India drachm 632-711 AD Last coins of the Hindus in Multan - VERY RARE type with a letter Pra on head, silver SRI Tapana type, Chach of Alor dynasty in

Stylized head right within a dotted border, Brahmi letter "Pra" on the forehead / Stylized Sassanian altar with the shaft replaced with three dots, stylized Brahmi letter "Sri" above, four characters "Ta-Pa/Ku-Ra" (probably should be read counterclockwise from "Sri", giving an inscription "Sri Tapana"). 13mm, 0.65 grams, Multan mint. Mitchiner ACW 4905-4909; Mitchiner NIS 269-276.These coins are fairly common, but ALWAYS appear in a very poor state of preservation. Because of this, these coins were misdescribed both times they appeared in publications - Mitchiner described them as "Guptas from north of Malwa" (and this is the most common attribution for these coins used). In a mongoraph published about these coins LC Gupta and SJ Mangalam attributed them to Sri Gupta, the first Gupta ruler. Both attributions are certainly wrong, since these coins are found in eastern Sindh, and not in Malwa. The misattributions took place because of the poor state of preservation of the available specimens - no coins with a full inscription were known until a small hoard of high quality coins (including this piece) was recently discovered. I am currently writing an article about these for the Journal of Oriental Numismatic Society, it should be published by the end of the summer.

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