344 E. Thomas— The Initial Coinage of Bengal. — JPt. II. [No.-. 4,. 
One of the most instructive facts disclosed by these few pieces is, that 
the rich and comparatively undisturbed territory of Bengal felt the want of 
a supply of silver money long before a similar demand arose in the harassed 
provinces of the North-West. The southern coins date, as far as can be seen, 
some nine years prior to Altamsh earliest effort at a silver coinage in his 
northern dominions ; and even liaziyah’s silver money of deferred date bears 
every token of exclusive manufacture in the subordinate Lak’lmauti mint. 
I have already quoted the testimony of Minhaj i Siraj, to the effect, 
that on the first conquest of Bengal by the Muslims, they found no metallic 
or other circulating media of exchange except that supplied by cowries 
even the compromise of the mixed silver and copper jitals of the various 
Hindu dynasties of the central ltajput tribes was unknown in the sea-board 
marts of the south. 
The chronicles of the proximate kingdom of Orisa, whose boundaries 
touched, if they did not often trench, upon the ancient kingdom of Gaur,f 
explain how so infinitesimal and largely distributed a currency was able 
to supply the wants of so rich and essentially commercial a population. It 
would appear, from the official records preserved in the Temple at Puri, 
that although there was no silver money in use, gold in convenient weights, 
if not in the form of absolute coin,]; was freely interchangeable with the 
more bulky heaps of cowries. In these same official palm-leaf documents 
we find the powerful king of Orisa, Anang Bhim Deo (a.d. 1174-1201), 
describing the geographical limits of his kingdom, specifying, with close 
exactitude, its now proved superficial area (39,407 square miles) ; and adding 
that, as the revenues of his predecessors of the Kesari line had amounted, 
with a more limited extent of territory, to 15,00,000 marJis of gold, so his 
own added boundaries had raised the State income to 35,00,000 marks. Mr. 
Stirling (our most trusted revenue authority), relying upon still-extant local 
* J.R.A.S. (n. S.) II., p. 148. See also Hamilton’s Hindustan, i., 40. 
f Mr. Stirling says, under the Ganga Vansa line, for a period of nearly four centuries; 
(from A.I). 1132), the boundaries of the raj of Orisa may be stated as follows : . . . . 
“ North, a line drawn from the Tribeni, or Triveni, Ghat above Hugli, through Bishnpur, 
to the frontier of Patkum : East, the river Hugli and the sea.” As. Res. xv. 164. Hunter 
i., 280. “ To the north of the mouth of the Saraswati lies the broad and high Tribeni 
Ghat, a magnificent flight of steps, said to have been built by Mukund Deo, the last 
Gajpati of Orisa.” Blochmann,. As. Soc. Bengal, 1870, p. 282. 
x On the above occasion, likewise, a new coin and seal were struck by the Raja’s 
orders, with the titles which are used to this day by the Khurdali Rajas, who claim to 
represent the majesty of this once powerful race. They run this : Vira Sri Gajapati , 
Gauresioara, etc. “ The illustrious Hero, the Gajpati (Lord of Elephants), sovereign of 
Gaura (Bengal), Supreme Monarch over the rulers of the tribes of Utkala, Karnata, and 
the nine forts,” etc. Stirling, As. Res. xv., p. 272. 
