186T.] The Initial Coinage of Bengal. 37 



own circulating media were only in process of crude development at 

 this period, and had scarcely risen superior to the purely Hindu cur- 

 rencies it had served the purpose of his predecessors to leave virtually 

 intact : his own strange Turki name,* and that of many of his suc- 

 cessors, continued to figure in the Ndgari letters of the subject races 

 on the surfaces of the mixed silver and copper coins of indigenous 

 origin, at times commemorative of imperfectly achieved conquests, 

 and the limited ascendancy implied in the retention of the joint names 

 of the conqueror and the momentarily subject monarch ;f while the 

 Sultan's own trial-pieces, in silver, were indeterminate in their design 

 and legends, as well as utterly barbarous in their graphic execution. 



Had the coin under review followed the usual phraseology and 

 palaeography of the Imperial Nasir-ud-din Mahmud's Mint legends, 

 it might have been imagined that an ancient and obsolete reverse 

 had been, by hazard, associated with a new obverse. But the obverse 

 inscription in the present instance differs from the latter Dehli no- 

 menclature in the addition of the word Shdh after the name of 3Iah~ 

 mud,l and contrasts as singularly in the forms of the letters, and the 



* This name I Lave, as a general rule, retained in the form accepted as the 

 conventional English orthography — Altamsh. The correct rendering of the 

 original is still an open question, but the more trustworthy authors reproduce the 

 designation as ^ji.^.iiJl a transcription supported in a measure by the repetition. 



of the third letter in the Kufic dies, and made authoritative, in as far as local 

 pronunciation is concerned, by the Hindi correlative version of f^rfffffrfflffj 

 (Pathan Sultans, Coin No. 14). The inscription on the Kutb Minak, at Dehli, 

 has <Jm*,U.)[ which accords with the Arabic numismatic rendering on the 

 reverses of the Hindi Coins now cited. 



See also Taj-ul-Maasir, Alitimish : Wasaf, Alitmish, and at times /j*>.JIj| 

 Badauni, Ailtitimish. 



Elliot's Historians of India, p. 111. 



f See coins of Chahir deva. 



Obverse. Bull. Legend : ^7^! =ft ^WtfTT^f^fa I 



Reverse. Horseman. Legend : ^\ ^T^^F ^^ i 

 — Pathan Sultans, No. 15 ; Ariana Antiqua, pi. six. 16. 31, 34 ; Prinsep's Essays, 

 i. 333, pi. xxvi. 31; M inhaj-ul- Siraj, pp. 215,240; Tod's Eajasthan, ii. 451 ; 

 and J. A. S. Bengal, 1865, p. 126. 



X So,inwrittenhistory, Nasir-ud-din Mahmud, theEmperor, is called by his own 



special biographer, ^[Lm.J] ^i ^j+s:' j^joJi j Iaj<JsJj -.«=tj pja.x+f\ ^l-hL*, 



(pp. 9, 177, 178, 201, etc.) which is in contrast to the nominal adjunct so constant 

 with his predecessors, Piruz Shah, Bahrain Shah, Masaud Shah. On one occasion 

 only does the additional Shah appear in a substituted list of Altamsh' a Court 

 (p. 178), where the text gives— 1. Sultan Nasir-ud-din * * 2. Sultan Nasir- 

 ud-din Mahmud; and at the end, after the name of Rukn-ud-dm Piruz Shah, 

 comes " Nasir-ud-din Mahmud Shdh." 



