (often corrupted); reverse, Heracles facing with club and lion’s skin, and a Kharoshthi legend signifying ‘Kujula Kadphises, Kushan, yavuga (chief)’. This class has the square omicron but no other square letters. The second class³ has: obverse, bust of Hermaeus diademed, and a Greek legend, usually mutilated, reading ‘Kujula Kadphises, Kushan’; reverse, the same as the first class. This class, beside the square omicron, has the square sigma and phi which one associates with the coins of Gondophares; as both classes must be near in time, it is clear that the period is getting too late for letter forms to mean much chronologically. In addition, there is a third class which belongs here, a strange copper coinage:⁴ obverse, bust of Hermaeus with a Greek legend βασιλέως στηρος συ Ἑρμαίου; reverse, Nike holding wreath and a Kharoshthi legend Maharajasa rajarajasa mahatasa Heramayasa, ‘Of King Hermaeus, King of Kings, the Great’, or ‘Great King of Kings’. This class shows the round omicron, and no square letters at all. It cannot be Hermaeus’ own coinage; he never uses such titles, nor could he, and the Greek legend is identical with that of the first class mentioned above. The round omicron therefore has nothing to do with the round omicron of the earlier coinage of Hermaeus himself, and that means that we are approaching the time when, on the Kushan coinage, the square letter-forms will have vanished from India and the round omicron will have become stereotyped. As, of the coins mentioned above, the first and third classes are connected by the identical Greek legend and the first and second by the identical reverse, all the coins must belong, roughly, to the same period, which can only be the reign of Kujula Kadphises I; his reign cannot have begun till somewhere after A.D. 25,¹ the date at which the Hou-han-shu begins, and probably went down to c. 50 (p. 352), so that these coins are at least some two generations later than the death of Hermaeus.
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¹ *BMC* pp. 62-6.
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² *Ib.* pp. 120-1. A number have since been found at Taxila: *ASI* 1912-13 p. 52 nos. 48-50, 1914-15 p. 33 nos. 35-7, 1929-30 p. 83 nos. 355-63.
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³ *BMC* p. 122. There are a number from Taxila among the coins of Kadphises I listed in *ASI* 1929-30 pp. 83 sqq. nos. 364-451.
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⁴ *BMC* p. 172; *Lahore Cat.* p. 85 nos. 682-92. I suppose that the coins found at Taxila with bust of Hermaeus and Nike are of this type, *ASI* 1929-30 pp. 74 sq. nos. 47 sqq., but there is no further description of them.
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¹ One of his coins bears an imitation of the head of Augustus, Cunningham, NC 1892 p. 65 no. 7.
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The late date of the third class, the copper coinage with the round omicron, is also shown by the words στηρος ου in the Greek legend. στηρος used to be treated as a corruption of σωτῆρος, but it occurs too regularly and consistently for this to be possible, and also such a corruption will not explain ου. Konow has explained ου as Kushan shau, i.e. Shah, king,² which in view of the seal from Bajaur with the inscription (in Kharoshthi) su Theüdama[sa]³ seems most probable; but he still took στηρος to be σωτῆρος. Many explanations of both words have been put forward;⁴ I venture to think the view is certain enough which makes στηρος the same language as ου, and that the meaning must be related to the Kharoshthi legend on the copper coins of the third class with round omicron—‘Great King’ or something of the sort.
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² CII pp. lxiii–iv.
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³ Ib. p. 6 no. iii.
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⁴ Given ib. p. lxiii.
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In any case there is little question as to what these coins are. Those of the third class, certainly in the Kharoshthi legend and probably in the Greek legend, make out that Hermaeus was a much more important king than he really was, that is, they are propaganda; the first and second classes are then propaganda also. But if Kadphises I used as propaganda the name and portrait of a Greek king who was dead some fifty years or more, and equipped him with extravagant titles which he never bore and which were not suited to his position, only one explanation is possible. We have in this book met with several undoubted pedigree coins or series of coins used as propaganda—those of Antimachus, Agathocles, Eucratides (Chap. v)—and these coins of Kadphises I are pedigree coins also: the Kushan, who was about to take or had just taken the Paropamisadae from its Pahlava rulers, is announcing that he is related by blood to Hermaeus in order to make himself more acceptable to the Greeks of that country; he is not a foreign conqueror but their lawful king. We get three steps in the process, though the sequence may be notional rather than temporal. The first (class 3) is that Hermaeus was a very great king. The second (class 1) stresses the relationship; Hermaeus has half—the more honourable half—of the coin. In the third (class 2) Hermaeus has less than half; he is falling into the background. Lastly come the coins of Kadphises alone, which I need not give. Neither of the Greek types on the coins here examined is a type of Hermaeus, any more than the legends are his; they are put on at random; Heracles⁵ and Nike might always be well-pleasing to Greeks.
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⁵ Cunningham suggested that the Heracles was the Kushan god of death, NC 1892 p. 59. But what then was Nike?
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This view of the coins, which seems to me inevitable, supports and is supported by a theory which has been put forward about Kadphises I. The name is spelt, in Kharoshthi, Kaphasa or Kapasa on coins of his found at Taxila,¹ and Lévi interpreted the name Kadphises to mean ‘the Kapisa man’,² which, as Konow has pointed out, might mean that his people considered that he had a title to the throne of Kapisa.³ As we have seen, he himself did claim such a title through his relationship to Hermaeus.
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¹ ASI 1912–13 pp. 44, 51. On the various spellings of the name see Konow, CII pp. lxiv, lxviii.
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² JA 1923 p. 52.
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³ CII p. lxvi n. 3.
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I have given in the text of Chapter VIII (p. 343) the reasons for supposing that Hermaeus gave a relative—sister is more probable than daughter—in marriage to a Kushan chief who was ancestor, probably grandfather, of Kadphises I. He can I think be identified. A Kushan chief is known, prior to the time of Kadphises I, who struck a Greek coinage with a Greek legend: Miaos (or Heraos—the name is said not to be certain) who calls himself ‘Kushan’ on his coinage.⁴ The obverse shows his head, while the reverse has the type of the Hermaeus and Calliope coins,⁵ ‘King on horseback’; but a flying Victory crowning the king, natural enough in the circumstances, has been added, a design repeated later on the coins of Gondophares. Miaos’ coins are earlier than the Hermaeus-Kadphises coins, since for a monogram they bear the Greek letter B, while one class (class 2) of the Hermaeus-Kadphises coins has Kharoshthi letters but none have Greek letters. The portrait of Miaos bears a very strong resemblance to some of those of Wima Kadphises,⁶ the son of Kadphises I, who if I am right was his great-grandson. The legend is TYPANNOYNTOΣ MIAOY (or whatever the name is) ΣANAB KOPPANOY, with many variants in the spelling. The last word is certainly ‘Kushan’, the P being the *sh* sign (see App. 18); this is its first appearance on coins in the Farther East, though it was soon followed by the *sh* sign on the coins of Spalirises (p. 509). The word τυραννοῦντος shows that Miaos was not a king, but a local ruler of some sort whose position was less than royal; τύραννος is regularly used in that sense by the author of the Periplus⁷ about a century later, and τυραννοῦντος shows not only that the moneyer knew Greek as a still living tongue but that he could appreciate the distinction between τύραννος and τυραννοῦντος—not ‘ruler’ but ‘under the rule of’; he probably had in mind βασιλεύοντος on the pedigree coins of Antimachus and Agathocles. The Kushan Miaos must in fact have been one of the five princes of the Yueh-chi, the yabghu (yavuga) of the Kuei-shuang, who at this time are said to have been somewhere between Chitral and the Panjshir country (p. 342); there is said to be tolerably easy communication by the Dorah pass between Badakshan on the Bactrian and Chitral on the Indian side.¹ The Greek moneyer did not attempt to render Miaos’ title; perhaps he did not know very well what yavuga meant, and so used the indefinite τυραννοῦντος; on the later Kushan coinage yavuga was to be transliterated. So far everything agrees well enough with the view that Miaos was a contemporary of Hermaeus and ancestor of Kadphises I.²
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⁴ BMC p. 116 (s.v. Heraüs); Cunningham NC 1888 p. 47 and more fully 1890 p. 111; Rapson, Indian coins 1897 p. 9; J. Kirste, Wien SB CLXXXII, 1918, Abh. 2 pp. 50 sqq.; CII p. liii.
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⁵ BMC p. 66.
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⁶ See especially BMC Pl. XXV, 6; the resemblance is most marked. There is no portrait of Kujula Kadphises.
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⁷ Periplus 24 is the best instance; see also 14, 16, 22, 23. J. Kennedy, JRAS 1913 p. 125, thought that τύραννος in the Periplus meant a local ruler who was probably a vassal, but the evidence does not go to show that vassaldom was of the essence of the meaning. Some have thought that the five Yueh-chi princes were vassals of some supreme overlord; there seems to be no evidence.
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¹ Sir A. Stein, *Serindia* 1 pp. 25–6.
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² Cunningham suggested ‘father and predecessor’, *NC* 1890 p. 114; but on the dates it must be ‘grandfather’ at the least.
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The word ΣΑΝΑΒ is unexplained; but Cunningham was certain of the B on every coin he had seen. His own explanation, tsanyu (= devaputra of the Kushan kings), is hardly satisfactory; it neglects the B, and it may be doubted whether a Kushan chief at this time could have called himself ‘Son of Heaven’, whatever his Imperial descendants were to do.³ The popular interpretation, Saka,⁴ is equally unsatisfactory. It, also, neglects the B; Miaos coined tetradrachms, which no Saca king ever did;⁵ above all, no known Saca or Kushan king ever calls himself ‘Saca’, and it is not, I think, even known whether the collection of peoples whom the Persians (followed by the Greeks and ourselves) called Sacas ever called themselves by that name, precisely as it is not known what the people whom Greeks and Romans called Parthians called themselves. One writer has sought to remedy the omission of the B by saying it is Middle Persian ve, ‘and’, and that the legend should read ‘Saca and Kushan’;⁶ but Greek coin-engravers in India did not join two titles by καί and did not use Middle Persian words for simple Greek ones. ΣΑΝΑΒ remains unexplained.
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³ Cunningham (ib.) however claimed to have read *devaputra* on a copper coin in the (usually illegible) Kharoshthi legend.
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⁴ *BMC* pp. 116, xlvii; Kirste op. cit. p. 56; *CII* p. liii.
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⁵ Cunningham *NC* 1890 p. 114.
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⁶ Kirste p. 56. He suggested (p. 55) that KOPPANOY really means, not Kushan, but ‘conqueror of Kushans’; instancing Germanicus. But Germanicus is not Germanus, as it would have to be on his argument.
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Miaos’ coinage, especially his portrait, is too good to have been struck anywhere but in a Greek mint, which, if I am right about his relations with Hermaeus, could only be Kapisa; the introduction of the sh sign could only have taken place in some regular Greek centre. On the other hand, the various coins we have show too many variations and blunders in the legend for the Kapisa mint at the beginning of the reign of Hermaeus. It may be that there was by now a good deal of difference between the mints in Greek Alexandria and Indian Kapisa. But the commonsense of the matter seems to be that Miaos’ portrait was engraved, and coin-models made, for him in the capital, and that he then copied them, as best might be, in his own lordship. This would agree well enough with the story.
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The conclusion, then, is that when Kujula Kadphises, a descendant of the Kushan *yavuga* Miaos who had married a relative of Hermaeus, invaded the Paropamisadae, he proclaimed to the Greeks that he came, not as a foreign conqueror, but as their lawful ruler by hereditary relationship to their last king Hermaeus; the coins here considered are the dry bones of that propaganda. It shows, incidentally, that in the first half of the first century A.D. there were still enough Greeks, or what passed as Greeks, in the Paropamisadae to be worth conciliating.