1867.] The Initial Coinage of Bengal 37 



own circulating media were only in process of crude development at 

 this period, and had scarcely risen superior to the purely Hindu cur- 

 rencies it had served the purpose of his predecessors to leave virtually 

 intact : his own strange Tiirki name,* and that of many of his suc- 

 cessors, continued to figure in the Ndgari letters of the subject races 

 on the surfaces of the mixed silver and copper coins of indigenous 

 origin, at times commemorative of imperfectly achieved conquests, 

 and the limited ascendancy implied in the retention of the joint names 

 of the conqueror and the momentarily subject monarch ;f while the 

 Sultan's own trial-pieces, in silver, were indeterminate in their design 

 and legends, as w r ell as utterly barbarous in their graphic execution. 



Had the coin under review followed the usual phraseology and 

 palaeography of the Imperial Nasir-ud-din Mahmiid's Mint legends, 

 it might have been imagined that an ancient and obsolete reverse 

 had been, by hazard, associated with a new obverse. But the obverse 

 inscription in the present instance differs from the latter Dehli no- 

 menclature in the addition of the word Shah after the name of Mah- 

 mud,l and contrasts as singularly in the forms of the letters, and the 



* This name I have, as a general rule, retained in the form accepted as the 

 conventional English orthography — Altamsh. The correct rendering of the 

 original is still an open question, but the more trustworthy authors reproduce the 

 designation as ,£.*ijJ| a transcription supported in a measure by the repetition 



of the third letter in the Kufic dies, and made authoritative, in as far as local 

 pronunciation is concerned, by the Hindi correlative version of ft*rf?ff?rfflf% 

 (Pathan Sultans, Coin No. 14). The inscription on the Kutb Minar, at Dehli, 

 has iji+sL) which accords with the Arabic numismatic rendering on the 

 reverses of the Hindi Coins now cited. 



See also Taj-ul-Maasir, Alitimish : Wasaf, Alitmish, and at times <£.*ljt 

 Badauni, Ailtitimish. 



Elliot's Historians of India, p. 111. 



f See coins of Chahir cleva. 



Obverse. Bull. Legend : ^[^T^tI ^t ^JWTT^rf^fa ' 



Reverse. Horseman. Legend : ^\ ^T^^" ^^' I 

 — Pathan Sultans, No. 15 ; Ariana Antiqua, pi. xix. 16. 31, 31 ; Prinsep's Essays, 

 i. 333, pi. xxvi. 31; Minhaj-ul-Siraj, pp. 215,240; Tod's Rajasthan, ii. 451 ; 

 and J. A. S. Bengal, 1865, p. 126. 



X So,inwrittenhistory, Nasir-ud-din Mahmud, the Emperor, is called byhis own 



special biographer, ^ikoJl ^j t }^+s: /0 ^J^hj Li^l^cO *h*+)\ ^tkL* 



(pp. 9, 177, 178, 201, etc ) which is in contrast to the nominal adjunct so constant 

 with his predecessors, Fimz Shah, Bahram Shah, Masaucl Shah. On one occasion 

 only does the additional Shah appear in a substituted list of Altamsh'a Court 

 (p. 178), where the text gives— 1. Sultan Nasir-ud-din * * 2. Sultan Nasir- 

 ud-din Mahmud ; and at the end, after the name of Rukn-ud-dm Firuz Shah, 

 comes " Nasir-ud-din Mahmud Shah." 



