Part 1 (1/2)
A Literary and Historical Atlas of Asia.
by J. G. Bartholomew.
INTRODUCTION
Fourth in the series of special atlases designed for ”Everyman's Library” the present volume deals with the countries of Asia, whose history and geography, and whose possibilities, great and grave, are alike reflected in the maps and charts that follow. When Queen Elizabeth granted to certain merchants of London a charter that gave them a roving commission to trade in the East Indies, she could not foresee the immense developments that were to rise from that adventurous commerce between east and west. The successive maps of India with their frontier changes mark the gradual advance of an old world toward the new one knit by powerful mutual ties to the Isle of Britain; and recently we have seen what it is to be hoped will open a greater era for those regions, marked by a return to the old capital of Delhi, and a resuming of ancient rites which first gained their symbolism in those lands.
But Asia, as j.a.pan has taught us and as China will undoubtedly teach us again, has her own destiny to bear out, apart from our European interests and politics; and it is in that aspect we need to study her on the lines laid down and made clear and positive in this volume. It is not the military records, the charts of mutinies and battle-fields, interesting as they are, which are alone important; but those showing the conditions, physical and climatic, of the country; the dispersion of the tongues, the sites of the old religions, the wealth and tillage of the earth with its fruits, grain and minerals, its rice fields and tea plantations; the prevalence of rain, sun and trade-winds; and the course of the sea-roads that affect its human and industrial life.
A gazetteer does not always seem to the ordinary man a very entertaining thing, but in this of Asia its compiler, Miss Grant, has tried to mark in brief, close compacted in small type, the place-a.s.sociations, historical and other, that give life to the names of town or country.
She has related them to the books that have dealt with them, and the events they have witnessed: given Ning-po its allusion to Marco Polo's travels, and Madras its San Thome pedigree, connected Palmyra with Tamerlane, and Puri, Bengal, with the gold tooth of the Buddha and the Temple of Vishnu's incarnation. In the Brief Survey of the Coins and Coinage, Mr. J. Allan (of the Coins and Medal Department, British Museum) has traced the record from Lydia, six centuries and more B.C., to our own time. His notes on the Phoenician coins--”tetradrachms of Tyre with a dolphin or the G.o.d Melkart riding on a sea-horse,” or an owl with a crook and a flail (Egyptian royal symbols); or the double shekels of Sidon with a galley, sails, or oars, before a walled city on one side, and a king of Persia on the other--show how much of history a set of coins, apparently so secretive, may hide in their silver and gold impressions.
In this Asian Atlas, of small dimensions as it requires to be to fit its pocket, Irkutsk in the north, ”far Mandalay,” the details of the East and West Indies, the route of Marco Polo, coasts like the Carnatic, towns like Lucknow and Cawnpore, Lhasa, ”the Forbidden City” of Tibet, and Matsuye, the old capital of Idzumo, which Lafcadio Hearn describes, all have their record. It remains to be said, that as in other volumes of the same set, Dr. Bartholomew of Edinburgh has acted as cartographer; and the editor and publishers wish to acknowledge his large practical aid in the design of the atlas. Also, they owe a word of thanks to Mr.
William Foster of the India Office for his expert advice.
Finally, they wish to dedicate the volume to the people and the princes of India, j.a.pan, and the other countries of which it is a memorial, believing in their great future.
E. R.
A BRIEF SURVEY
OF THE
COINAGES OF ASIA
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES (700 B.C.) TO THE PRESENT DAY
BY J. ALLAN, M.A., M.R.A.S.
_Of the Department of Coins, British Museum_
The coins of Asia from the earliest times may be conveniently reviewed in the following geographical and chronological sections: I. Ancient coins of Western and Central Asia (to the rise of Islam, excluding the majority of Greek and Roman coins which have no claim to be Asiatic); II. Mohammadan coins of Western and Central Asia; III. Coins of India (Hindu and Mohammadan); IV. Coins of the Far East; V. Coins struck by European nations for their Asiatic possessions.
I.--ANCIENT COINS OF WESTERN AND CENTRAL ASIA
_Origin of Coinage in Lydia._--According to Herodotus (I. 94) the Lydians were the first people to strike coins of gold and silver, while other writers attribute the invention of coinage to Pheidon, king of Argos, who struck coins in Aegina. The truth appears to be that gold, or rather electrum, was first coined in Lydia in the seventh century B.C., while silver was first minted in Aegina about the same time. The earliest Lydian coins are believed to have been issued in the time of Gyges, king of Lydia (687-652 B.C.). These are rude oval pieces of electrum, a natural mixture of gold and silver found locally, and are stamped on one side only (Plate I. 1). The uncertain value of this metal was found an embarra.s.sment to commerce, and Croesus (561-546 B.C.), under whose rule Lydia became a great and wealthy power, introduced a coinage of pure gold and of pure silver, ten staters of silver being equal to one of gold (Plate I. 2, gold stater).
_Persia._--When Cyrus conquered Lydia in 546 B.C., the Persians, who, like the a.s.syrians, had no coined money, became acquainted with the art of coinage. It is not certain when the Persians began to issue coins, but from the statement of Herodotus that Darius Hystaspis (521-486 B.C.) coined gold of the finest quality, and the probable etymology of ”daric”
from Darius, the beginning of the Achaemenid coinage is placed in his reign; it is most probable that it was at Sardes in Lydia that Darius first struck his coins, as there he would be most likely to find skilled artificers. The coins of the Persian empire were the _daric_ of gold about equal in value to the stater of Croesus (or rather more than an English sovereign in metal value) and the _siglos_ (_shekel_) of which twenty were the equivalent of a daric. The types were the same on each coin, viz., on the obverse, the Persian King in a half-kneeling position holding a bow in his left hand and a spear in his right, while the reverse still had no type but only a rough incuse caused in striking the coins (Plate I. 3, daric). These two coins remained the official coinage of the Persian empire till its fall. The conquered Greek cities were not allowed to strike gold, but the issue of silver and copper by them was not interfered with; in addition certain Persian satraps were allowed to issue silver coins bearing their own names.
_Phoenicia._--In spite of their commercial activity, the Phoenician cities of the Mediterranean coast did not begin to strike coins until comparatively late times, the end of the fifth and beginning of the fourth centuries B.C. We possess extensive silver coinages of the fourth century for most of these cities, those of Tyre and Sidon being particularly important. The tetradrachms of Tyre have as types, a dolphin or the G.o.d Melkart riding on a sea-horse and an owl with crook and flail, Egyptian symbols of royalty (Plate I. 4, _c._ 410-332 B.C.).
The double shekels of Sidon bear on the obverse a galley with sails or rowers often before a walled city, and on the reverse the suzerain king of Persia in a chariot (Plate I. 5, _c._ 400-384 B.C.).
_Imitations of Athenian coins._--The coins of Athens circulated very widely in the ancient world, particularly in Central Asia, where imitations of them were made when the Athenian mint could no longer supply the demand (Plate I. 6, imitation of Athenian tetradrachm). On some of these imitations the owl was replaced by an eagle, while Athenian influence can still be traced in the remarkably neat coins of Sophytes (Plate I. 11, reverse, c.o.c.k), whom Alexander found reigning on the North-West Indian frontier on his march across it in 326 B.C.
_Alexander III., the Great._--When the Persian empire fell before Alexander the Great his coins became current throughout Asia, from the Mediterranean to the Indus, and profoundly influenced all later coinages. His gold coins (the stater, with its multiple the distater and its sub-divisions) have on the obverse a head of Athena, and on the reverse a winged Victory with the king's name; the silver (drachm, with multiples and subdivisions) has on the obverse a head of the young Herakles in lion-skin, and reverse, Zeus seated on throne holding eagle and sceptre (Plate I. 7). Tetradrachms bearing Alexander's name and types continued to be struck for a century and a half after his death, and they are at the present day the commonest of ancient coins.
_Seleucid Kings of Syria._--We possess an extensive series of coins of the Seleucid kings of Syria, the dynasty founded by Seleucus Nikator (312-280 B.C.), the general of Alexander who succeeded to his Asiatic heritage. The earliest Seleucid coins (before 306 B.C.) retained the name and types of Alexander, but soon a greater variety of types was adopted, while the king's head began to appear regularly on the obverse.