1874.] Hon. E. C. Bayley— 0^ a Coin of Ghiyas ud-clin A'zam Shah. 159 



A more recent and more exactly corresponding example, however, is that 

 of Khan Bahadur Khan who held the executive authority in Kohilkhand for 

 about a year during the mutiny in 1857-58. He was not strong enough 

 himself to assume the regal position and style, and while the Mughuls and 

 the Mahrattas were both struggling, with fair chances of success, for the 

 supreme power, he feared to offend either by acknowledging the supremacy 

 of the other. He solved the difficulty, as Khizr Khan had done before him, 

 by striking coins of Shah 'Alam with the proper *' julus" year, as if Shah 

 'Alam had continued reigning down to that date. 



Probably similar motives were at work in Bengal when this coin was 

 struck. The feelings of their supporters would hardly have allowed the 

 reigning sovereigns, whoever they were, expressly to acknowledge the supre- 

 macy of Timur and his successors. On the other hand, the dread of the 

 Tartar invaders was evidently great, and the local sovereigns would hardly 

 dare to put forth their pretensions to regal state so prominentlv as was 

 involved by the striking of coins in their own names. 



How strong this feeling of dread was even in Bengal, and down to a 

 much later date^ is shown by very curious evidence. A successor of Jalal- 

 ud-din Muhammad having been hardly pressed by the ruling king of Jaunpur 

 applied for his interference to Shahrukh, the son of Timur, then reigning at 

 Hirat, who in reply sent a peremptory order to the king of Jaunpur to 

 desist from all interference with the affairs of Bengal. It is recorded that, 

 as a fact, this interference did subsequently cease, and the Bengal king in 

 gratitude sent an embassy with presents to Shahrakh, who again des- 

 patched a return embassy, a fact to which we owe one of the best books of 

 that period, the Matla' us-Sa'dain, which was written by Shahrukh's ambas- 

 sador as a record of the observations made, and information collected, by 

 him during his visit to India. 



It may be feared, therefore, that with the possible exception of the coins 

 of some obscure pretender, little information further than that we have al- 

 ready, is likely to be gathered from numismatic sources for the adjustment of 

 the confused period of history occurring between Ghiyas ud-din's death and 

 the accession of Jalal ud-din Muhammad. No coins of EajaKanis or Ganesh 

 have yet been found (unless indeed he himself assumed the title Bayazid 

 Shah, a supposition hardly consistent with the historical accounts of his 

 reign), and it seems improbable, since his reign was one of fair length and 

 prosperity, that, if these existed, some would not have come to light with 

 the coins of both earlier and later kings, which have been found in consider- 

 able numbers. 



It is, I think, a fair conjecture that Saif ud-din desisted from coining 

 on some threat from Timur (if the date on the coin quoted by Mr. Blochmann 

 is correct, he must have continued coining in his own name long after the 



