PREFACE. HAVING suggested to Messrs. Trübner & Co. the desirability of the issue of a new edition of "MARSDEN'S NUMISMATA ORIENTALIA" on an enlarged scale and on a basis. calculated to secure the co-operation of representative numismatists of all nations, I felt myself bound to draft the general plan of the work, and to invite my coadjutors to a consideration of a common method of transliterating Oriental words, and a possible compromise among ourselves towards that important end. I did not propose that my name should be prominently identified with the undertaking, desiring to leave the various sections of the publication to more able or younger men, and taking only so much share in it as to appear as one of the staff of contributors, answerable merely for my individual writings. As the prospects of the work have matured beyond all expectation, I have found it necessary to assume a more direct part in distributing the divisional subjects among the tried authors who have consented to join our ranks, and, in a subdued tone, in exacting conformity to a fixed method of treatment in the execution of the work at large. Several papers were already in an advanced state of preparation, and in one case the illustrations were even printed off, when the urgency of the Publishers induced me to come to the front with the article now submitted. It has the advantage of appropriately opening a Book on Coins, inasmuch as it begins at the very beginning of the art of coining, otherwise I should not have cared to reproduce an Essay, partly published some years ago, without a much more searching and complete reconstruction than time has permitted in the present instance. With this reservation, I have sought to make the article as comprehensive as possible in itself, and seeing that this edition may go forth into foreign lands, where access to the English and other works cited in its pages may be difficult, if not impossible, I have further endeavoured, under the saving shadow of the small Note-type, to substitute explanatory quotations for the bare references it is usual to supply. LONDON, August, 1874. E. T. |