The Greeks in Bactria and India c30: Appendix 18. San and Rho
The Greeks in Bactria and India c30
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Appendix 18. San and Rho
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That the sign ϸ which appears in Greek legends on the Kushan coinage and on that of two earlier rulers has the value *sh* was remarked in 1872 by Cunningham,¹ who thought that the sign was a peculiar form of Rho. In 1887 Sir A. Stein² put forward the theory that it was a revival of the obsolete Greek letter San (which had the value *sh*), since the oldest minuscule form of San resembles, though apparently it is not identical with, the ϸ sign on the Kushan coinage. This has raised a good deal of discussion; on the one hand, various other origins have been suggested for the ϸ sign, including the Aramaean Tsade,³ and on the other, much learning has been expended in an attempt to show that this sign had not the value *sh* but the value *r* (Rho),⁴ while Professor F. W. Thomas has taken the view, which resembles Cunningham's, that the *sh* sign ϸ was derived from the *r* sign ρ (Rho),⁵ and has also said that after the fifth century San only survived as a numeral⁶ (and as a numeral it cannot come in question, for it was written with a totally different sign). But I have never seen the one enlightening Greek text on the subject quoted.
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¹ *NC* 1872 p. 181, 1890 p. 108, 1892 p. 54.
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² *Academy* XXXII, 1887, p. 170.
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³ See F. W. Thomas, *JRAS* 1913 p. 642.
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⁴ J. Kirste, *Orobazes*, Wien *SB* CLXXXII, 1918, Abh. 2.
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⁵ *JRAS* 1913 pp. 1016, 1034.
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⁶ *Ib.* p. 642.
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Athenaeus,⁷ in discussing various substitutions of San (*sh*) for Sigma (*s*), says that Aristoxenus (end of the fourth century B.C.) frequently remarked on the tendency of singers to make that substitution; Aristoxenus' words as quoted (Kaibel's text) are τὸ σίγμα λέγειν παρητοῦντο διὰ τὸ σκληρόστομον εἶναι...τὸ δὲ ῥῶ διὰ τὸ εὔκολον πολλάκις παραλαμβάνουσι. Now the MS of Athenaeus, Codex Marcianus, in the second clause of the passage cited has τὸ δὲ ϸ, which the Epitome, followed by Kaibel, has corrected to ῥῶ (see Kaibel's note). But that Aristoxenus meant San (the *sh* sound) is certain, not only from the manner in which Athenaeus quotes the passage in the midst of a discussion of San, but because the tendency of singers to sing San for Sigma had previously offended both Pindar⁸ and his teacher Lasus of Hermione, who wrote an ode and a hymn without a Sigma in them⁹ so as to give singers no excuse for singing the hated *sh* sound; and it is clear that it is this tendency to which Aristoxenus is alluding. This means that, if Athenaeus quotes Aristoxenus correctly and if Codex Marcianus represents Athenaeus correctly, San at the end of the fourth century was written ῥ (Rho). But it is incredible that such a wonderful instrument as Greek in its prime should have made one sign do duty for both the sh sound and the r sound, even though the sh sound was no longer used in speaking. What Aristoxenus must really have written was not ῥ but ϸ, which a copyist who no longer understood turned into ῥ; there were two signs, ϸ (San) and ῥ (Rho), perhaps with a very slight difference between them, i.e. the upper limb of San very short (compare the very slight difference in the German alphabet between the signs for f and s); and in some times and places, especially where knowledge of Greek was imperfect or failing, much confusion might result; one might be used where the other should have been, sometimes perhaps owing merely to a slight error of an engraver’s tool. But unquestionably the sign ϸ on the Kushan coinage is generally sh;¹ this is proved by the Indian pronunciation Kanishka of the Greek Kavepkɩ. The same is the case on some coins of the earlier Saca king Spalirises; his name is certain from the Kharoshthi Spalirisa, but in the Greek form, though the first letter is usually Sigma, it is also sometimes either ϸ or a form indistinguishable from a capital Rho;² actually the first instance in the East of a sign which looks like a capital Rho having the value sh appears on the Greek coins of the Kushan Miaos (App. 17).
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⁷ Athen. XI, 467 a, b.
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⁸ Fr. 79 b, τὸ σὰν κίβδηλον ἀπὸ στομάτων.
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⁹ Athen. X, 455 b, c; see in J. U. Powell, *New Chapters in the History of Greek Literature*, 3rd series, 1933, p. 49 (C. M. Bowra).
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¹ Kirste op. cit. pp. 12–17 makes rather a strong case for a Rho in OKPO on the coins of Kanishka and Huvishka. ² Set out CII p. xli. See Cunningham, NC 1890 p. 108. ³ I make no reference to the horses branded with San in the fifth century (Aristoph. Clouds 122; Athen. xi, 467 b), for it is not known what the mark was or if the custom ever travelled to Asia.
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Stein then should be right that on the Kushan coinage ϸ represents San; but it was not I think a revival of San. The Aristoxenus passage should solve the problem of how the ‘obsolete’ San ever reached the Farther East; the answer is that it was not entirely obsolete.³ It was obsolete in classical literature; what kept it alive, ready to represent the sh sound in a foreign language if required, was not literature but music. Music formed part of the curriculum of the gymnasium, and gymnasia, as has been seen (p. 18), must have been universal in the Greek cities of the East; but there is more than that. Aristoxenus, says Athenaeus, spoke often (πολλάκις) about San. But Aristoxenus was famous; he was a learned Peripatetic and writer on the theory of music, and his works on the subject became classics in the Greek world; from him other writers on the subject took their start, and his writings must have been widely known. All the Hellenistic literature on music is lost, but there must once have been such a literature; one cannot suppose a blank between Aristoxenus in the fourth century B.C. and Aristides Quintilianus in the second century A.D., and indeed there is a reference to different schools of thought having existed.¹ There was plenty of interest in music, and not only among intellectuals—the Syracusan Women of Theocritus proves that—and that this interest extended to the Farther East is shown by Herodorus’ Ode to Apollo (p. 39) from Susa, where the unusual and intricate metre testifies to a corresponding study of music. All this must have kept alive the knowledge of San, because in music, unlike literature, the *sh* sound could not die; I understand that the tendency of some singers to sing *sh* (e.g. ‘Ish’ for ‘Ich’ in German) is as well-known in modern times as it was to Lasus and Aristoxenus. It is not necessary to say that a knowledge of San survived in *India* (though it may well have done so), for two art-motives travelled to India from Pergamum and the Phoenician sphere respectively shortly before the time of Miaos and Spalirises (pp. 394, 329), and there was perfectly good communication with the West in their day. And it seems certain that, if the *sh* sound could not die, the frequent comments on the subject of San by the most famous of Greek writers on music would not have been allowed to die either. And they did not die; some of them reached Athenaeus.
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¹ The reference in Aristides Quintilianus to οἱ συμπλέκοντες and οἱ χωρίζοντες, on which see Susemihl II p. 223.