Hemichalkous - Menander I

Menander I remains the best-documented of the Indo-Greek kings largely because he appears in Buddhist literature as "Milinda" — the philosopher-king whose dialogues with the monk Nagasena were preserved in the Pali text Milindapañha. Whether his apparent sympathy toward Buddhism was genuine conviction or political calculation in a predominantly Buddhist realm is a question numismatists and historians have debated for over a century. His coins circulated across a territory stretching from the Punjab into Arachosia, and copper fractions like this hemichalkous served the everyday transactions that silver would have been too valuable to handle.