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



recorded on the coinage of the day, by the insertion of the prefix 

 of ciJ^aa. to the name of the selected residence, which term colloquial- 

 ly marked the presence of royalty within the limits of the favoured 

 fiscal, division. 



Sikandar's mint cities were five in number — No. 2, Firuzdbdd ; 3, 

 Sdtgaon ; and 4, Shahr Nau, in Western Bengal ; with 5, Sondrgaon ; 

 and 6, Muazamdbdd, in the Eastern division of the province. 



2. The first-named mint, in addition to the preferential Hazrat* 

 is styled variously Baldat and JL»jfjss^\ S^ij " fortified city," a speci- 

 fication which probably refers to the separate though closely proxi- 

 mate citadel of AJcddlah, so celebrated in the military annals of the 

 time (coin No. 26). 



3. Satgaon is distinguished by the prefix of &+°j* (Atrium) a term 

 which, in India, came to be conventionally used for a tract or geogra- 

 phical division of country,! a sense which would well accord with its 

 application to Satgaon, as the third circle of government of Bengal 

 proper.]; In the subsequent reign of Aazam the mint specification 

 is more directly brought into association with the town itself in the 



seemingly more definite localization involved in the word <u*a-»§ 



4. Shahr Nau, I suppose to have been the intitulation of the new 

 city founded near the site of the old Lakhnauti :|| it is variously 

 denominated as the simple 'Arsat or Xj£+*+J\ &»°jC (populous, richly 



* %j*as* " Prgesentia, Majestas ; urbs, in qua est regis sedes." 



t e>£°3 ***** in P ersian > means " surface of the earth." Sir Henry Elliot 

 remarks, " The words used before Akbar's time to represent tracts of country 

 larger than a Pergunnah were J^w f AJa^ } Aa^c 5 jUj> } o^j, and -Uai| 

 — Glossary of Indian Terms, sub voc " Circar." 



X Zia-i-Barni, in introducing his narrative of Tughlak Shah's expedition to 

 Bengal (a. h. 724), speaks of that province as consisting of the three divisions 

 " Lakhnauti, Sunargaon, and Satgaon" (p. 450, printed edit.). 



The Ayin-i-Akbari, in the xvi. cent. a. d. thus refers to Satgaon, " There are 

 two emporiums a mile distant from each other ; one called Satgaon, and the 

 other Hoogly with its dependencies ; both of which are in the possession of 

 the Europeans." — Gladwin, ii. p. 15. See also Rennell, p. 57. Stewart's 

 Bengal, pp. 186, 240, 243, 330. 



§ From t_^2J! " amputavit :" hence Ax*aJJ " oppidum, vel potior, pra?cipua 

 pars oppidorum." 



|| The decipherment of the name of this mint (as Col. Yule reminds me) 

 determines for mediasval geography the contested site of Nicolo Conti's 

 C&rnove. The Venetian traveller in the East in the early part of the fifteenth 





