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94
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
I myself have, for long past, persistently held that the true term was to be found in Tahiriya, the name of a dynasty dominant above all others in Eastern Asia at the period of the .merchant's visit to India.1
This conclusion has gradually been strengthened by the discovery of the exact generic word in the unique Oxford MS. text of Ibn Khurdadbah, and in the more critical version of Mas'audi, lately published in Paris.
20
31
To these evidences I am now able to add the definite legend of a coin of Talhah bin Tahir, struck at Bust, on the Helmund, in A.H. 209 (A. D. 824).
TALHAH BIN TAHIR, A.H. 209.
No. 17. Copper: size, 5; weights, 30, 31, and 22.5 grains. Bust. A.H. 209 (.D. 824). Two specimens, Cunningham collection, British Museum. A third coin, recently acquired, by the B. M., contributes the legible name of the Mint.22
Obverse.
لا اله الا الله وحده لا شریک : Centre بسم الله ضرب هذ الفلس بیست سنة : Margin تسع وماتين
Reverse-Central device, a reduced Sasanian
head, to the right, with the usual flowing back-hair, and traces of the conventional wings above the cap; the border of the robe is bossed or beaded.
In front of the profile the name of Al Talhah is inserted.
مهمه رسول الله ما امر به الامير: Margin طلحة علي يدي عبدالله
This coin has further claims upon our attention in its testimony to the survival of old
[APRIL, 1882.
types and the continuity of the recognition of Sasanian devices in Seistân, extending, in its local influences, even to the confessed followers of Islam, up to so late a period as 209 years after the Hijerah of Muhammad.
Considered under this aspect of fixity of national designs, it may instruct us in the classification of some of the parallel devices previously noticed," about which our knowledge is at present indeterminate in the extreme. We know from the later developments of the IndoMuhammadan coinages issued by the immediate successors of Mahmûd of Ghazni," that the Eastern Turki Muslims were less strict in their denunciations of emblems and figures, than their presumedly more orthodox co-religionists of the West, and that in these cases the Northern invaders of India freely accepted the national types of the conquered kingdoms, which in this sense may furnish data for tracing back and discriminating the earlier examples of parallel assimilations.
19 The Arabic text of Y'akabf, edited by Juynboll (Lugd. Bat., 1861), gives the dates of this family as follows:Tahir bin Al Husain .......... A.H. 205 A.D. 820-1 Talbah bin Tahir A.D. 822-3 Abdallah bin Tahir Tahir bin 'Abdallah Muhammad bin Tahir Y'akub bin Lais See also Prinsep's Ess1ys, vol. II, U. T., p. 804; Hamsa Isfahani (Gottwaldt), pp. 177, 228, &c., &c.
A.H. 207 A.H. 215
A.D. 880
A.H. 230
A.H. 249 A.H. 259
A.D. 844-5 A.D. 862-8 A.D. 872-8
30 Journ. Asiatique, 1865, p. 289. M. B. de Meynard, I find, adhered to the Tatherides, in defiance of Professor Cowell's confirmatory testimony to Taheriya. Elliot's Historians, vol. I. p. 4. 1 Text, vol. I. p. 382. 22 Mr. S. L. Poole discovered the correct reading of this mint from a later coin of Lais bin 'Ali, A.H. 298, Num. Chron. vol. XIII. p. 169. See also the autotype facsimile of this class of coin in the British Museum Catalogue of Oriental Coins, vol. ii, Plate iv, page 72, and Prinsep's Essays, vol. II, p. 118. p. 91, 92 ante. Prinsep's Essays, vol. I, p. 333; Pathan Kings of Delhi, p. 58; Journ. R. As. Soc., vol. XVII. pp. 171, 177.
To return to the material estimates of the Sindi currencies, we are in a position to cite the consecutive testimony of Îshtakhri and Ibn Haukal, whose verbatim texts in their latest exhaustive form are reproduced in the footnote. These restored versions authorize us to infer that there were, among other impinging or still extant national methods of weighing and estimating metallic values inter se, certain market rates, or prices current, for international exchanges, which were quoted in fractions at that time, as our half-crowns still count, in defiance of decimals, in the London stock lists.
From these returns we gather that there were coins termed "Victorious" equivalent to five ordinary dirhams in the local exchange,
يات كل
ونفردهم القاهر بات نحو خمسة دراهم واهم درهم يقال له الطاطري في الدرهم وزن درهم والمين وتقودهم القندهاريان گل درهم- The Haal
as Ishtakhri,
Ibn Haukal.
25/2
منها خمسة درا هم ولهم درهم يقال له الطاطري
في الدرهم درهم رئس
The conversion of the Kaheriya into Kandahariya seems to have been a purely arbitrary correction, and one not justified by the tenor of the associate text.
Kandahar is not mentioned elsewhere in Ibn Haukal's geographical lists. The town at this period does not appear to have attained any degree of importance. See Goeje's text, p. 297. The name, however, occurs in Ibn Khord&dbab, IV, p. 278.
