used Kharoshthi. Lakshmi, goddess of abundance and fortune, appears in several of these coins. Hindu On 3 October 1970, six Indian-standard silver drachmas were discovered at the administrative quarters of Ai-Khanoum from a pilgrim's water vessel by a team of French archaeologists. These coins are the first numismatic representations of Vedic deities and serve as key evidences about Bhagavatism being the first form of Vishnu cult in early India. The coins display early Avatars of Vishnu: Balarama-Sankarshana with attributes of pestle and plow on reverse, and Vāsudeva-Krishna with attributes of Shankha and Sudarshana Chakra on obverse. On the bases of the coins bearing characteristic trademarks of Indian sculpture — frontal pose as opposed to three-quarter, stiff and starched folds in drapes, absence of proportions, and sideways disposition of feet — Audoin and Bernard speculated that the engravings were by Indian artists. Bopearachchi disputes the conclusion and points out the mis-representational depictions of Vāsudeva-Krishna's chattra with a headdress and conch with a high-necked vase; he hypothesizes that a Greek artist had engraved the coin from a now-lost (or undiscovered) sculpture. A dancing girl, found on the obverse of some Bronze coins of Agathocles are believed to be representations of Subhadra. Nickel coins Also, Agathocles and Pantaleon, along with their contemporary Euthydemus II, are unique in the ancient world, in that they were the first in the world to issue copper-nickel (75/25 ratio) coins, an alloy technology only known by the Chinese at the time (some weapons from the Warring States period were in copper-nickel alloy). These coins used the symbolism of Dionysos with a thyrsus over his left shoulder and his panther, which were his type for smaller coinage. It has long been suggested that the nickel contained in the coins of Agathocles was ultimately of Chinese origin (Chinese Baitong, 白铜, "white copper"), and that they were indicative of the existence of trade links with China around that time. However, a recent archaeometallurgical study of trace elements has shown that nickel in these coins actually came from natural nickeliferous copper ore. Decipherment of the Brahmi script From 1834, some attempts were made to decipher the Brahmi script, the main script used in old Indian inscriptions such as the Edicts of Ashoka, and which had become extinct since the 5th century CE. Some attempts by Rev. J. Stevenson were made to identify characters from the Karla Caves (circa 1st century CE) based