1867.] The Initial Coinage of Bengal. 5 



Considering the then existing time-honoured system of valuations by 

 shells, — which would certainly not invite a hasty issue of coin, — 

 Muhammad Bakhtiar's acknowledged subordination to Kutb-ud-din, 

 who, so far as can be seen, uttered no money in his own name, it may 

 fairly be inferred that if a single piece was produced, it formed a 

 part only of an occasional, or special, Medallic mintage constituting a 

 sort of numismatic Fatah-namah, or assertion and declaration of 

 conquest and supremacy alone, and designedly avoiding any needless 

 interference with the fixed trade by adventitious monetary complica- 

 tions, which so unprogressive a race as the Hindus would naturally 

 be slow to appreciate. 



Similar motives may be taken to have prevailed in the north, where 

 the least possible change was made in the established currency of the 

 country, extending, indeed, to a mere substitution of names in the 

 vernacvdar character on the coin, which was allowed to retain the 

 typical " Bull and Horseman" device of Pritlivi Raja and his prede- 

 cessors. The pieces themselves, designated from their place of mint- 

 age Dehli-ivalas* were composed of a mixture of silver and copper in 

 intentionally graduated proportions, but of the one fixed weight of 

 thirty-two ratis, or the measure of the old Purdna of silver of Manu's 

 day. Progressive modifications were effected in the types and legends 

 of these coins, but no systematic reconstruction of the circulating 

 media took place until the reign of Altamsh ; who, however, left the 

 existing currencies undisturbed, as the basis for the introduction of the 

 larger and more valuable and exclusively silver *~&sd popularly known 

 in after times as the Tankahft a standard which may also be supposed 



* The name is written (J| ^J& in Kutb-ud-din Aibek's inscription on 

 the mosque at Dehli. (Prinsep's Essays, i. 327). The Taj-ul-Maasir and 

 other native authorities give the word as (J*JjLt>^. Hasan Nizami, the author 

 of the former work, mentions that Kubachah, ruler of Sind, sent his son with an 

 offering of 100 laks of Dehli-wals to Altamsh, and no less than 500 laks of the 

 same description of coin were eventually found iu Kubachah' s treasury, many of 

 which were probably struck in his own mints. (See Ariana Antiqua, pi. XX., 

 fig. 19 ; J. A. S. B., iv. ; pi. 37, figs. 28,29, 47 j and Prinsep's Essays, i., pi. xxvi., 

 figs. 28, 29, 47.) 



f Erskine derives this name from the Chagatai Turki word, tang, " white." 

 (History of India under Baber. London, 1854, vol. i. p. 546). Vullers gives a 



tenuis, suff. jQ. Ibn Batutah carefully preserves the orthography as dJS'i 



f , 

 different and clearly preferable derivation in <XJaj (fort. ex. ^JJ3 s. u&3 

 s. ^cff and ^. 



