2 The Initial Coinage of Bengal. [No. 1, 



Presidency Mint crucibles, and now contribute the leading materials 

 for the subjoined monograph. 



An autumnal fall of a river bank, not far removed from the tradi- 

 tional capital of Kunteswar Bdja, a king of mark in provincial 

 annals,* disclosed to modern eyes the hidden treasure of some credu- 

 lous mortal who, in olden time, entrusted his wealth to the keeping of 

 an alluvial soil, carefully stored and secured in brass vessels specially 

 constructed for the purpose, but destined to contribute undesignedly 

 to an alien inheritance, and a disentombment at a period much pos- 

 terior to that contemplated by its depositor. This accumulation, so 

 singular in its numerical amount, is not the less remarkable in the 

 details of its component elements — whether as regards the, so to say, 

 newness and sharpness of outline of the majority of the pieces them- 

 selves, the peculiarly local character of the whole collection, or its 

 extremely limited range in point of time. It may be said to embrace 

 compactly the records of ten kings, ten mint cities, and to represent 

 107 years of the annals of the country. The date of its inhumation 

 may be fixed, almost with precision, towards .the end of the eighth 

 century a. h., or the fourteenth century a. d. A very limited pro- 

 portion of the entire aggregation was contributed by external curren- 

 cies, and the imperial metropolis of Dehli alone intervenes to disturb 

 the purely indigenous issues, and that merely to the extent of less 

 than 150 out of the 13,500 otherwise unmixed produce of Bengal 

 Mints.t 



The exclusively home characteristics of the great majority of the 

 collection are enlivened by the occasional intrusion of mementoes of 



* Col. J. C. Haughton, to whom we are mainly indebted for the knowledge of this 

 trouvaille, has been so obliging as to furnish me with some interesting details 

 of the site of discovery and illustrations of the neighbouring localities. 

 Col. Haughton writes : — " The place where the coin was found is about three 

 miles S. W. of Deenhatta, not far from the Temple of Kunteswaree (or Komit- 

 Eswaree) on the banks of the river Dhurla. Near to this temple is a place 

 called Gosain Moraee, a short distance from which are the ruins of Kuntesur 

 Raja's capital, called Kunteswaree-Pat, consisting of a mound of considerable 

 extent, which has been surrounded with several ditches and walls, which are 

 again protected at the distance of a mile or two by enormous mounds of nearly 

 100 feet high. The brass vessels, in which the treasure was deposited, were 

 ordinary brass lotahs, to which the top or lip had not been fixed, but in lieu 

 thereof the vessels were covered by canister tops, secured by an iron spike 

 passing from side to side." 



f I wish to explain the reservations I make in thus stating this total below 

 that given in Rajendra Lai's list of 150 coins of seven Dehli kings (J. A. S. B., 



