60 TJte Initial Coinage of Bengal. [No. 1 



recorded on the coinage of the day, by the insertion of the prefix 

 of ci>j.^3^. to the name of the selected residence, which term colloquial- 

 ly marked the presence of royalty within the limits of the favoured 

 fiscal division. 



Sikandar's mint cities were five in number — No. 2, Firuzdbdd ; 3, 

 Satgaon ; and 4, Shahr Nau, in Western Bengal ; with 5, Sondrgaon ; 

 and 6, Muazamdbdd, in the Eastern division of the province. 



2. The first-named mint, in addition to the preferential Hazrat* 

 is styled variously Baldat and &M>jys* J \ is&h " fortified city," a speci- 

 fication which probably refers to the separate though closely proxi- 

 mate citadel of Ahddlah, so celebrated in the military annals of the 

 time (coin No. 26). 



3. Satgaon is distinguished by the prefix of ^y- (Atrium) a term 

 which, in India, came to be conventionally used for a tract or geogra- 

 phical division of country, f a sense which would well accord with its 

 application to Satgaon, as the third circle of government of Bengal 

 proper.J In the subsequent reign of Aazam the mint specification 

 is more directly brought into association with the town itself in the 



seemingly more definite localization involved in the word &■>•*£•' § 



4. Shahr Nau, I suppose to have been the intitulation of the new 

 city founded near the site of the old Lakhnauti :|| it is variously 

 denominated as the simple 'Arsat or %jy+*+)\ '^y> (populous, richly 



* SjAj^. " Prsesentia, Majestas ; urbs, in qua est regis secies." 



f i^Axij &&jfi in Persian, means " surface of the earth." Sir Henry Elliot 

 remarks, " The words used before Akbar's time to represent tracts of country 

 larger than a Pergunnah were £+>» } AJa^. } &^OjS> ,jIjo , <-^>J/j, an ^ c.UaJf 

 — Glossary of Indian Terms, sub voc " Circar." 



X Zia-i-Barni, in introducing his narrative of Tughlak Shah's expedition to 

 Bengal (a. h. 724), speaks of that province as consisting of the three divisions 

 "Lakhnauti, Sunargaon, and Satgaon" (p. 450, printed edit.). 



The Ayin-i-Akbari, in the xvi. cent. A. d. thus refers to Satgaon, " There are 

 two emporiums a mile distant from each other ; one called Satgaon, and the 

 other Hoogly with its dependencies ; both of which are in the possession of 

 the Europeans." — Gladwin, ii. p. 15. See also Eennell, p. 57. Stewart's 

 Bengal, pp. 186, 240, 243, 330. 



§ From i_»^a.,5 " amputavit :" hence &x&s " oppidum, vel potior, pra?cipua 

 pars oppidorum." 



|| The decipherment of the name of this mint (as Col. Yule reminds me) 

 determines for mediseval geography the contested site of Nicolo Conti's 

 Cernove. The Venetian traveller in the East in the early part of the fifteenth 



