CONTENTS. Page Translation of an Inscription copied in the temple of Nakhon Vat, or the City of Monasteries, near the capital of ancient (Published 1st November, 1867.) Notes on Sirajuddauláh and the town of Murshidábád, taken Remarks on some ancient Hindu Ruins in the Garhwál ..... OF THE ASIATIC SOCIETY. PART I. HISTORY, LITERATURE, &c. No. I.-1867. The Initial Coinage of Bengal.-By EDWARD THOMAS, Esq. [Received December 5th, 1866. Reprinted from the Journal of the Royal Asia tic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. ii. p. I. N. S.] Towards the end of August, 1863, an unusually large hoard of coins, numbering in all no less than 13,500 pieces of silver, was found in the Protected State of Kooch Behár, in Northern Bengal, the contents of which were consigned, in the ordinary payment of revenue, to the Imperial Treasury in Calcutta. Advantage was wisely sought to be taken of the possible archæological interest of such a discovery, in selections directed to be made from the general bulk to enrich the medal cabinets of the local Mint and the Museum of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. The task of selection, and with it of inevitably final rejection, was entrusted to Bábu Rajendra Lál Mitra-an experienced scholar in many branches of Sanskrit literature, and who, in the absence of more practised Numismatists, courageously encountered the novel study and impromptu exposition of Semitic Palæography as practically developed in his own native land. six centuries ago. The Bábu, after having assiduously completed his selections for the Government, was considerate enough to devote himself to renewed and more critical examinations of this mass of coined metal, with a view to secure for Colonel C. S. Guthrie (late of the Bengal Engineers), any examples of importance that might have escaped his earlier investigations. The result has been that more than a thousand additional specimens have been rescued from the * J. A. S. Bengal, 1864, p. 480. * Presidency Mint crucibles, and now contribute the leading materials for the subjoined monograph. An autumnal fall of a river bank, not far removed from the traditional capital of Kunteswar Rája, a king of mark in provincial annals,* disclosed to modern eyes the hidden treasure of some credulous mortal who, in olden time, entrusted his wealth to the keeping of an alluvial soil, carefully stored and secured in brass vessels specially constructed for the purpose, but destined to contribute undesignedly to an alien inheritance, and a disentombment at a period much posterior to that contemplated by its depositor. This accumulation, so singular in its numerical amount, is not the less remarkable in the details of its component elements-whether as regards the, so to say, newness and sharpness of outline of the majority of the pieces themselves, the peculiarly local character of the whole collection, or its extremely limited range in point of time. It may be said to embrace compactly the records of ten kings, ten mint cities, and to represent 107 years of the annals of the country. The date of its inhumation may be fixed, almost with precision, towards the end of the eighth century A. H., or the fourteenth century A. D. A very limited proportion of the entire aggregation was contributed by external currencies, and the imperial metropolis of Dehli alone intervenes to disturb the purely indigenous issues, and that merely to the extent of less than 150 out of the 13,500 otherwise unmixed produce of Bengal Mints.t The exclusively home characteristics of the great majority of the collection are enlivened by the occasional intrusion of mementoes of *Col. J. C. Haughton, to whom we are mainly indebted for the knowledge of this trouvaille, has been so obliging as to furnish me with some interesting details of the site of discovery and illustrations of the neighbouring localities. Col. Haughton writes:-"The place where the coin was found is about three miles S. W. of Deenhatta, not far from the Temple of Kunteswaree (or KomitEswaree) on the banks of the river Dhurla. Near to this temple is a place called Gosain Morace, a short distance from which are the ruins of Kuntesur Raja's capital, called Kunteswaree-Pat, consisting of a mound of considerable extent, which has been surrounded with several ditches and walls, which are again protected at the distance of a mile or two by enormous mounds of nearly 100 feet high. The brass vessels, in which the treasure was deposited, were ordinary brass lotahs, to which the top or lip had not been fixed, but in lieu thereof the vessels were covered by canister tops, secured by an iron spike passing from side to side." I wish to explain the reservations I make in thus stating this total below that given in Rajendra Lál's list of 150 coins of seven Dehli kings (J. A. S. B., |