Editing Krishna (section)

====Depiction in coinage (2nd century BCE)====
[[File:Vasudeva Krishna on a coin of Agathocles of Bactria circa 180 BCE.jpg|thumb|upright|{{center|[[Vāsudeva]]-Krishna, on a coin of [[Agathocles of Bactria]], {{circa}}{{nbsp}}180{{nbsp}}BCE.<ref name="US">{{cite book |last1=Singh |first1=Upinder |title=A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century |date=2008 |publisher=Pearson Education India |isbn=978-81-317-1120-0 |pages=436–438 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H3lUIIYxWkEC&pg=PA437 |language=en}}</ref><ref>[[Osmund Bopearachchi]], [https://www.academia.edu/25807197 Emergence of Viṣṇu and Śiva Images in India: Numismatic and Sculptural Evidence], 2016.</ref> This is "the earliest unambiguous image" of the deity.<ref name="BRILL">{{cite book |last1=Srinivasan |first1=Doris |title=Many Heads, Arms, and Eyes: Origin, Meaning, and Form of Multiplicity in Indian Art |date=1997 |publisher=Brill|isbn=978-90-04-10758-8 |page=215 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vZheP9dIX9wC&pg=PA215 |language=en}}</ref>}}]]
Around 180 BCE, the [[Indo-Greek]] king [[Agathocles of Bactria|Agathocles]] issued some coinage (discovered in [[Ai-Khanoum]], Afghanistan) bearing images of deities that are now interpreted as being related to [[Vaisnava]] imagery in India.<ref name="Bopearachchi"/><ref>Audouin, Rémy, and Paul Bernard, "[http://www.persee.fr/doc/numi_0484-8942_1974_num_6_16_1062 Trésor de monnaies indiennes et indo-grecques d'Aï Khanoum (Afghanistan). II. Les monnaies indo-grecques.]" Revue numismatique{{nbsp}}6, no.{{nbsp}}16 (1974), pp.{{nbsp}}6–41 (in French).</ref> The deities displayed on the coins appear to be [[Saṃkarṣaṇa]]-[[Balarama]] with attributes consisting of the [[Gada (mace)|gada]] mace and the [[plow]], and Vāsudeva-Krishna with attributes of the [[shankha]] (conch) and the [[Sudarshana Chakra|sudarshana chakra]] wheel.<ref name="Bopearachchi" /><ref>Nilakanth Purushottam Joshi, Iconography of Balarāma, Abhinav Publications, 1979, [https://books.google.com/books?id=5vd-lKzyFg0C&pg=PA22 p. 22]</ref> According to [[Bopearachchi]], the [[headdress]] of the deity is actually a misrepresentation of a shaft with a half-moon parasol on top ([[chattra]]).<ref name="Bopearachchi" />