Abstract
Osmund Bopearachchi is one of the major experts on Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek coinages. He has personally inspected more of the coins, which in private and public collection must number tens of thousands, than possibly any previous numismatist. He introduces us, throughout his studies, to new discoveries of hoards of these coins, and continuously comments on the significance of the new finds.
Bopearachchi’s main concern is the proper classification of coin-types and the sequence in which they are to be placed. In this collection of his essays, we see him at work as a craftsman, refining and correcting his views as more evidence unfolds, evidence that he pursues with admirable assiduity. It is likely that the sequences he has established (partly with the aid, no doubt, of the studies of his predecessors) are, in most cases, almost definitive. But there is certainly difficulty awaiting him when it comes to keying this order of sequence to chronology in absolute time. For a numismatist of so critical a bent as Bopearachchi, it is strange to see him accept the identification of the Azes era with the Vikrama era of 57 BC, a most improbable theory, and put the epoch of the Kushan era at AD 127, following Harry Falk’s unconvincing arguments that involve the dubious device of a ‘missing hundred’ (pp. 426, 565). But if we consider the evidence relating to economic history that numismatic research of the kind Bopearachchi offers us, we can at least momentarily waive our objections to such loose dating, for 50 years this side or that hardly matter to the larger economic processes of antiquity.
The importance of the Bactrian-Greek and Indo-Greek coinages for Indian economic history lies partly in the fact that these introduced in India for the first time an efficient medium of exchange, of standard weights, in three metals, gold, silver and copper, facilitating market transactions at all levels. India’s own punch-marked coins in coarse silver could not have been used for smaller transactions and were difficult to assay owing to their coarseness. The spread across India of coinages imitating the Greek issues during the first three centuries AD were thus an important factor in promoting commerce, the significance of which is seldom recognised in text books.
There is yet another factor, on which Bopearachchi offers important evidence: the arrival of a ‘gold-phase’ in Indian monetary system. Gold was coined by Alexander, the Seleucids and the early Bactrian rulers, though it is relatively rare in Indo-Greek coinage. Bactria had accumulations of gold by the early decades of the first century AD as was brought out so remarkably by the massive amount of gold artefacts recovered by Soviet archaeologists at Tillya Tepe in Northern Afghanistan (see the magnificently printed report by Victor Sarianidi, Bactrian Gold: From the Excavations of the Tillya-Tepe Necropolis in Northern Afghanistan, Leningrad, 1985). The so-called second deposit at Mir Zakah near Gardez in Afghanistan yielded many gold artefacts and gold coins of Indo-Greek and Indo-Parthian rulers (the gold weighing 350 kg) (Bopearachchi, pp. 44n. and 650). Vima Kadphises, the second Kushan emperor, who had Bactria as his base, with large conquests in India, began to issue a splendid gold coinage in the second century AD, in which he was followed by his successors, Kanishka, Huvishka and Vasudeva, with Huvishka issuing perhaps the largest number.
The presence of both Chinese lacquerware and Roman artefacts at Begram, north of Kabul (first–second centuries AD) shows that Bactria was now on the great Silk Road linking China with the Mediterranean. The gold that was acquired probably arose largely out of profits of the trade. Bapearachchi (pp. 75, 448–49) draws our attention to the Vaishali hoard of Bactrian gold coins, allegedly 1000 in number, which were apparently imported from Bactria in the second century BC mainly for their value as bullion (they bear cuts on their obverse obviously for assay purposes). India’s history as a net importer of bullion thus had begun even before South India became involved in its lucrative trade with Rome.
The question remains, from where did Bactria obtain its gold in order to accumulate and then export? It was often assumed that the source was the Roman empire and the Kushans smelted Roman gold coins to mint their own. Bopearachchi (pp. 600–602) had an analysis carried out on the gold coins of Nero and Domitian, Roman emperors, which were found at Begram in a golden reliquary along with gold coins of Vima Kadphises, Kanishka and Huvishka. The analysis revealed that while the gold in Roman coins had an extreme degree of purity (99.3 to 99.9 per cent), the Kushan coins had greater impurities, containing much larger quantities of platinum and palladium sticking to the metal from its original state as a mineral (pp. 600–602). Kushan gold could not, therefore, have come from smelting Roman coins and must have come directly from some local source. This could well be Kuran (south of Badakhshan) where Xuan Zhuang (Yuan Chwang) reported gold being extracted from the rocks (Thomas Watters, On Yuan Chwang, London, 1905, pp. 278–79). If so, profits from trade must have been obtained in Bactria in the form of other commodities, which were then exchanged for local gold, that was made into coins and, in that form, exported by way of trade to India.
Despite the highly technical nature of Bopearachchi’s work, and the unavoidable overlap between the essays, I found this volume to be most stimulating. The last section contains extremely moving accounts of the destruction and plunder to which the great art objects and cultural antiquities of Afghanistan have been subjected ‘since the fall of the Communist government’, for which the author squarely blames ‘the cynical game of realpolitik in Afghanistan’ by external powers (pp. 616–24). The scale of plunder is indicated by the fact recorded by Bopearachchi (p. 646) that since 1994 more than 8000 Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek coins have appeared in sale catalogues the world over. Much of what has been destroyed of Afghanistan’s great cultural heritage by both indigenous and external barbarism can now, alas, never be restored.