148 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [April, 1910. 



southern Jessore in these three months, as the crossing of the 

 Ganges is dangerous during the Rains. The Dacca inscription, 

 however, enables the origin of the name " Khalifatabad " to 

 be explained, i.e., it was given by Khan Jahan to his Sunder- 

 ban settlement in honour of the reigning Nasiru-d- Din Mahmud, 

 the king who had granted him a sanad to reclaim land, and 

 who alone amongst Bengal kings styled himself " Vicar of 



God," in this case ^Ul-^t aiuJbL or more simply *JJf ^^ 



as in his coin of which a figure is given by Blochmann on 

 page 295 of the Second of his Contributions to the Geography 

 and History of Bengal (J.A.S.B., 1874). Khalifatabad came 

 into prominence as a mint town in the time of the HusainI 

 kings, owing, it appears, to 'Ala'u-d-Din Husain Shah having 

 originally settled at 'Alaipur near Khulna to the north of 

 Haveli Khalifatabad (Blochmann, Contributions, I, 1873, p. 227, 

 note). His son Nasiru-d-Dln Nasrat Shah issued coins there in 

 the lifetime of his father, and the mint continued to issue 

 coins until the end of the HusainI dynasty with Ghiyasu-d-Din 

 Mahmud II in 945 A.H.* (1538 A.D. ; cf. Nelson Wright's 

 I.M.C., Bengal coins, Nos. 211, 212 and 225.) l 



A full account of all that is known about Khan Jahan, 

 the earliest Commissioner of the Sunderbans of whom we have 



any knowledge, will 



Westland 



Jessore, published by the Bengal Secretariat Press in 1871. 



B. — The Early Gold Coinage of the DihlI 



Emperors. 



According to the most recent authority (Mr. Nelson Wright, 



in his Indian Museum Catalogue of the Coins of the DihlI 

 Sultans, p. 7), the earliest ruler to introduce gold tankas of the 

 same pattern and weight as the silver tanka of 175 grains was 

 Nasiru-d-Dln Mahmud I (644—664 A.H:). A find of gold coins 

 which has been slowly passed during the last year into the 

 shops of Calcutta poddars enables us, however, to antedate this 

 coinage by at least one reign. Both the coins which will now 

 be described were purchased in Calcutta, the place of origin 

 being stated in the case of the first coin to be Tarkeswar, the 

 well-known shrine, a few miles west of Chandernagar. Little 

 reliance, however, can be placed on the statement. 



1 Cunningham (Report XV, p. 46) states that he had a coin of 

 Nasiru-d-Din Mahmud I in his possession minted at Hazrat lvhallffat]- 

 abad in 846 A.H. If his reading was correct it shows that Mahmud I 

 resided and minted coins in the Sunderbans as early as 1442 A.D., and 

 that Khalif atabad was probably the stronghold to which the descendants 

 of Ilyas Shah retreated after Raja Ganesh's usurpation and from which 

 Mahmud* s successful rebellion originated. 



