1867.] The Initial Coinage of Bengal. 3 



imperial re-assertions, and numismatic contributions from other inde- 

 pendent sources aid in the casual illustration of the varying political 

 conditions of the province, and of the relations maintained from time 

 to time between the too-independent governors of a distant principali- 

 ty and their liege suzerains at Dehli, 



Muhammadan writers have incidentally preserved a record of the 

 fact, that on the first entry of their armies into Bengal, they found an 

 exclusive cowrie or shell currency, assisted possibly by bullion in the 

 larger payments-, but associated with no coined money of any descrip- 

 tion ;* a heritage of primitive barter, indeed, which survived undis- 



September, 1864, p. -481). In the first place, I greatly mistrust the reading of 

 the sixth king's title. Muhammad bin Tughlak was called Fukhrud-diti Junah 

 in his youth only ; on his first mission to the Dakhin in 721 a. h., the higher 

 title of Ulugh Khan was conferred upon him by his father, but from the date 

 of his accession to the throne of Hindustan, he contented himself with the use 

 of his simple name and patronymic ; no longer the " glory of the faith," he 

 was the far more humble uj+i^.)\ i>J;- f LJo i+iyh or the conventional 

 aJU| Joxw <_£* ^ALs-*^| (Zia-i-Barni., Calcutta edit., p. 196), both of which 

 were so persistently copied by the independent Bengal Saltans. Certainly no 

 such title as ^.oJl .^ 5 occurs on any of the specimens of the Kooch Bahdv 



collection, that the Babu has selected for Col. Guthrie, with the exception of 

 those bearing the names of Fakr-ud-din Muhdrah Shah. 



The second question of the altogether improbable intrusion of coins of 

 Muhammad Adil Shah (" new type ") I must meet in a more direct way, by 

 assigning the supposed examples of his money to the potentate from whose mints 

 they really came, that is, Ikhtidr-ud-din Giia/A Shah (No. 7, infra), giving a 

 difference in the age of the two kings, as far as their epochs affect the probable 

 •date of the concealment of this trouvaille, of more than two centuries (753 a.h. 

 against 960 a.h.).« The Babu has himself discovered his early error of making 

 Shams-ud-din Firiiz, one of the Dehli Pathans (as reported in the local news- 

 papers), and transferred him, in the printed proceedings in the Asiatic Society 

 of Bengal, to an anomalous position at the end of the Bengal Pathans (p. 4S3), 

 while omitting to deduct him from- the total number of " eight Dehli Pathans," 

 which reckoning has been, allowed to- stand at p.- 480^. In the matter of date, 

 we are not informed why this king should be assigned to a.d. 1491, instead of to 

 the true 1320 A.rv which history, claims for him. 



* Minhaj-ul-Seraj, who was resident in Lakhnauti in a.h. 641, writes 

 CUwl oljj JU^. (jcjJU 8^ ii% WljO <C <*■*&)£ jl. j&i cjUa. 

 Tabakat-i-Nasiri, p. 149, Calcutta printed edition (1864). Ibn Batutah gives 

 an account of the collection of the^ cowrie shells in. the Maldive Islands, from 

 whence they were exported to Bengal in exchange for rice ; the -gradational 



quantities and values are detailed as follows : 2sU*«=.10O cowries, ijls^r. 700' 



a The title of Mohammed bin Toghlak on, the specimens in the Society's 

 eabinet is &JJ| (J-vvw ^i cWs:* ■'l and the coin which was first taken for that 

 of Adil Shah has on iii'lkhtiar uddin Ghdzi Shah. — Ed.. 



