Coins were issued from the Ranthambhor
mint by:
Coins were issued from the Ranthambhor
mint by:
[1] Discussion on SACG, following posting
of photos by Zubair Khan (2007), as follows:
Bhandare S
Wonderful coins, indeed and I
did recall seeing them while I was in Mumbai in February. The Anhirwala and Hardwar Dams are real beauties! I have my
reservations re: 'Ranthambhor' though - the mint-name on the coin certainly
shows an 'H' joined to a 'W' or 'U' and that may be the last portion
'...(b)HO(r)
Goron S
On one type of Sher Shah Suri rupees the name
Ranthambhor seems to be engraved in a truncated form, assuming it is meant to
be Ranthambhor. See type G&G D793. Maybe the mintname
on the Akbar copper is engraved in the same way. This form would need less
space on the die.
Bhandare S
I checked on D793. Must say,
you'd already know the points I am making below, but for the benefit of others
on the group, I will elaborate a little more.
The word 'Ranthambhor' has
two aspirated ('H'-added) consonents: 'Th' and 'Bh'. Both are preceded
by nasal sounds, 'N' and 'M' which can be inscribed interchangeably in Arabic
when they occur in this fashion (e.g. 'Mu-N-bai'
instead of 'Mu-M-bai') Similarly, the letter 'H' may
be inscribed in two forms - the 'do-chashmi' with two
loops and the ordinary (I forgot what this form is called!) that looks like a
sigmoid. So there are many combinations of letters to be employed while
inscribing 'Ranthambhor'
I think on D793 only the
first aspirated consonent, i.e. 'Th'
is written with a 'Do-chashmi' form of 'H' while on
D794, both the aspirated consonents are written using
the 'do-chashmi' form. So the mint-name on D793 is
not really truncated, but inscribed in a different manner. Agreed, the first
way will occupy less space but still I think the room on the 'Ranthambhor' Dam
is bit too short to accomodate the entire word,
particularly if we regard what is visible as '...bhor'.
More likely to fit is a shorter word - something like 'Jhusi'?
There is an instance where
'Ranthambhor' does occur inscribed in a truncated form - it is written 'Ranthor' on rare rupees of Aurangzeb. Here quite clearly
only one of the aspirated consonents is inscribed,
leaving the other out, and only one 'H' occurs in the inscription. It is
inscribed in non-'Dochashmi' fashion.
Zubair Khan
Thank you very much for your
comprehensive comments as usual. Glad you liked the coins. The
As you have described that
on one of the rupees of Aurangzeb, the mintname is
inscribed simply as Ranthor for Ranthambor,
similarly it seems quite likely that the inscription on the coin under
consideration should be the truncated form of the full name Ranthambor.
Of course, the points you have raised carry weight and I don't prefer to add
anything further. However, it is a fact that alphabet `be' was also used
unaspirated and unpreceded by alphabets `nun' or `mim'
in the inscriptions.
After closely scrutinizing
(D793-794, KM 300.75) rupees of Sher Shah and
Aurangzeb, we found it inscribed in different styles on each. So it appears
reasonable to consider it nothing but the abbreviation of Ranthambor.
Doesn't it ?
Kulkarni P
The Mint name read as Bhor or (rantham)Bhor looks like lakhnau to
me. If you can see that the lak is out of the
flan then the
Bhandare S
I am quite sceptical about
the instance of 'shortening' the mint-name Ranathambhor
as 'Ranthor' on Aurangzeb's coins. Prime facie, I
don't see how this can happen! As can be seen from the image kindly uploaded by
Sanjay, every other inscription on the coin is in good order, so why 'shorten'
the mint-name at all? As far as I can see, it is just another case of a
misreading that has been carried on for decades in numismatic literature (like
'Punch', 'Puna', Sikandarah'
etc - to give examples of other non-existent mints
for Aurangzeb!) What the mint-name actually reads may still be considered open
for debate...
Secondly, even if we
consider 'Ranthor' to be a shortened form of 'Ranathambhor'
Prashant's reading 'Lakhnau'
definitely worth considering but even for 'Lakhnau' the space available on the
coin seems a bit limited given the calligraphic style and spacing of
characters. The 'H' is engraved so large and the space where it appears (below
the 'Fulu' portion of the legend) is so limited that
anything that comes before the 'H' is more likely to be only a single letter.
Kulkarni P
Re your views on Ranthor and laukhnau: I feel that
the reading Ranthor is also incorrect. There is only
one letter before the he on Aurangzeb's rupee. So It could be read as either Ranhor or Rathor but everyone is
trying to read it as Ranthor so that one can
attribute it to Ranthambhore. We need to look for
another explanation of the legend.
Regarding Lakhnau, I dont agree with you that there is no room for two letters
before H on the copper coin of Zubair ( the Akbar's Dam). See the new picture
of a Lakhnau Dam in my photo Album. The letters La and kha
are always engraved so closely that they take the room of only one letter of
normal width- such as che or wao.
So the letters La kh can be accommodated in the
available space. The comparison of the two dams in the picture appended show
that the obverses are made from dies engraved slightly differently but the
reverses are struck from almost identical dies. Even the mint mark on the
reverse is the same. This should conclusively prove that the coins are of
lakhnau.
re: Aurangzeb's 'Ranthor' mint, your views and mine do not differ as you
will see from my last posting. As for Zubair's coin,
I see your point quite clearly, in fact substantiated from certain images which
Zubair sent me off the group. I hope he will post he requisite images to the
group but from what I see on his other 'Lakhnau' coins is two other ways in
which the mintname written, one of which foots the
bill which supports the contention that 'Ranth(ambh)
I would support the
attribution of the "Ranthambhor" copper coin to Lakhnau. In my own
former collection of Akbar coppers I had a coin of year 986 very similar to the
additional coin illustrated by Prashant. My coin had more of the mint epithet
and the word "falus" visible and less of
the place name but the reverse is practically identical as far as I can tell
from the rubbing that I have kept.
Anwar Faraz
Mr. Kulkarni has given his
coin image, ‘Lakhnau’ dam,the images of his coin are
very clear (obverse &reveres) and mint name we can read very easily,‘Lam+Kaf+Hay(