Finally returning to this topic after a nice Thanksgiving trip to visit relatives in Texas and a return
home to have gall bladder surgery (that went very well). Then, I
had hoped to post the photo attached to this post as the newest addition to my
collection, but someone else wanted it more than I did. Oh well, there will be more as this
Type 244 appears to be (or one of) the most common coins of the Western Turks.
As I stated when I posted, my concern was finding coins minted in or near present day Afghanistan. All of the empires and kingdoms that have controlled parts of this
area have included wider areas, including
Bactria, Gandhara,
Iran, etc. Just before the coin went up for the final
auction, the
ANS was kind enough to send me a few pages from the
Vondrovec book that discuss
Type 244. Based on this, the coin falls into my collecting
area. Also, as an aside, what I saw of the book makes me really want my own copy of this two volume
work. And I really do not want to settle for the digital version (that is quite expensive on its own, but at least available).
As Jan has mentioned, just this one coin is quite complicated and confusing, but
Vondrovec clears a lot up for me. I am just going to let
Vondrovec speak here. I will say, I may have been on at least a reasonable track with my thoughts on the commander of a chilliarch. Also, all the ones I have seen
had countermarks and gold plugs, including the coin attached here. This also explains why these coins are dated as they are (as after 688 AD).
Note that the depictions of the various legends/languages in the excerpt below are not accurate.
Section 9.1.10
SandanDrachms of
Type 244 are very numerous. Of high
quality silver, with no
billon specimens known to me, their overall appearance - size, manufacture and basic typology- suggests that they were intended to circulate alongside
Sasanian and Arab-Sasanian drachms.
The ruler's crown is surmounted by a
lion's
head on asymmetrical pair of wings; no details of their actual attachment are visible, but we may assume that they were modeled after the wings of Khusro II (r. 591-628) which became canonical on
Sasanian and Arab-Sasanian coinage. Below the wings and attached to the diadem are two crescents, each containing a large dot or globe. The
reverse shows a slender fire
altar, its ribbons floating upwards, and two attendants with characteristic crescent-shaped headdresses standing to either
side. Again, the double margin provides the only absolute chronological
terminus post quem of 688 CE.
Type 244 is a trilingual issue, indicating a multilingual
area of circulation. The
obverse bears legends in Brahmi and
Bactrian. The Brahmi
obverse legend Sri candāna vakhudevah is to be read from right to left, translated by Falk as "
His Perfection, Candana, Lord of the Oxus." This gives us another reason for locating the production of
Type 244 in
Bactria.
The
Bactrian legends outside the margins of both sides have long been disputed. On the
obverse, the
legend is
opt Bayo aÇpoß88iyo gavdavo Bayo xos8no ("
His Perfection, the Lord, Commander
Sandan ,
King, the Lord"). According to Sims-Williams, Az(o)robadigo might be derived from chiliarch (a commander of 1,000 soldiers) whereas
Sandan is a personal name. [See Footnote 694 below]
The
reverse has two Pahlavi legends: in the left
field 'pzwn' ("increase") and in the right pwn GDH... (“from Glory"... the last word is unclear). The
Bactrian legend at the outer
rim of the
reverse reads
opt Bayo d§no B кауао opi Bayi (“
His Perfection, the Lord Ddebo, the
Bactrian khagan,
His Perfection, the Lord"). The translation of Bays§tyyo kayavo as "khagan of Balkh" has recently been suggested by La Vaissière and is accepted by Sims-Williams. La Vaissière has also proposed that
Type 244 was issued by Pangul, which I cannot entirely follow. However such details as a
Bactrian legend between the margins, are shared by Pangul's coins and
Sandan's.
Both the Brahmi title vakhudevah ("Lord of the Oxus") and the
Bactrian title Bay§§yo kayavo ("Khagan of
Bactria") enable us to locate this issue in
Bactria. As we have already seen on the coins of the Yabghu (chapter 9.1.7), there can be contradicting geographic information; however, everything about
Type 244 seems to point to production in
Bactria. And yet we must be extra careful with this line of argument. In the case of Pangul's
Type 245, the same epithet Bays&Lo ("of Balkh") does not provide sufficient evidence for locating this issue in
Bactria as
his other coin-types bear the
mint signatures of Zabulistan and Rakhvad (chapter 9.1.12).
Footnote 694: Sims-Wiliams 2010: 124 claims that
Sandan was a"Turk Shahi" ruler and refers to Xiaohe Ma, who "identifies oavSavo with Zhantan, who was named in 762 CE as younger brother of the
king of Jibin, which may well be correct as regards the name but hardly as regards the individual."
Cf. Xiaohe Ma, unpublished paper distributed at the conference "
Ancient Coins and the Culture of the Silk Road," Shanghai 2006, which is apparently the article Xiaohe 2012, published entirely in
Chinese.
Me again. I find this a fascinating deep dive into one particular coin
type that has and remains a fun exercise. I will be continuing my quest for this coin (and others) as an example of the Western Turki Shahis.
Cheers,
Virgil