Lands of Asia layouts (Eng) 26.11.21

part ii | states
inscription had a sacred meaning, and that this reading of the inscription is confirmed
by the name of the god Mithra and that it is associated with the main function of this
deity – a guarantor of contract and obligation. However, Vorobyeva-Desyatovskaya
disagrees. Referring to the use of the word shramana in inscriptions on the four
bars, she suggests that the Dalverzin bars were part of the property of the Buddhist
community of that city, and could have been intended to cover the costs of building
Buddhist stupas, as well as the production of golden Buddha figurines, and for the
ornamentation of temple sculptures, as stipulated by Vinaya rules.
G. Pugachenkova thought the Dalverzin hoard was military booty captured in
northwest India by the owner of a large house, DT-5, who, in her opinion, belonged
to the Kushan-Bactrian military nobility.
Another supposition, and perhaps a more likely one, is that the bars, both with
and without inscriptions, may have constituted tax revenues in the form of gold bars
of a certain weight, and in this case of groups of different weights, with the first group
of bars weighing between 358.1 and 449.7 grams, and the second weighing between
876.2 and 877.8 grams. As already noted, this kind of levy had existed in Central Asia
from the middle of the 1st millennium BC, and was collected for the treasury of the
Achaemenid king. This would suggest that the formulations of the inscriptions on the
bars ‘given by Mithra or by Mithra given’, or ‘the shramanas (delivered)’ should be seen
as denoting the individuals making the tax payments: in the first and second cases the
rich landowner or merchant Mithra, and in the third representatives of the wealthy
Buddhist community of the city (Dalverzintepa) that owned two temples in the city.
The inscriptions were made using a punching technique, by a special tax official
in charge of recording tax revenues, who would have been similar to a madubar, an
accountant in Parthian Mithradatkirt or an accountant of tax revenues in Graeco-
Bactrian Ai-Khanum.
In Ai-Khanum, receipts were kept in special vessels in the treasury of the city
governor’s palace, from where they were transferred to the king’s treasury. It is possible
that the DT-5 building at Dalverzintepa was the palace of a Chaganian satrap, where
tax revenues from the entire region were delivered before being transferred to the
royal treasury. G. Pugachenkova and V. Masson had already suggested the possibility
of regarding this building not as a nobleman’s house but as a palace.
Another important document was found at Dalverzintepa – an ostracon with
a Pahlavi inscription dating from the mid-3rd century to the mid-4th century AD.
According to V. Livshits and A. Nikitin, the inscription translates as ‘Year 12. Navbun
(?) let him pay denars 100 (?)….’. The scholars believe that this refers to a payment of
100 or even 1,000 (this reading is plausible) gold coins, connected to the monetary
transactions conducted by Persian merchants who came to Dalverzintepa from Iran.
88