INTRODUCTION

THE romance of the discovery of Greek coins in India is well
told by Professor H, H, Wilson in Ariana Antiqua (London, 1841).
Coins of Apollodotos and Menander were published for the first
time by Colonel Tod in the first volume of the transactions of the
Royal Asiatic Society, 1824. The coins described and figured became
the subject of an interesting and learned dissertation by Augustus
Wilhelm von Schlegel, which appeared in the Journal Asiatique,
November, 1828. Of the medals of Apollodotos and Menander,
Schlegel observes, 'ces deux m^dailles sont, pour ainsi dire, hors
de prix tant pour la conservation parfaite que pour leur extreme
raret^ et leur importance historique/ Their historical importance
remains undiminished, but their attribute of rarity was soon to be
changed through the discoveries of the American explorer Masson
in Afghanistan. Mr, Masson resided for some time in that country,
and during the years 1833 to 1837 he succeeded in accumulating
some thirty thousand coins from the Kabul Valley and its vicinity.
The far greater proportion of these must have been too much injured
by corrosion to have had any other than metallic value, but several
new names of Greek princes unknown to history were found, such
as Archebios, Lysias, and Hermaios, and numerous pieces of what
are now called the Indo-Scythians, Indo-Parthians? and Kushans.
Meanwhile collateral progress in the decipherment of the legends
was being made in India by James Prinsep, and in Europe by such
savants as M. Raoul Rochette and Lassen. The results of Prinsep's
labours are embodied in his Essays on Indian Antiquities, a scholarly
work of the first rank, but now out of date. Another early worker in
this field was Cunningham, who as Lieutenant A. Cunningham wrote
on these coins in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal for
1834, and as General Sir Alexander Cunningham crowned his long
and devoted labours on the Indo-Greek series of coins by producing
the fully informed and striking essays which appeared in the Numis-
matic Chronicle during the years 1868 to 1892, under the titles of
fThe Coins of Alexander's Successors in the East, Greeks, Indo-
Scytbians, and Parthians', 'The Coins of the $akasj, 'The Coins of
the Kushans', and so on. The objection has been raised that these
papers, although of great value, require to be read with caution,