1880.] C. J.'Rodgers— Corns supplementanj to Thomas'' Olironicles. 207 



Coins supplementary to Thomas' " Chronicles of the Patlidn Icings of 

 Delhi."— By CnAS. J. Rodgees. (With a Plate.) 



Steady research is always followed by constant results. These results 

 are as a rule insignificant discoveries which are individually small, but col- 

 lectively they all go to swell the sum of human knowledge. In my last 

 small supplement to Thomas' " Chronicles of the Pathan kings of Delhi" 

 I promised to give some additions which I had then in hand. But as I 

 went on with two other papers and my researches for them, I found that 

 incidentally my matter for the second supplement grew more interesting, 

 and at last I found to my surprise that I had more coins in hand than 

 would fill two plates ; so I began to draw at once and simultaneously to put 

 away for a third sujiplement all coins for which I could not now find a 

 place. Strange to say just as I had made up my mind about these plates 

 a find of about 500 coins of five Ghazni kings, all struck at Lahore, 

 came to hand, some quite new and unpublished, and after that a batch 

 of silver coins of Ala-uddin Khwarizmi of whose coins I gave three 

 new types in my first supplement and of whose I give one great 

 beauty in my present paper. These silver coins were struck at Qhazni 

 and Fariudn or as Thomas calls it ' Per wan.' He gives no drawings 

 of them and only alludes to them as giving us the mint of Perwan. These 

 Ghazni kings' and the Khwarizmi king's coins must stand over for the 

 present. I scarcely dare make a promise about them. About a year ago 

 I came across a find of Ghazni coins, in number about 500, and up till now 

 I have had no time to Avork at them and say what was in them, although 

 there were several novelties of histoi-ic value. As I personally go to the 

 bazars I see for myself what coiiaes into them. And when I see what 

 comes into them and what finds a lodgement ia our museums, I am 

 astonished and dumb-foundered to think that coins of whose existence we 

 are unaware are daily being brought in from the villages and fields and 

 ruins which abound here and there in the country and are simply handed 

 over to the smelting pot as common silver, — bullion in fact which is pur- 

 chased at a little less than its intrinsic value. And all this, while there is 

 in India no Imperial Cabinet of Coins and no one appointed to collect for 

 it and arrange it and make it a thing worthy of the historical associations, 

 India as an Empire and as a collection of ancient kingdoms and states, 

 possesses. India is a continent : but it is too poor to possess one Imperial 

 Cabinet of coins which would serve as a metallic record of past emperors 

 and rulers, past glories and shames, in fact, which would be a history of 

 the past in metal manuscripts. With the present rage for melting down 



