[N 



Ethnology of N.-E. India— II. 621 



my hands, and the resulting average of 6 per annum appears 

 sufficient to justify comment on the few instances of years of 

 which no coins have hitherto come to light. In addition to 

 these 750 coins (which, with half a dozen exceptions, are in 

 Bengali script, the language being Sanskrit) Mr. H. A. Grueber, 

 Keeper of Coins and Medals at the British Museum, kindly 

 placed at my disposal casts of the unique British Museum 

 collection of 28 Assamese coins in the Ahom language and script, 

 most of which belong to the predecessors of Rudra Simha. The 

 object of the present paper is to utilise these materials in check- 

 ing the statements of the Buranjis regarding Assamese historj^, 

 to supply any further information that may be derived from a 

 study of the coins, and incidentally to summarise our knowledge 

 of Assamese numismatics. 



Pre-Ahom Coins in Assam. 



Although we might expect from the intimate relations 

 between Harsha Siladitya and the vassal King of Kamrup in the 

 time of Hiuen Tsiang (645 A.D.) that coins modelled on those 

 of Harsha would be found in Assam, no such tokens have 

 hitherto come to light, and the only information from numis- 

 matic sources that has reached us for the long period until 

 Suklerimun initiated an Ahom coinage in 1543, is derived from 

 one or two finds of Musalman coins, the chief being that made 

 at Gauhati in 1880 (c/. Hoernle in Journ. Asiatic Soc. Bengal, 

 1881 , p. 53). As noted in the first paper of this series (Journ. 

 Asiatic Soc. Bengal, 1910, p. 150) the Gauhati find may be 

 regarded as a relic of the invasion of Kamrup by Tughril Khan, 

 the insurgent Governor of Bengal who styled himself Sultan 

 Mughisu-d-Din Yuzbak. The coins range in date from those 

 of Sultan Altamsh (614 A.H.) to those of Mughisu-d-Din Yuzbak 

 himself, minted at Lakhnauti in Ramazan. 653 A.H., and 

 the occurrence in the find of a coin of the previous insur- 

 gent Governor Ghiyasu-d-Dln 'Iwaz Ibnu-1-Husain dated the 

 2nd Jumada, 621 A.H., suggests that Tughril Khan's disas- 

 trous expedition into Kamrup may have been prompted by 

 his predecessor's excursion up the Brahmaputra in 624 A.H. 

 ( = 1226 AJX), when he is said Jo have advanced as far 

 Sadiya. Siikapha, the first Ahom King in the Assam 

 Valley, had crossed the Patkoi Range just two years before 

 "liyasu-d-Dln 'Iwaz's invasion, and Tughril Khan's expedi- 

 tion was exactly contemporary with the founding of Charaideo, 

 the first capital of the Ahom Kings. At some unknown date 

 prior to the invasion of the Ahoms, the old Hindu kingdom of 

 Kamrup had been overwhelmed by an invasion of a race of 

 Tibeto-Burmans, known as Bodos, who finally established a 

 capital on their western frontier at Kamatapar, not far from 



as 



