361 
1873.] E. Thomas— The Initial Coinage of Bengal. — Bt. II. 
It might he supposed to he an open question as to whether Ghiyas-ud- 
din 'Iwaz or Nagir-ud-din Mahmud ,—the eldest son of Altamsh and his 
viceroy in Bengal—presided over the mints which put forth the coins classed 
under Eos. 10 and 11. As regards the latter, at present unique, piece, there 
can he little douht, from its assimilation to the ordinary Dihlf models, that 
it formed a portion of the revised and improved coinage of the south after 
Mahmud’s defeat of Ghiyas-ud-dfn in 621 A.n. In like manner, the 
introduction of the term on No. 10, as a prefix to the title of Sultan 
Altamsh, points to a feeling of filial reverence, which is altogether wanting 
even in Ghiyas-ud-din’s repentant manifesto in the legend of No. 9. 
Mahmud’s appointment to the government of Audh dates from a.h. 623,* 
and the tenor of one of the narratives of Minhaj i Siraj would imply that 
he proceeded southwards with hut little delay ; so that all coins hearing the 
date of 624, with the name of Altamsh, might preferentially he assigned to 
his interposition, more especially as Ghiyas-ud-din at, and prior to this, period 
had placed himself in a renewed attitude of insurrection. 
Coin of Nagir-ud-din Mahmud Shah, as Viceroy in Bengal. 
The administration of the Bengal mints under the official auspices of 
Nagir-ud-din Mahmud , as developed in the issues Nos. 10, 11, leads up to 
and confirms 1 with more full effect an identification I have hitherto been 
obliged to advocate in a less confident tone—that is, the attribution of the 
piece, figured in my £ Chronicles of the Pathan Kings,’ p. 81, to the eldest 
son of Altamsh, at some period towards the close of his brief career. With 
these newly-discovered evidences of his overt intervention in the local cur¬ 
rencies, the transition to a subuded and possibly paternally-sanctioned nu¬ 
mismatic proclamation, in his own name, would he easy, more especially if 
that advance was made simultaneously with the effusive reception at Dihli 
of the reigning Khalifah’s earliest recognition of Altamsh’s supremacy, 
coupled with the desirability of making this Imperial triumph manifest in 
those southern latitudes, where other dynastic names had already claimed a 
prior sanctification,f 
# Persian text, 180. 
f Minhaj i Sir?ij, after completing his account of Nngir-ud-dfn’s conquest of Ghiyas- 
ud-dfn ’Iwaz, and the transmission of the spoils to the Sultan at Dihlf, continues— 
xfi j 
cjfjl/c j( fj j o/AA 
g\ Ax) jfc # 1/ciJ _ A-**»b ^,.<1 CLsj AX'i' ^ 
M I I ♦* 
p. | A | * ch , *’ J **~**^B * * p-"* J 
(See also Elliot’s Historians, ii., pp. 326, 329.) The Khalifall’s emissary arrived at 
Dihlf on the 22nd of Rabf’-ul-Awwal, (3rd month of) a.h. 626, p. |VD and news of the 
death of Nacir-ud-dfn Mahmud reached the capital in the 5th month of the same year, 
p. 174. 
