This is an important new book that answers a long-standing question in Indian numismatic history: where is the coinage of the great Puṣpabhūti king Harṣavardhana? The only known coinage of this illustrious king is a small silver issue modelled on Gupta/Maukhari prototypes.

Deyell did not set out to answer this question, but rather to study a series of base gold coins of a post-Kidarite style, showing a stylized king sacrificing at an altar on one side and a seated female deity on the other.Footnote ¹ Sir Alexander Cunningham attributed these coins in 1894 to a “Naga” or “Karkotaka” dynasty of Kashmir. This dynasty is mentioned in the great history of Kashmir, the Rājataraṅgiṇī, and some of the base gold coins in question name some of the kings, such as Durlabha and Pratāpa, who are mentioned in that text. Cunningham drew the seemingly natural conclusion that the coins belonged to the dynasty, and his attribution became the conventional wisdom about these coins. Some scholars, however, maintained uneasiness about this wisdom, as it appears that these coins are almost never found in the Kashmir valley. Further, they do not seem to belong to the same sequence as other known coins from Kashmir. Deyell decided that it was time to solve this puzzle.

The most significant part of Deyell's work was to identify the find spots of the coins. There are very few recorded hoards of these coins; most of the known examples have come to the coin market through chance discoveries or other unofficial channels, where the find spots are not made public. Deyell painstakingly recovered this information through extensive interviews with dealers in Pakistan and India and was able to construct maps showing where the coins are found. He discovered that only one hoard has ever been found in the Kashmir valley, and that hoard was discovered at a pilgrimage site where coins could easily have been carried from elsewhere. As for the rest, he discovered two important facts: (1) coins naming the king Pratāpa are not found with the others but only in hoards by themselves; all these hoards come from the Gangetic plain, and (2) hoards of all the other types, naming the kings Durlabha, Namvi, Vigraha, Vinaya and Yaśo, are generally found in the Punjab foothills and the adjoining plains of Punjab and Gandhāra.

What do these findings tell us? First, they solve the long-standing puzzle of why these supposedly “Kashmir” coins seem not to belong to the sequence of other known coins from that area. Second, they tell us that, although they bear a resemblance of design with the other coins (what Deyell calls the DNVVY coins, from the initials of the kings), the Pratāpa coins are actually not part of the same series. Rather, they constitute a separate sequence deriving their design from the same late Kidarite prototypes. Third, they indicate that the Punjab foothills and even the adjacent plains seemed to have come in and out of Kashmiri control during this period (c. 7^th-8^th centuries), apparently being ruled at times by Kashmiri kings and at times by kings who might be styled as post-Kidarites.

These discoveries alone would have made Deyell's book worth reading. But it is a fourth implication that is the most important one. Deyell naturally wonders who may have issued the Pratāpa coins. It would have to be a king or kings who held sway over a vast area of the Gangetic plain for some time during the 6^th to the 8^th centuries. Deyell identifies two plausible candidates: the branch of the Alchon Huns led by the kings Toramāṇa and Mihirakula, and the Puṣpabhūti (or Puṣyabhūti) kings Prabhākaravardhana and Harṣavardhana. Deyell argues that the Huns are unlikely candidates because there is no clear evidence that they ever penetrated as far east as Bihar where Pratāpa coins have been found. Besides, Toramāṇa and Mihirakula are really too early (late 5^th to early 6^th centuries) and we know that at least Toramāṇa (and probably Mihirakula as well) issued gold coins inspired by or imitating Gupta coins.Footnote ²

That leaves the Puṣpabhūti kings Prabhākaravardhana and Harṣavardhana as the only viable candidates for the Pratāpa coinage. We know that Prabhākaravardhana used the epithet Pratāpaśīla and issued silver coins with this epithet. Nine of these silver coins, along with hundreds of the same series issued by Harṣavardhana using the epithet Śīlāditya, were found along with some Pratāpa coins in a hoard found at Bhitaura in Faizabad district, UP. Might not have Prabhākaravardhana Pratāpaśīla issued coins naming himself Pratāpa? This seems plausible. Deyell then shows that the distribution of find spots of Pratāpa coins corresponds just about perfectly with the known extent of Harṣavardhana's empire (see his map 18.3). Attributing the Pratāpa coins to the Puṣpabhūti kings, therefore, seems like “the best scenario to explain the known facts. It also solves a tenacious and vexing problem: why did Harsha mint no coinage for his empire, beyond the local Maukhari silver? The answer is he did, but he chose to continue his father's prototype for some or all of his reign.” (p. 192). Harṣavardhana's missing coinage is thereby found!

Not content with presenting his highly persuasive argument, Deyell carefully studies all aspects of the coinage: style, iconography, paleography, metrology, minting techniques, and provenance, as well as the overall political and monetary situation of the time, to see if absolutely all of the evidence is consistent with his theory. It is. One natural question to ask that Deyell however did not address is: why did Prabhākaravardhana and Harṣavardhana not issue coins on the Gupta model in the areas where the Guptas had ruled? Would Kidarite style coinage familiar in their homeland of Thāneśwar, have been acceptable as currency in the areas further east in the Gangetic valley? This question may have been beyond the scope of Deyell's work, but the answer to it may perhaps shed some light on the short-lived nature of Harṣha's empire.

In 1990, Deyell published his book Living Without Silver,Footnote ³ which has become the definitive work on the monetary history of early medieval north India. In this new book, he has stretched back in time by a couple of centuries and has produced what is destined to become the definitive work on the coinage of that period.