848 
E. Thomas— The Initial Coinage of Bengal. — Pt. II. [No. 4, 
The central figure in the historical tableau, illustrated by these 
introductory coinages, stands prominently to the front in the person of 
Ghiyas-ud-din Twaz—an outline of whose career I now append. 
Ghiyas-nd-din ’Iwaz bin Al-Husain. 
Husam-ud-din Twaz Khilji , a native of Ghor in Afghanistan, on joining 
Muhammad Bakhtyar Khilji in Bengal, was entrusted by that commander 
with the charge of the district of GangautriA He was afterwards promoted 
to the important military division of Deokot,f by Qutb-ud-dm Aibak’s 
representative commissioner in the South-east, and with his aid eventually 
defeated Muhammad Sheran and the other confederated Khilji chiefs. J On 
Ibn Bat Utah’s indiscriminate use of the terms “ Dirliams and Dinars,” in their local 
application in Bengal, to suppose that his definition of coin exchanges referred to the 
relative values of gold and silver, and that it in so far supported my estimate of 1 : 8 
(J.R.A.S., II., p. 61, note 1). I now find that towards the close of Muhammad bin 
Tughluq’s reign, the exchange had come for the moment to be 1: 10 (Chronicles, p. 227), 
in lieu of the ordinary 1 : 8. The entire difficulty of the obscure passage in the Journal 
of the African Voyager has, however, been set at rest by the more comprehensive tables of 
values furnished by the Egyptian traveller Shaikh Mubarak Anhdti (Notices et Extraits, 
xiii., 51), which show that the dinar of silver (i. e. the tanlcah ) was equal to 8 dirhams 
( hasht-Jcdni ). See also Elliot’s Historians, iii., pp. 577, 582. 
J.R.A.S. (n.s.), II., p. 157. The new and unworn pieces in the Koch Bihar 
trouvaille averaged 166 grains; and the earlier issues, of 188, 189 grains, found with them, 
had generally been reduced in weight to correspond with the later official standard. 
# Variants - — Text, p. 158, and MSS. I have preserved Stewart’s 
• • ♦* 
version of the name in my text, but the site of Gangautri has not been identified. There 
is a town called Gurguri (24° 23'; 86° 55') on the line of country between Bihar and 
Nagor, but it is not known to have been a place of any mark. There is also a celebrated 
fort of high antiquity on the same line of communication, named Gfdor (24° 53 / ; 86° 55’), 
which may have served as an outpost of the Bihar head quarters. 
f Deokot (lat. 25° 18 '; long. 88° 31'), the chief place in Gangarampur (district of 
Dinajpur), is now known by the name of Damdama. Hamilton states that “ it received 
its present appellation from its having been a military station during the early Muham¬ 
madan Government” (p. 50). Muhammad Bakhtyar, after his first success against the 
King of Bengal at Nadiya (that 23° 25'; long. 88° 22'), contented himself with destroying 
that town, and withdrew his troops nearer to his base of communications, to a position 
about 90 miles to the northward, somewhere about the site of the future Lak’hnautf, Deokot 
again being some 50 miles N.N.E. 
Minhaj i Siraj, in describing Lak’hnautf, at a later date (641 A.n.), mentions that 
the province lay on both sides of the Ganges, but that the city of Lak’hnautf proper 
was situated on the western bank. The author adds, that an embankment or causeway 
((Jj) extended for a distance of ten days’ journey through the capital from Deokot 
to Nagor in Bfrbhum, (lat. 23° 56'; long. 87° 22'). —Stewart’s Bengal, p. 57. Persian 
text of Tabaqat-i Nagirf, pp. 161, 162, 243. Am-i-Akbari, ii. 14. Elliot’s Historians, 
ii., p. 318, iii. p. 112. Rennell’s Map, p. 55. Wilford, As. Bes. ix., p. 72. 
X The subjoined curious notice of the distribution of the boundaries of the kingdom of 
