1867.] The Initial Coinage of Bengal. 27 



tional lowering of standard weights, came to settle down to the 96 rati 

 tolah, remains to be proved by the determination of the decimals in 

 troy-grains, which ought to be assigned to the normal rati. 



I now proceed to notice the historical bearings of the coins of the 

 Bengal series. 



Any general revision of a special subject, coincident with the dis- 

 covery of an unusually large amount of new illustrative materials, owes 

 a first tribute to previous commentators — whose range of identifica- 

 tion may chance to have been circumscribed by more limited archceo- 

 logical data, the application of which may equally have been narrowed 

 by the inaccessibility of written history, heretofore confined, as in the 

 .present instance, to original Oriental MSS., or the partial transcripts 

 .and translations incidentally made known to the European world. 

 At the head of the list of modern contributors must be placed, in 

 point of time, M. Reinaud, who, so long ago as 1823, deciphered and 

 described several types of the Bengal Mintages, commencing with 

 those of Ilias Shah (No. viii. of this series).* Closely following 

 appeared Marsden's elaborate work, which, among other novelties, 

 displayed a well-sustained sequence of Bengal coins, with correspond- 

 ing engravings, still unequalled, though in point of antiquity pro- 

 ducing nothing earlier than the issues of the same Ilias Shah, who 

 had inaugurated the newly-asserted independence of the southern 

 monarchy, with such a wealth of coinages. f Next in order must be 

 cited a paper, in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, by Mr. 

 Laidlay, which added materially to the numismatic records of the 

 local sovereigns, though still remaining deficient in the development 

 of memorials of the more purely introductory history of the king- 

 dom4 I myself, in the course of the publication of the Imperial 

 Coins of the Pathan Sultans of Behli,§ had occasion to notice two 

 pieces of Bahadur Shah, one of which proved of considerable interest, 

 and likewise coins of both Shams-ud-din Firuz, and Mubarak Shah, 

 whose defective marginal legends, however, defeated any conclusive 

 assignment to their original producers. 



* Journal Asiatique 3 Paris, vol. iii., p. 272. 



f Numismata Orientalia, London, 1825, pp. 561-585, 



£ Vol. xv. (1846), p. 323. 



§ Wertheimer, London, 1847, pp. 37, 42, 82, and Supplement printed at Delhi 

 in 1851, p. 15. See also Numismatic Chronicle, vol. is., pp. 176, 181 ; vol. x.j 

 p. 153 ; and vol. xv. p. 124. 



