1/2 Drachm Late Gupta, Malwa Region

The late Gupta silver fractions from Malwa represent a period of accelerating political fragmentation, when Gupta imperial authority was being squeezed from the northwest by Huna incursions and from within by breakaway feudatories. Regional minting became increasingly decentralized as a result, and attribution of individual pieces to specific rulers within this period remains contested among specialists. Mitchiner's classification groups these by region rather than reign for precisely that reason.

Weight reduction from the standard drachm was not uniform across Malwa issues, making individual specimens difficult to sequence chronologically without die linkage studies.