Mālava

From the Punjab to Rajasthan

The Malloi whom Alexander's army fought in 325 BCE, in the campaign in which he was nearly killed assaulting one of their towns, are generally identified with the Mālavas. At some point after that the people moved southeast into the country around Nagar, near Jaipur, where tens of thousands of their small copper coins have been recovered.

The coins carry the legend of the victory of the Mālavas, or the names of individuals with no royal title, which is the pattern of a corporate rather than a monarchical issue. They span several centuries, and their sheer quantity makes the Mālavas one of the better-attested non-monarchical polities of ancient India.

The era and the name

Inscriptions of the fifth and sixth centuries CE date events in a reckoning described as being in the usage of the Mālava corporation, with an epoch corresponding to 58 BCE. The same epoch is that of the Vikrama era, still in use, which later tradition ascribes to a king Vikramāditya of Ujjayinī. Whether the Mālava reckoning is the origin of the Vikrama era, or a parallel usage that was later reattributed to a legendary king, is unresolved.

The name travelled with the people a second time. The Malwa plateau of central India takes its name from them, though the association belongs to a later period than their Rajasthan coinage, and the Mālavas themselves are named in the Allahabad pillar inscription among the peoples who submitted to Samudragupta.