43 ancient coins discovered from pond near Balurghat

BALURGHAT: 43 ancient coins believed to belong to the Islamic period was discovered from a pond in Kushmandi by a group of villagers while decomposing jute on Tuesday afternoon.

The rare coins were stored in a copper pot underwater in Kushmandi's Parameswarpur village around 70 km from here. The villagers, according to an official source, instead of secretly splitting the hidden treasure of the rare coins among themselves, chose to hand them over to government officials. Two officials from Balurghat headquarter led by Tanjirul Hassan and Apurba Chandra Dey in association with police from local Kushmandi police station rushed there after being informed by the villagers and took the coins into custody.

"When we were being involved in decomposing the jute in the pond water we discovered the metallic items stored in a copper pot. On cleaning them, we realised that they could be something precious from the past. Later the officials told us that they were silver coins of the Islamic period," said a villager.

Experts say the coins dated between 1342 AD and 1389 AD of the Islamic period. Now the coins are being kept in safe custody at Dakshin Dinajpur State Museum in Balurghat. The supervising officer of the museum Abhik Kumar Das speaking exclusively to Millennium Post said: "We have already divided the coins into three separate groups and numbered them for identification. They were made in Firojabad Mint (now in Pandua) and Sonargaon Mint (now in Bangladesh). The coins date to the reigns of two Islamic rulers-Shamsaldin Ilyas Shah from the period 1342 AD to 1358 AD and Sikandar Bin Ilias Shah from the period 1357 AD to 1389 AD."

Das said Dr Sutapa Sinha, professor of Islamic History and Culture from Calcutta University has been given the responsibility to prepare a complete catalogue of coins stored at the Balurghat museum while Dr Sudipa Roy Banerjee, professor of Ancient Indian History and Culture from the same university is involved in preparing a separate catalogue of other artefacts preserved in the same museum.

"It is expected that the catalogues will be published by the end of March. It will help the researchers and common public a lot," Das said.