1920. ] Numismatic Supplement No. XXXIV. 231 
the runaway mistress of the Ottoman would thus be written 
ye, and her city would, of course, be 4) »~. 
I may also notice, without laying any undue stress upon 
them, two other facts, which are neither uninteresting nor 
irrelevant. 
The English translation of an old ‘ Account of Shahaji and 
his son, Shivaji,’ which was among the records preserved in the 
fort of Raigadh is printed in the first volume of [Sir] G. W. 
Forrest’s ‘Selections from the Letters, Despatches and other 
State Papers preserved in the Bombay Secretariat (Maratha 
Series).’ This document contains a curious passage which is 
not without bearing on the matter before us : 
&< S ; 
Nizamshahi government, of which, he, Shivaji, was the vazir” 
(Op. cit., I, 18). 
Now there would be no point in the phrase 4) >42 L “) xe 
coyS, ‘I made Sirat bisdrat’ (i.e. ugly, featureless, deformed), 
unless the name of the town was written with a c», and the 
fact that Shivaji or rather his Munshi permitted himself to 
indulge in this verbal conceit indicates that the spelling 4) ,< 
was looked upon as fairly consonant with orthographic usage. 
But this is not the only instance of the pun on Strat an 
words.” After describing at some length the fort of Surat 
and the siege operations of 980 A.H., iar 
‘The wretched disloyal Hamzaban and all the people in 
a sue 
made his plea for mercy through 
chief amirs reminded His Majesty eae 
1 Bishop Heber writes: ‘‘ Surat, or as the natives pronounce it, 
Soorut (beauty), is a very large and ugly city, with narrow winding 
streets.” Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, 
Ed. 1849, Vol. IT. 122. 
