1856.] 



Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 



457 



could command, and had sent the coin to the former Librarian of 

 the Society, Babu Eajendralal Mittra. From him he had received 

 the note which he would read. 



My deab Sir, — Tour coin is from Cooch Behar, and is an in- 

 teresting specimen of an obscure type. On the obverse it has Sri 

 sri Siva char ana Tcamala madhu karasya, " of the bee of the lotus feet of 

 the twice illustrious Siva ;" and on the reverse Sri sri man narand- 

 rdyana hhupdlasya sake 1477 ; " of the doubly blessed King Narana- 

 rayana, in the Saka year 1477" (i. e. 1555 of the Christian era.) The 

 language of the inscription is Sanskrit, and the character Bengali. 

 According to the genealogical tables consulted by Major (now Lieut.- 

 Col.) Jenkins, (Bengal Selections, No. 5,) Naranarayana was the 

 son and successor of Biswa Singh, the founder of the Cooch dynasty. 



The era of Naranarayana is nowhere given : at a rough guess 

 Lieut.-Col. Jenkins assumes Biswa Singh to have lived about 300 

 years ago. The coin enables us to settle this point definitively. # 



Two coins of this type have been figured by Marsden, but none 

 of the reign of Naranarayana ; nor is his reading of the dates of his 

 coins at all correct. He brings down Lakshminarayana the immediate 

 successor of Naranarayana to the year 1727, and yet it is well known 

 that no less than eight princes, some of very long and prosperous 

 reigns, succeeded him, before the country came in contact with the 

 British Government in 1772. 



Tours very truly, 



Eajendralal Mittra. 



* Buchanan Hamilton, in his History of Cooch Behar, (ante vol. vii. p. 16) 

 questions the accuracy of Biswa Singh's era, and adverts to several circumstances 

 which, he thinks, seem to be irreconcilable with facts recorded by Mohammedan 

 historians. The anachronism, however, if there be any, must be trifling as the era 

 of Naranarayana given by him (loc. cit.J accords completely with the date of the 

 coin under notice. 



The coin is figured below. — R. M. 



