1873.] 
209 
Contributions to the Geography and History of Bengal (Muhammadan 
Period). —Part I., Geographical. — Part II., Historical, based on 
Inscriptions received from General A. Cunningham, C. S. I., Dr. J. 
Wise, E. Y. Westmacott, Esq., W. L. Heeley, Esq., Walter 
M. Bourke, Esq., &c., and on unpublished coins , with notes by E. Y. 
Westmacott, Esq., and Dr. J. Wise. —By H. Blochmann, M. A., 
Calcutta JSIcidmsah. 
In the end of last year, General Cunningham, Director of the Archaeo¬ 
logical Survey of India, forwarded to the Asiatic Society, for publication in 
the Journal, a unique collection of rubbings of Muhammadan inscriptions 
from Bengal and various places up-country, and in the Proceedings of our 
Society for January last, I gave an account of the importance of these 
rubbings with reference to the history of Bengal. Dr. J. Wise of Dacca, 
Mr. Walter Bourke, Mr. E. Y. Westmacott, C. S., and Mr. W. L. Heeley, 
C. S., have also favoured the Society with valuable rubbings and notes on the 
localities where they were obtained, and I shall delay no longer to carry 
out the wishes of the donors and publish my readings with a few notes 
suggested by the subject. I have also examined our coin cabinet, which I 
found to contain some unpublished Bengal coins of great value. 
The importance of mural and medallic evidence for Bengal History 
arises from the paucity and meagreness of written sources. Whilst for the 
history of the Dihli Empire we possess general and special histories, often 
the work of contemporaneous writers, we have only secondary sources and 
incidental remarks for the early Muhammadan period of Bengal, i. e., from. 
A. D., 1203 to 1538. Nizamuddin Ahmad, who served Akbar as Bakhshl, 
the friend and protector of the historian Badaoni, is the first writer that 
gives in his Tabaqat i Akbari, which were completed in 1590, a short con¬ 
nected account of the independent kings of Bengal from 1338 to 1538. 
For the time between 1203 and 1338, we depend on incidental remarks 
made by Dihli writers, as Minliaj i Siraj, Baranl, and ’Aflf. Eirishtah, 
who flourished in the beginning of the 17th century, has a chapter on the 
same period as Nizam ; hut though he gives a little more, it seems that he 
used the same, at present unknown, source as the author of the Tabaqat i 
Akbari. But there can be no doubt that this source was a work defective in 
chronology and meagre in details. Eirishtah also cites a historical com¬ 
pilation by one Iiaji Muhammad of Qandahar, of which no copy is at pre¬ 
sent known to exist. 
The latest writer on Bengal History is Ghulam Husain of Zaidpur, 
poetically styled £ Salim,’ who composed his Biyazussaldtin, or £ the Gardens 
of Kings,’ at the request of Mr. George Udney oi Maldah. This work, the 
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