458 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [December, 1914. 



coins 



Kings, before the time of Rudra Singha, was to issue 

 bearing only the date of accession. This is exemplified by all 

 the known coins of Chakradhvaja Singha, Udayaditya, Suhung, 

 and Gadadhara Singha It is true that the coins of Sukleng- 

 mung are dated a.d. 1543, four years after his accession, 

 but he was the first of the dynasty to issue coins, and his 

 coins were doubtless dated from the year in which the innova- 

 tion was introduced. A third difficulty occurs in the descrip- 

 tion of the King on the reverse of these coins as a worshipper 

 of Hari Hara or Hari Harendra (Vishnu and Siva) which, as 

 Mr. Stapleton points out, is "in marked contrast to the 

 legends on most of the subsequent Kings of Assam in which 

 veneration for Hara Gauri (Siva and Durga) is usually ex- 

 pressed.'' It is at least probable that the king who struck 

 these coins belonged to the Vaishnava sect, whereas Pratapa 

 Singha appears to have been a Saivite. 



The traditional attribution of these coins is therefore full 

 of difficulty, and should, I think, be abandoned. In that 

 case the coins would naturally be assigned to Jayadhvaja 

 Singha, who came to the throne, according to the Buranjis, 

 in_A 1 D. 1648, the date borne by the coins. The title Svarga 

 Narayana Deva is found in inscriptions on cannon, applied to 

 Chakradhvaja, Udayaditya, and Gadadhara (Mr. Gait's 

 Report page 29) , and the shorter expression Svarga Deva was 

 a common appellation of all the Ahom Kings. The coins 

 are therefore anonymous, like the full coins of the Jaintia 

 Kings, and the issuing king is described only by his title. 

 This attribution removes all the difficulties connected with 

 these coins. They bear, like the coins of the other earlier 

 Ahom kings, the date of the issuing king's accession : and the 

 veneration which is expressed on them for Vishnu is in accord 

 with the intimate connection of Jayadhvaja with the great 

 Vaisnavite Sattras of Auniati and Jakhalabandha. (Vide Mr. 

 Gait a History page 138). Why the coins should have been 

 issued anonymously, is a matter for conjecture. In the case 

 of the Jaintia coins, the omission of the king's name is ex- 

 plained by the tradition that, on the subjection of Jaintia by 

 bilarai, brother of the Koch King Nar Narayan, the stipula- 

 tion was made that the Jaintia Kings should refrain from 

 issuing coins in their own names. It is possible, though hardly 

 likely, that a similar stipulation was made by the Muham- 

 madans at the conclusion of peace with Pratapa Singha in 1638, 

 and was observed until after the departure of Mir Jumla's 

 expedition from Assam in 1663. These coins were, however, 

 so far as is known, the first coins issued by an Ahom King in 

 tbe Sanskrit language, and it is not unlikely that the form of 

 the inscription was borrowed from the Jaintia coins, the Ahom 

 title Svarga Narayana, Deva appearing in the place of the 



J ay a ntapu 



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