Very Fine +, Unique.

In his seminal work on Hun coinage, 2 Robert G?¨bl identified many types and tried to create some kind of order for them, but did not make much headway because the coins did not seem to follow a clear chronological sequence. Recently, new energy was imparted to the study of these coins by the discovery and publication by Gudrun Melzer of a copper scroll inscription from the Schøyen Collection which names four of the Alchon kings known from their coins. 3 Although the find spot of the scroll is not known, the scroll itself identifies its probable place of origin: a town called Ta¯laga¯n. Melzer suggested in her paper that this was probably the town of T?a¯laqa¯n in northern Afghanistan (north of the Hindu Kush mountains), but E´tienne de la Vaissie`re4 has argued persuasively that it was rather the town of Talagang in Pakistan, just north of the Salt Range and south of the Hindu Kush. The four kings mentioned in the scroll, maha¯s?a¯hi Khi¯n?gi¯la, devara¯ja Torama¯na, maha¯s?a¯hi Mehama and maharaja Javu¯kha, are all listed as donors in the establishment of a Buddhist stupa in Ta¯laga¯n. For the first time, we can feel secure in the identities of these four kings and coins that bear their names can safely be assigned to them, something G?¨bl had not always done because of possible ambiguities in the reading and interpretation of the coin legends. Accordingly the concerned coin mentions the epithet Devaputra and Haavav... and can be assigned to a new king . Probable attribution looking into the reverse motif of the stylized Goddess Lakshmi similar to that of the Kashmir hunnic coin of Tujina puts this coin from a similar series. A new find.