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lism of the designers, and the ignorance and crude mechanical imitation of the engravers, their legends become mere semblances of intelligible writing, and, as the plates will show, like Persian shikastah, easy to read when one can divine what is intended, but for anything like precision in obscure and nearly obliterated margins, a very untrustworthy basis for the search after exact results.

The different mints each followed its own traditions, and the school of art stood generally at a higher level in the eastern section of the kingdom, especially when Sonárgaon was held by its own independent rulers. The lowest scale of die execution, exemplified in the present series, was reserved for the capital of the united provinces under the kingship of Sikandar (No. 23 infrâ). The numismatic innovations of Muhammad bin Tughlak, were felt and copied in the south, especially in the reproduction of the titular legends, but his own coins struck at the "city"-he would not call it capital-of Lakhnautí, evince the haste and carelessness of a temporary sojourn, and still worse, the hand of a local artist, all which short-comings may be forgiven to a monarch who in his own imperial metropolis had raised the standard of the beauties of Arabic writing, as applied to coin legends, to a position it had never before attained, and which later improved appliances have seldom succeeded in equalling.

The Bengal Sultáns, mere imitators at first, were original in their later developments of coin illumination, and the issues of the fully independent kings exhibit a commendable variety of patterns in the die devices, damaged and restricted, however, in the general effect by the pervading coarseness and imperfection of the forms of the letters. Then, again, the tenor of the inscriptions is usually of independent conception, especially in the refusal to adopt the ever recurring kalimah, and in the suggestive mutations of titles assigned to the lieutenants of the prophet on earth, whose names they did not care to learn. So also was their elaboration of the titular adjuncts of the four Imáms uninfluenced by northern formula; many of which conventionalisms survived for centuries, till Shír Sháh, in the chances of conquest, incorporated them into the coinage of Hindustán, during the exile of the temporarily vanquished Humáyún.

The standard of the Bengal coinage was necessarily, like the pieces themselves, a mere imitation of imperial mint quantities, and the

early issues will be seen to follow closely upon the proper amount in weight contemplated in the Dehli prototypes; but one of the curious results the Kooch Behár collective find determines is, that though the first kings on the list clearly put forth money of full measure, their pieces were, in most cases, subjected to a well understood Indian process of boring-out, or reduction to the exact weight to which we must suppose subsequent kings lowered the legal standard of their money, so that, although some of the silver pieces of Kai Káús and Firúz have escaped the debaser's eye, and preserve the completeness of their original issue denomination, the great majority of the older coins have been brought down to the subsequent local standard of 166 grains, at which figure, in troy grains, the bulk of the hoard ranges; or, in more marked terms, 166 grains is the precise weight of the majority of the very latest and best preserved specimens, which must have been consigned to their recent place of concealment when very fresh from mints but little removed from the residence of the accumulator of the treasure, and be held to represent coin which could scarcely have changed hands.

The intrinsic value of the money of these sovereigns follows next in the order of the enquiry. This department of fiscal administration might naturally have been expected to have been subject to but limited check or control, when regulated by the uncertain processes of Oriental metallurgy; but, in practice, it will be seen that some of the native Mint-masters were able to secure a very high standard of purity, and, what is more remarkable, to maintain a singularly uniform scale in the rate of alloy. In the case of the imperial coins subjected to assay in Calcutta, specimens spreading over, and in so far, representing a sequent eighty years of the issues of the northern metropolis, vary only to the extent of six grains in the thousand, or 0.6 per cent. As the Dehli coinage proves superior, in point of weight, to the southern standard, so also does it retain a higher degree of purity; the 990 and 996 of silver to the test total of 1,000 grains, sinks, in the earliest examples of the Bengal mintages, to 989, from which figures it experiences a temporary rise, in possibly exceptional cases, under Bahadur Shah, who may be supposed to have brought down, with his reinstituted honours and the coined treasure so lavishly bestowed upon him by Muhammad bin Tughlak, on his restoration to the government of

Sonárgaon, certain implied responsibilities for the equity and fulness of his currencies; while in the subsequent irregularly descending scale, Azam Shah's officials arrived at the most unblushing effort of debasement, in the reduction of silver to 962 grains. Among other unexpected items for which the aid of modern science may be credited, is the support which the intrinsic contents of the erroneously-classed coins of Adil Shah under native interpretation, lend to the correctness of the revised attribution of the pieces themselves suggested by the critical terms of their own legends, in the manifest identity of their assay touch with the associate coins of the lower empire of India.

Colonel Guthrie has furnished me with the following data, concerning the assay of the various coins composing the Kooch Bahár hoard:-"When the Bengal Asiatic Society made their selection of coins from the trove, they set apart four of each description for the Mint, two being for special assay, two for the Mint collection. The result of the assay was as follows (1,000 represents absolute purity) :"

DEHLI COINS.

1. Balban (A. H. 664) ... 990 and 996 2. Kai Kobád (A.H. 685) 990 and 996 3. Ghiás-ud-din Tughlak (A. H. 720) 990.

4. Adil Shah [i. e. Ghází Sháh of Bengal, A.H. 751] 989.

BENGAL COINS.

1. Shams-ud-din Firuz.......... 989
2. Bahadur Shah
988 and 993
3. Mubárak Shah
987

4. Iliás Sháh (1st type) 989; (2nd)
982; (3rd) 988.

5. Sikandar Shah (return lost).
6. Azam Shah (1st type) 981; (2nd)
989; (3rd) 962; (4th) 977;
(5th) 985.

A question that has frequently puzzled both Oriental and European commentators on the history of India, has been the intrinsic value of the current coin at the various epochs referred to, so that the most exact numerical specifications conveyed but a vague notion of the sterling sum contemplated in the recital by any given author. Numismatists have been for long past in a position to assert that the Dehli Tankah contained absolutely 173 grains, which would presuppose a theoretical issue weight of 174 or 175 grains, and a touch of nearly pure silver; but assuming this specific coin to have been a white or real "Tankah of Silver" (a) a doubt necessarily remained as to what was to be understood by the alternative black Tankah (la &íï). Nizám-ud-din Ahmad, in his Tabakát-i-Akbari, seems to assign the introduction of these black Tankahs to Muhammad bin Tughlak, who notoriously depreciated the currency to a large extent, before he re

sorted to the extreme measure of a forced currency, though it may be doubted whether any such depreciation would have been thought of, even if there had been time to effect the conversion, at the very commencement of his reign, to which period Nizám-ud-din attributes the issue of these pieces, in the apparent desire of explaining the bare possibility of the possession of such numerical amounts as are stated to have been squandered in largesses by the newly-enthroned monarch. However, the real debasement of the coin need not have extended much beyond the point indicated by the superficial aspect of his own Bengal mintages, and Azam Shah's coins of the same locality probably exceed that accusatory measure of debasement; while, on the other hand, Muhammad bin Tughlak, on reverting to specie currencies, after his futile trial of copper tokens, seems to have aimed at a restoration of the ancient purity of metal in his metropolitan issues, as I can quote a coin of his produced by the Dehli Mint in A. H. 734, which has every outward appearance of the component elements of unalloyed silver, and equally retains the fair average weight of 168 grains.* All these evidences would seem to imply that the Bengal ratio of purity was intentionally lower, and that a very slight addition to the recognised alloy would bring the local issues fairly within the category of black Tankahs. Such a supposition of the inferiority of the coinages of the southern kingdom appears to be curiously illustrated by Báber's mentioning that, in A. H. 932, a portion of the revenues of the district of Tirhút, a sort of border-land of his kingdom, which did not extend over Bengal, was payable in Tankah Nukrah, and the larger remainder in Tankah Síáh,† an exceptional association of cur.

This coin is similar, but not identical in its legends with the gold piece, No, 84, of 736 A. H., p. 50 Pathán Sultáns. The following are the inscriptions:

و الله الغني و انتم الفقرا Obverse

في عهد محمد بن تغلق Reverse

بدار الاسلام سنة اربع وثلثين وسبعماية -Margin

+ Báber has left an interesting account of the revenues of his newly-acquired kingdom in India, as estimated after the battle of Panipat, in A. H. 932, to the effect that "the countries from Bhíra to Bahár which are now under my domi" of Tankahs. In the detail of the returns nion yield a revenue of 52 krores from different provinces, Tirhút is noticed as Tribute (Khidmatána) of the William Tirbúti Rajah 250,000 tankah núkrah, and 2,750,000 tankah siah. Erskine, History of India under Báber and Humáyun, London, 1854, vol. i., p. 540. See also Leyden's Memoirs of Báber, London, 1826, p. 334.

rencies in a given locality, which can scarcely be explained in a more simple and reasonable manner than by assuming the lower description of the conventional estimate piece to have been concurrent with a better description of the same coin, constituting the prevailing and authorized revenue standard of the northern portions of the conquering Moghul's Indian dominions.

Another important element of all currency questions is the relative rate of exchange of the precious metals inter se. And this is a divi. sion of the enquiry of peculiar significance at the present moment, when Her Majesty's Government are under pressure by the European interest to introduce gold as a legal tender at a fixed and permanent rate, or, in effect, to supersede the existing silver standard, the single and incontestable measure of value, in which all modern obligations have been contracted, and a metal, whose present market price is, in all human probability, less liable to be affected by over production than that of gold: the bullion value of which latter had already begun to decline in the Bazárs of India, simultaneously with the arrival of the first fruits of Australian mining.

If the contemplated authoritative revolution in the established currency had to be applied to a fully civilized people, there might be less objection to this premature experiment; but to disturb the dealings of an empire, peopled by races of extreme fixity of ideas, to give advantages to the crafty few, to the detriment of the mass of the unlettered population, is scarcely justified by the exigencies of British trade, and India's well-wishers may fairly advance a mild protest against hasty legislation, and claim for a subject and but little understood Nationality, some consideration before the ruling power forces on their unprepared minds the advanced commercial tenets of the cities of London and Liverpool.

The ordinary rate of exchange of silver against gold in Marco Polo's time (1271-91 A. D.),* may be inferred to have been eight to one;

*The Province of KARAIAN. "For money they employ the white porcelain shell found in the sea, and these they also wear as ornaments about their necks. Eighty of the shells are equal in value to a saggio of silver, or two Venetian groats, and eight saggi of good silver to one of pure gold." Chap. xxxix.

The Province of KARAZAN. "Gold is found in the rivers, both in small particles and in lumps; and there are also veins of it in the mountains. In consequence of the large quantity obtained, they give a saggio of gold for six saggi of silver. They likewise use the before-mentioned porcelain shells in currency, which, however, are not found in this part of the world, but are

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