46 



The Initial Coinage of Bengal. 



[No. 1, 



The singularly limited number of the coins of this prince, confined 

 — if Calcutta selections be not at fault* — to three examples amid 

 the 13,500 accumulated specimens of the currencies of other kings 

 of the land over which he temporarily held sway, sufficiently mark 

 his status in the general list of the potentates of the century in which 

 he lived. No date or place of mintage is preserved on his extant 

 money, and the single additional item supplied by their aid is his 

 personal or proper name, which 'appears on their surfaces as ***-> ; 

 a crude outline which might suggest a doubt as to the conclusiveness 

 of the transcription of S^J, now confidently adopted as expressing an 

 optional rendering of the grandfather's title of iyti.|^*f,f a name 

 which was even further distorted from the Turki original by the 

 conversion of the medial j r into the vernacular cerebral ^ or 3 = d. 

 For the rest, the pieces themselves, under the mechanical test, in 

 their make, the forms of their letters, and the tenor of their legends, 

 evidently follow closely upon Shams-ud-din's mintages, and as clearly 

 precede the money of the same locality, issued by G-hias-ud-din 

 Bahadur Shah who in 724 a. ii. drove this, his own brother, Shahab- 

 ud-din to take refuge with Grhias-ud-din Tughlak Shah. Bahadur's 

 career has yet to be told in connexion with his own coins ; but to 

 dispose of Shahab-ucl-din,J as far as the exercise of his Mint prerog* 

 tives are concerned, he seems to have been lost to fame, from the 



* The name of this king does not appear in any of RajendralaTs lists. 



f The ancient name of C^ UL J^-Ui.1, f Bokhara notoriety in 350 A. h. 

 (Frashn Recensio Numorum Muhammadanorum, pp. 139, 593, 578), was sub- 

 jected to strange mutations on Indian soil. My authority for the substitution of 

 the final $ in place of the vowel | is derived from Ibn Batutah, who uniformly 

 writes the word with an g (hi. 231, 5, 293.) Ferishtah (text, p. 131) has \yu-, 

 whence Stewart's Bagora (p. 74). Dow gave the name as Kera, and Briggs as 

 Kurra (i. pp. 265, 270, etc.). 



% Those who delight in interesting coincidences might see, in this name of 

 Shahab-ud-dm, a most tempting opportunity for associating him with a really 

 important record by the Indigenes themselves, inscribed on a stone slab in the 

 fort of Chunar, setting forth their victory over a " Malik" Shahab-ud-din, 

 quoted as acting under Muhammad bin Tughlak, in Samvat 1390 (a. h. 734) ; 

 but I confess I do not myself encourage the identification. Chunar is certainly 

 not out of the range of access from Bengal ; but other men of mark may have 

 filled this command, and the name of the fortress itself is never heard of in 

 reference to the affairs of the kingdom of Lakhnauti, in those early days, though 

 the main road of communication between the two capitals of the north and the 

 south took its course through Budaun or Kanauj and Jaunpore. The inscription 

 is otherwise well worthy of further examination, in as far as it concerns the 

 history of imperial influence upon proximate localities j and as such I transcribe 



