Friday, 6 May 2016

Coins of The Indo-Greek

The Indo-Greek kings introduced Greek types, and among them the portrait head, into the Indian coinage, and their example was followed for eight centuries. Every coin has some mark of authority in it, this is what known as "types". It appears on every Greek and Roman coin. Demetrios was the first Bactrian king to strike square copper coins of the Indian type, with a legend in Greek on the obverse, and in Kharoshthi on the reverse.

Copper coins, square for the most part, are very numerous. The devices are almost entirely Greek, and must have been engraved by Greeks, or Indians trained in the Greek traditions. The rare gold staters and the splendid tetra drachms of Bactria are the envy of any avid numismatist .The silver coins of the Indo-Greeks, as these later princes may conveniently be called, are the didrachm and the hemidrachm. 

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