or, as is more probable, elaborated out of the elements of ancient was nomminally coined at 69.4 grains. It really issued from the mint at a maximum weight of 68 (a very few of the most finely preserved coins reaching this amount). Now taking Makrizi's statement that the mishkâl was 24 kirats, and that of the Ayin-i-Ak beri that the Greek mishkâl was 2 kirats less than this; we find the weight of the mishkâl=68+0=74.18 grains troy Again, Mak rizi mentions that Abdel-malek-ben-Merwah coined dinars and dirhams in the ratios of 214 kirats: 15 kirats. Now this Caliph's gold coins in the British Mu. seum (in a very fine state of preservation), weigh 66.5 grains, and his silver, also well preserved, 44.5. Taking the former as coined at 67, we have the ratio : Dinar Dirham 21: 15-67: 46.2, Which latter gives a probable weight for the dirham as originally coined. (In Makrizi's time the ratio was dinar: dirham= 10:7 21.75: 15.22; or supposing the gold coin unchanged at 67, the silver dirham would become 46.88). Then, as the ratio of the dinar (or gold mishkâl) to the mishkâl weight=214: 24, we have for the mishkâl weight a value of 73.93 grains. These two values, thus severally adduced from different data-viz., 74.18 and 73.93-sufficiently nearly accord to justify, I think, our striking the balance between them, and declaring of the ancient mishkâl-(" the Syrian or Indian mishkâl") to have been very nearly 74 grains. Hence the kirats would be 3.133 grains, troy. The modern carat varies from 3.15; the modern Indian carat to 3.28, the old French carat (made this probably to be an aliquot part of the old French ounce). The English carat 3.168; the Hamburgh=3.176, and the Portuguese 3.171. The above value of the mishkâl accords extremely well with my theory about the diamond. That the "Greek Dinar" of Makrizi was the Sassanian gold is not at all likely, although the silver dirham was, no doubt, originally derived from the Sassanian drachma. Of the few gold pieces of Sassanian coinage, the one in the Museum, of Ardashir I., weighs now 65.5, and could not have been coined at less than 66.5 grains-which would give a mishkâl of 72.04. But under the Sassanidæ, the gold coinage was quite exceptional, and was not large enough to have formed the basis of the monetary system of the Caliphs, which was professedly founded on Greek coins, current. As to the Bokháran mishkál of Báber's time, how are we to arrive at it? You-and if you can't, who can ?—are able to make little firm ground out of the weights of Sassanian, or Ghasnavid coins-nor will the coins of the Ayubite, Mamluke and Mamluke Bahrite Caliphs (of which I have weighed scores), give any much more reliable units on which to base the history of the progress of change in the mishkâl. The limits of its variation in modern times seem to have lain between 74.5 and 72 troy grains; I believe 74 as a near as possible its true original weight, the weight of the Syrian and of the Indian mishkâl. This would give the rati on the goldsmith's standard of 8 to the masha, and 49 to the mishkâl, as 1.85 grains, and the limits of this rati would be 1,862 and 1.80. The value of the jeweller's rati (6 to the mashi) would be for the 74 grain mishkâl 2.47 grains, and its limits would be 2,483 and 2.40. That Báber's and Humayun's now worn and dilapidated coins of 71 and 71.5 grains were mishkâls, is not improbable; but they certainly were not coined at less than 74 grains. Without entering into the Indian numismatical question, I may remind you of Tuglak's coin of 174 grains (one in the British Museum 172.25), probably coined at 175 or 176; a fair weight of issue for a coin nominally of some 177 or 178 grains. These coins, I believe, you consider to represent the tola. A tola of 177.6 would accord on the ratios of Báber's table with a mishkâl of 74 grains. I am strongly tempted to enter further into this question of the ponderary systems of India, but I am warned by your own able papers of the difficulties in the path of one who deals only in translations and in the weight of coins. 24th Nov., 1865. Indian Metrology-may be quoted in their surviving integrity of weight and design, as having furnished the prototypes of a long line of sequent Dehli mintages, and thus contributing the manifest introductory model of all Bengal coinages.* The artistic merits of the produce of the southern mints, though superior in the early copies to the crude introductory issues of Altamsh, seldom compete with the contemporary design or execution of the Dehli die-cutters, and soon merge into their own provincialisms, which are progressively exaggerated in the repetition, until, at last, what with the imperfection of the model, the progressive conventiona There three are varieties of Altamsh's silver coinage, all showing more or less the imperfection of the training of the Indian artists in the reproduction of the official alphabet of their conquerors. The designs of these pieces were clearly taken from the old Ghazní model of Muhammad bin Sám's Dirhams and Dínárs, and the indeterminate form of the device itself would seem to indicate that they mark the initial effort of the new Muhammadan silver currency which so soon fixed itself into one unvarying type, and retained its crude and unimproved lettering for upwards of a century, till Muhammad bin Tughlak inaugurated his reign by the issue of those choice specimens of the Moneyer's art which stand without compeers in the Dehli series. No. 1, Silver. Size, vii.; weight, 162.5. Supposed to have been struck on the receipt of the recognition of the Khalif of Baghdad in 626 A. H. Obverse: square area, with double lines, within a circle. لا اله الله محمد رسول الله Legend Reverse Square area, with double lines, within a circle. قی عهد الامام المستنصر امير المومنين,Legend No. 2, Silver. Size, viii; weight, 168.5. Date, 630 A. H. Mr. Bayley notices the occasional change of the name of the piece to the for المستنصر بامر الله as well as the ignorant substitution of السكة generic the Khalif's true title. J. A. S. B., 1862, p. 207. Col. Guthrie's coin (Type No. 2) discloses a similar error. في عهد الامام المستنصر امیر المومین Legend ضرب هذة الفضة Margin, No. 3, Silver. Size, viii.; weight, 163.5 gr. Obverse, as No. 2, but the square area is enclosed in a circle. Reverse: Square area enclosed within a circle, identical with the obverso design. 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) :" 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 doubt necessarily remained as to what was to be understood by the alternative black Tankah ( &íïï). 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 |