; The singularly limited number of the coins of this prince, confined -if Calcutta selections be not at fault-to three examples amid the 13,500 accumulated specimens of the currencies of other kings of the land over which he temporarily held sway, sufficiently mark his status in the general list of the potentates of the century in which he lived. No date or place of mintage is preserved on his extant money, and the single additional item supplied by their aid is his personal or proper name, which appears on their surfaces as a crude outline which might suggest a doubt as to the conclusiveness of the transcription of, now confidently adopted as expressing an optional rendering of the grandfather's title of l‚† a name which was even further distorted from the Túrki original by the conversion of the medial r into the vernacular cerebral or 3 = ḍ. For the rest, the pieces themselves, under the mechanical test, in their make, the forms of their letters, and the tenor of their legends, evidently follow closely upon Shams-ud-din's mintages, and as clearly precede the money of the same locality, issued by Ghíás-ud-din Bahadur Shah who in 724 A. H. drove this, his own brother, Shahábud-din to take refuge with Ghíás-ud-dín Tughlak Sháh. Bahádur's career has yet to be told in connexion with his own coins; but to dispose of Shaháb-ud-dín,‡ as far as the exercise of his Mint prerogatives are concerned, he seems to have been lost to fame, from the * The name of this king does not appear in any of Rajendralál's lists. + The ancient name of of Bokhára notoriety in 350 a. H. (Fræhn Recensio Numorum Muhammadanorum, pp. 139, 593, 578), was subjected to strange mutations on Indian soil. My authority for the substitution of the final in place of the vowel is derived from Ibn Batutah, who uniformly writes the word with an 8 (iii. 231, 5, 293.) Ferishtah (text, p. 131) has whence Stewart's Bagora (p. 74). Dow gave the name as Kera, and Briggs as Kurra (i. pp. 265, 270, etc.). Those who delight in interesting coincidences might see, in this name of Shaháb-ud-dín, a most tempting opportunity for associating him with a really important record by the Indigènes themselves, inscribed on a stone slab in the fort of Chunár, setting forth their victory over a "Malik" Shaháb-ud-dín, quoted as acting under Muhammad bin Tughlak, in Samvat 1390 (A. H. 731); but I confess I do not myself encourage the identification. Chunár is certainly not out of the range of access from Bengal; but other men of mark may have filled this command, and the name of the fortress itself is never heard of in reference to the affairs of the kingdom of Lakhnauti, in those early days, though the main road of communication between the two capitals of the north and the south took its course through Budáun or Kanauj and Jaunpore. The inscription is otherwise well worthy of further examination, in as far as it concerns the history of imperial influence upon proximate localities; and as such I transcribe date when he was absorbed with an associate fugitive brother (Násirud-dín) under the ægis of the Emperor of Dehli. Shaháb-ud-din. Bughrah Sháh. No. 6. Silver. Size, vii. Weight, 168.5 grs. Two coins only, Col. Guthrie. Plate I., fig. 4. both the text and Dr. Mills' translation of the brief passages which may chance to illustrate the general subject. Verse 5: सहाब्दीनादिदुष्टात्मयवनेन्द्रमहम्मदा | àciâi fa(føàtsa)iâï âfcufq @q1fafa: || "By MUHAMMAD, lord of the hostile Yavanas SHAHAB-UD-DÍN and the rest, though an enemy, was SAIRÁJA, the treasure of benignity, employed as prime minister." Verse 11: संवत् १३८० भाद्रपदि ५ गुरौ सैराजदेवेनशर- "Samvat 1390, in the month of Bhadra, fifth day of the waning moon, on Thursday, was the kingdom set free from MALIK SHAHÁB-UD-DÍN, acting under the protecting favour of SAIRÁJA DEVA aforesaid." -See Journal As. Soc. Bengal, vol. v., 1836, p. 341). A subordinate but still more open inquiry also suggests itself in connexion with the mention of Shaháb-ud-dín in 734 A. H., as to whether, amid the strange confusion of names and titles, the "Kadr Khán," who is noticed by Ferishtah under the original designation of Malik Bídar Khilji, may not, perchance, have been the identical Shaháb-ud-din Bughrah, reinstated as simple governor in Lakhnauti, as his brother Bahadur was restored to power in Sonárgaon. I am aware that this is treacherous ground to venture upon; but such a supposition is not without other incidental support, especially in Ibn Batutah's passage (original, iii. 214, quoted at p 48), where Kadr Khán is spoken of as if he had been in effect the last scion of the family of Násir-ud-din Mahmud Bughrah. The original passages in Ferishtah are as follows (i. p. 237) :— و ملك بيدار خلجي را قدر خان خطاب کرده چون شاه ناصر الدین فوت شده بود اقطاع لكهنوتي باو داد ( درين وقت یکی از نوکران قدر خان که او را ملك فخر الدین گفتندی بعد از فوت بهرام خان در بنگاله بغي ورزيد و قدر خان را کشته خزاین لكهنوتي متصرف شد و ملك بندار خلجي قدر خان شد و اقطاع لكهنوتي يافت See also Briggs' Translation, i. pp. 412, 423. A difficulty necessarily suggests itself in regard to the tribe of Khilji, but the use of the name in its non-ethnic sense might readily be explained by the old subordination of the Bengal family to the Khilji dynasty of Firúz, or the specially Khilji serial succession of the earlier governors of Bengal. The single point in the biography of Bahadur Sháh, which remains at all obscure, is the date of his first attaining power. Ibn Batutah records with sufficient distinctness, that he conquered and set aside his regnant brother Shaháb-ud-din, sometime prior to Ghíás-ud-dín Tughlak's reassertion of the ancient suzerainty of Dehli over the lightly-held allegiance of Bengal, and his eventual carrying away captive the offending Bahadur, who was, however, soon to be released, and restored with added honours,* by Muhammad bin Tughlak, almost immediately on his own accession. Indian home-authors, who so rarely refer to the affairs of the Gangetic delta, give vague intimations of the first appointment of Bahádur to Eastern Bengal by 'Aláud-din Muhammad in A. H. 799,† assigning to him an inconceivable interval of placid repose until A. H. 717, when he is stated to have broken out into the turbulent self-assertion for which he was afterwards so celebrated. The two statements are certainly at variance, but Ibn Batutah's is the most readily reconcilable with probabilities, and the demands of the up to this time legible dates on the coins which Bahadur put into circulation in Bengal. I might have some doubt as to the conclusiveness of the reading of the date 710 on his money in the Kooch Bahár trouvaille, but I have none as to the clear expression of A.H. 711 and 712, though the singular break occurring between 712 (or 714) and 720 suggests a suspicion of an originally imperfect چون سلطان بهادر سنار گاهی را بملک اوده رخصت کرد انچه زر نقد در خونه بود بیکبار در انعام او داد .Tabakat-i-Akbari See also Zíá-i-Barni, printed edit. p. 461. die-rendering of the 10 for 20;* which would bring عشرين عشر = the corrected range of Bahádur's dates to 720-724; but even these figures leave something to be reconciled in reference to their associate place of mintage, for in 720-722, his father, Shams-ud dín Fírúz, was clearly in possession of the already commemorated "Lakhnauti;" but such an anomaly might be explained by the supposition that Bahadur, in the earlier days, used the name of Lakhnauti as a geographical expression for a portion of the dominions ordinarily administered from that capital. Undoubtedly the first appearance of the contrasted designation of the Eastern capital "Sonárgaon" occurs on a coin of his father; but even this sign of discrimination of urban issues would not be altogether opposed to a continuance by Bahadur of the loose usage of Camp Mints, of naming the metropolis as the general term for the division at large, or inconsistent with the subsidiary legitimate employment of the designation of the province on a coinage effected anywhere within its own boundaries,—either of which simple causes may have prevailed, and been utilized with a new motive, if any covert ulterior meaning might be designed, as implying that Bahadur himself had special successional or other claims to the metropolitan districts. Tughlak Shah's intervention in the affairs of Bengal seems to have originated in an appeal on the part of the ejected Shaháb-ud-din against the usurpation of his brother Bahádur. The result of the Imperial expedition to the South was the defeat, capture, and transport to Dehli of Bahádur Sháh; but among the first acts of the new Sultán, Muhammad bin Tughlak, was the release and re-installation of the offender, showing clearly that he was something more than an ordinary local governor, transferable at will, and that possibly the interests of the father and son, in their newly-established dynastic rank, and the confessed insubordination of the latter, were independently advocated by the opposing members of the royal line of Bengal, whose family tree could show so much more ancient a series of regal successions than their parvenu Suzerains, whose elevation dated scarce five years back. One of the most interesting illustrations Among more critical Arabic scholars than the Bengal Mint Masters ever affected to be, this point would have been easily determined by the insertion or omission of the conjunction, vau, which, as a rule, is required to couple the units and the twenties, but is not used with the units and tens. of the present series is contributed by coin No. 9, in the legends of which Bahadur acknowledges the supremacy of Muhammad bin Tughlak over Eastern Bengal during A.H. 628.* The subjection seems, however, to have been of brief duration, as sometime in or after the year A.H. 730 Bahádur appears to have reverted to an independent coinage, in a new capital called after his own title Ghiáspúr (coin No. 8), and in A.H. 733 Muhammad bin Tughlak is found issuing his own coin in Bengal, and Bahádur, defeated and put to death, contributed an example to insurgent governors in his own skin, which was stuffed and paraded through the provinces of the empire. IV. Bahadur Sháh. Lakhnautí, A. H. 710?, 711, 712, 7-3, 7-4,† break, 720, 721, 722. Weight, ordinarily, 166 grs.; one Silver. Size, vii. to viii. ضرب هذ الفضة بحضرت لكهنوتي سنة احد وسبعماية ,Margin * Ibn Batutah gives the following additional particulars of Bahádur's rein. stallation:-"Il [Muhammad bin Tughlak] lui fit de nombreux cadeaux en argent, chevaux, éléphants, et le renvoya dans son royaume. Il expédia avec lui le fils de son frère, Ibráhím Khán; il couvint avec Behâdour Boûrah qu'ils posséderaient le dit royaume par égales moitiés; que leurs noms figureraient ensemble sur les monnaies ; que la prière serait faite en leur nom commun, et que Ghiyâth eddîn enverrait son fils Mohammed dit Berbath (l), comme ôtage près du souverain de l'Inde. Ghiyâth eddîn partit, et observa toutes les promesses qu'il avait faites; seulement il n'envoya pas son fils, comme il avait été stipulé. Il prétendit que ce dernier s'y était refusé, et, dans son discours, il blessa les convenances. Le souverain de l'Inde fit marcher au secours du fils de son frère, Ibrâhîm Khân, des troupes dont le commandant était Doldjí altatiry() Elles combattirent Ghiyâth eddîn et le tuèrent ; elles le dépouillèrent de sa peau, qu'on rembourra de paille, et qu'on promena ensuite dans les provinces."-Vol. iii. p. 316. The dates 7-3, 7-4, may perchance be obliterated records of 723 and 724. I have placed them among the lower figures, but I have no sanction for retaining them in that position. |