Drachm - Napki Malka Gandhara mint

The Hephthalites — called "White Huns" by Byzantine sources, though their ethnographic connection to the Hunnic confederations remains genuinely contested — dominated the region stretching from Bactria into the Punjab for roughly a century after destroying the Kidarite kingdom around 467 AD. Napki Malka is among the more enigmatic of their rulers; the name itself is likely a title rather than a personal name, translating roughly as "king" in a Bactrian formulation, which makes attribution to a single reign difficult.

Billon coinage from Gandhara in this period reflects the progressive debasement that accompanied near-constant military pressure from the Sasanians to the west and, ultimately, the Göktürk alliance that finally broke Hephthalite power by the 560s.