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



coins it possesses to-day. Year by year for the past twenty 

 years it has continued steadily adding to its store, and re- 

 cently through the munificence of Mr. Henry Van den Bergh 

 it has acquired the Bleazby Cabinet with its numerous rare 

 and even unique specimens, so that not improbably the 

 National Collection is to-day, as it should be, the finest in 

 the world. But alas ! a full half of its treasures, and that 

 the choicer half, remains unreported, and hence unknown, to the 

 British public. It is much to be desired that the Museum 

 authorities, recognizing the lamentable situation, will take 

 early steps to issue a superb catalogue worthy of their superb 

 collection. But, so long as this incumbent duty remains 

 undischarged, they must be prepared to see their present 

 obsolescent catalogue, as it falls more and more out of date, 

 yielding more and more its once high place to such scholarly 

 volumes as Mr. Nelson Wright's or Mr. Whitehead's, contain- 

 ing as they do ample records of the more recent numismatic 

 discoveries. 



These two books distinctly take rank in the highest class, 

 and they stand, moreover, in intimate relation each to the 

 other. Mr. Whitehead indeed repeatedly makes express ac- 

 knowledgment of his indebtedness to Mr. Nelson Wright's 

 earlier labours in the same numismatic field, an indebtedness 

 which is, we fancy, shared by all collectors of the Mughal 

 coins of India. Mr. Wright's catalogue of these coins, as repre- 

 sented in the Indian Museum and in the Cabinet of the 

 Asiatic Society of Bengal, constituted, when six years ago 

 it issued from the Clarendon Press, a marked advance on the 

 best works till then available, and the lines that he at that 

 time laid down Mr. Whitehead has followed almost in their 

 entirety. Indeed so closely do the two books resemble each 

 other that they might almost be regarded as consecutive 

 volumes of some numismatic series projected by a common 

 editor. The interval, however, of six years that separates 

 their publication was a period that witnessed considerable 

 additions to our knowledge of the Mughal coins, and Mr. 

 Whitehead has been careful to turn this fresh material to 

 good account. For this reason his catalogue will, we anti- 

 cipate, be in more frequent request than Mr. Nelson Wright's, 

 yet one may truly say that the later work is but the natural 

 fruition of the earlier. Not that the two are absolutely 

 identical in their methods, for Mr. Whitehead has by no means 

 shrunk from introducing such changes as he has deemed desir- 

 able. The most notable of these is the new order in which 

 he has presented the mint-towns of the several reigns. The 

 names of the mints, written in Persian characters, and also 

 transliterated into English, are now arranged not in the English 

 but in the Persian alphabetical order. To English collector 

 this change may just at first prove somewhat inconvenient, 



