1867.] The Initial Coinage of Bengal. 25 



U the 34.8 grain of the first of these be multiplied by 160, it will 

 give a return of 5568.0 grains, and accepting 

 this trial piece, conditionally, as Firuz's novel /5^\-f-*Kn) 

 half-Chital* it will be seen to furnish a general \J52p^is!^ 

 total of 11136 grains for the copper equivalent of \ Chital of Firdz. 

 the 175 grains of silver contained in the old Tankah, and confirms the 

 range of the Chital at 69.6 grains, or only .4 short of the full contents 

 tradition would assign it, as the unchanged halfkdrshd'pana of primitive 



c^-^i \at*£& *k"j)j& igy^ 0*** ^ j** ) ^MJl£^ jKi&* 



^aj AS" ^AOyi &\*>j* &»})j& ^UaL* *j^ JbjfcUJ oJIa. ^jI 



The original and unique MS., from which the above passage is extracted, is in 

 the possession of the Nawab Zia-ud-din of Loharii, in the Dehli territory. 



* I once supposed these two coins to be whole and half Chitals, instead of the 

 half and quarter pieces now adopted. 



f It may be as well to state distinctly that the most complete affirmation of 

 the numismatic existence of a Chital of a given weight and value, supported even 

 by all anterior written testimony, in no wise detracts from the subsequent and 

 independent use of the name for the purposes of account, a confusion which per- 

 chance may have arisen from the traditional permanency of the term itself, which 

 in either case might eventually have been used to represent higher or lower 

 values than that which originally belonged to it. Zia-i-Barni at one moment 

 seems to employ the term as a fractional fiftieth of the Tankah, while in other 

 parts of the same or similar documents he quotes a total of " sixty Chitals," 

 and in his statement of progressive advances of price, mentions the rise from 

 twenty Chitals to half a Tankah. Ferishtah following, with but vague know- 

 ledge, declares that fifty Chitals constituted the Tankah ; while Abtil Fazl, who 

 had real information on these matters as understood in his own day, asserts 

 that the dam was divided "in account" into twenty-five Chitals. (See Suppt. 

 Pathan Sultans, p. 31 ; N. C. xv. 156 ; Ferishtah, p. 299 ; Gladwin A. A., L, p. 

 36.) Then again there seems to have been some direct association between 

 Chitals and Kdnis, as General Cunningham has published a coin which he as 

 yet has only partially deciphered, bearing the word &Xk*- on the one side, and 

 tjty [i/^i] on the other. J. A. S. B., 1862, p. 425. 



" 4 



