![]() Scholars also suggest that shortly before AD 1218, an indigenous coinage was started in Malwa. This continued in a long series, with possible termination dates in the successive conquests of the Paramara kingdom by the Khalji Sultans of Delhi in AD 1291 and 1302. The very earliest of the Malwa coins have obverse stylised head designs very similar to the range of Somala Devi coins. The obverse of the earliest coin of Malwa Plateau retained the ear ornament of the Chaulukyan gadhaiya prototypes. The Malwa issue was further characterised by a 'fish-hook' to the right-of the face, which the Gujarat coins lacked. This became the main distinguishing feature of the entire Malwa billon coin series. The weight standard was increased by 10 per cent, and the fire altar reverse replaced by a battle scene, in which a horseman waving a sword tramples an unresisting figure below and attacks a standing figure to the right. ![]() The only coins attributable to the Malwa Plateau are very rare. Lakshmi base gold coins, and derivative smaller Lakshmi-type silver coins, equally rare. A standard format Lakshmi gold coin, normally 4.05 g weight, was struck in the name of Udaya Deva, who is equated with the Paramara Udayaditya, around AD 1070-86. Another particular heavy Lakshmi gold coin of nearly 5.6 g and its half unit of 3.0 g were struck in the name of Nara Varman, son of Udayaditya. A particular hybrid small silver coin of Malwa Plateau with a simplified standard Lakshmi format, weight 2.45 g, has been identified with either of the two Paramara rulers. To sum up, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries the Paramara kings did not feel the need to issue their own coinage except on special occasions, since the gadhaiya billon money of Gujarat, a trading coinage, served their currency needs. Following the change of dynasty in Gujarat and withdrawal of Gujarati administration from Malwa in the early thirteenth century, the Paramara Dynastyissued a series of billon coins, in fabric, metrology and alloy content imitative of the gadhaiya prototypes. This series was issued continuously thereafter, although with increasing debasement. The inability to maintain the quality of the coinage certainly reflects a policy of expediency during the period of dynastic decline, when the Rajput fortunes in Malwa ebbed before the onslaught of Delhi Sultans in the north and Yadavas in the south. |