18G7.] The Initial Coinage of Bengal. 41 



independence by Nttsir-ud-din himself ; nor is it probable that, in such 

 a case, he would have changed both his title and his name. Besides, 

 the array of title on the coins in the triple succession of Sultans is 

 altogether inconsistent with his actual origin. Though he was the 

 son of one emperor of Dehli, and the father of another, he could 

 scarcely ignore the rise of the former from a state of slavery, or 

 conceal the fact that Balban himself never pretended to have been the 

 offspring of a king. The two alternatives remain, of either supposing 

 that Nasir-ud-din died before 691 a.h., a question discussed elsewhere, 

 or to conclude that his son Rukn-ud-dm Kai Kaiis temporarily as- 

 sumed kingship during the lifetime of his father,* and that his 

 limited reign and local obscurity saved his memory from the com- 

 ments of history. I fully endorse Rajendra Lai's suggestion that Kai 

 Kaiis would have been likely to be selected as a name for one of a 

 family who took so many of their designations from Persian heroic 

 ages, and the elaborate intitulation adopted by that prince, on his 

 coins, of the "son and grandson of a Sultan," favours such an identi- 

 fication.! It will be seen that, although the opening terms of his 

 obverse legends follow the conventional and unvarying mint phraseo- 



* The following is the genealogical tree, according to Ibn Batutah. See vol. 

 iii., pp. 174-5, 179, 210, 462 ; vol. iv., p. 212. 



I , . .1 



abiuf p jLr~^- ij* 



[ c^j^- 5 ' ? ] eM^u""*"'" i^*? &t*h y M 



f The name of the son of Kai Kobad, who was elevated to the throne of Dehli 

 on the death of his father, is variously given by Oriental writers as Shams-ud-din 

 &iyOjiS and^^j^r. Budauni and the Mirat-ul-Alm (MS.) give Kai Kaus 

 but the majority of authors prefer the Kaiomurs. Zia-i-Barni does not state the 

 name of the boy, but mentions a son of Altamsh, in the previous generation as 

 having been called Kaiomurs (printed ed. p. 126). 



6 



