Different groups of Indian Coins. 83 



man, bears the Gaur Ndgari of the 10th century ; on this several 

 names have been made out, Bhi'madeva, &c.; and on some, the Persian 

 titles of the first Musalman conquerors are impressed. 



A fourth series, with a sitting female figure, is in the modern Nagari, 

 and is probably the latest of the Kanouj coins. The early Muhamme- 

 dan coins of Sabaktegin, Mahmud, &c. frequently have a partial ad- 

 mixture of Nagari, which will aid in locating the rest ; for while this 

 provoking dearth exists with regard to Hindu coins, we find coins 

 with legible names and Hejri dates for the whole line of their Muham- 

 medan conquerors, whose history is amply preserved without their aid. 



One confirmation of a historical fact from numismatic aid has been 

 remarked in the discovery of the name of Vdsu Deva or Bas-Deo, on a 

 Sassanian coin. Ferishta states, that Bas-deo, of Kanouj, gave his 

 daughter in marriage to Bahram of Persia, A. D. 330 : — the coin marks 

 exactly such an alliance ; but the Hindu chronicles admit no such name 

 until, much later, one occurs in the Malwa catalogue of Abul Fazl. 



In the dynasties of Nepal and Assam, (at least from the middle of 

 the seventeenth century,) we have been wholly guided by coins in our 

 possession ; and it might be possible, by persevering search, to obtain 

 from the same source the names of many Rajas antecedent to this 

 period, which are now doubtful or wholly unknown. 



From the time of the subversion of the Moghul empire in the middle 

 of the last century, the historical train of their coins ceases to be avail- 

 able ; all the native states having, in imitation of the English, struck 

 their money in the name of a nominal sovereign of Delhi, with no regard 

 to dates, or even to the existence of the monarch; and up to the present 

 time, we have had the names of Muhammed Shah, Alemgir II., and 

 Shah Alem, issuing simultaneously from the native and the Company's 

 Mint, while a second Akber sways the pageant sceptre of the seven 

 climes ! (See first part of Appendix.) 



It must be confessed that a large field still remains open, for the 

 re-investigation of the middle ages of Hindu history, in judicious 

 hands ; for independently of the new materials now before us in the 

 numerous coins lately discovered, and in many new inscriptions, we 

 have the aid of the foreign histories of Ceylon, Ava, Tibet and 

 China ; we have access to the native volumes before only consulted 

 through interested pandits ; and we have Col. Tod's ample traditions 

 and real archives of the principal portion of the Indian continent, 

 the seat of all its important history. To say nothing of the minute 

 and circumstantial numismatic histories of Greece and Rome, it is 

 principally to coins that we owe the history of the Arsacidoe of Persia, 



