In his splendid recent autobiography, History of a History Man, Patrick Collinson reveals that when as a young man he was asked by the medievalist Geoffrey Barraclough at a job interview what his research method was, all he could say was that he tried to look at everything which was remotely relevant to his subject: ‘I had no “method”, only an omnium gatherum of materials culled from more or less everywhere.’

Deccan was positioned at the very centre of the great circuits of Indian Ocean trade. Its merchant guilds, such as the Ainnurruvar, have a recorded history of nearly 1,000 years

Having expanded his influence as far as Bengal, commanding the ports of India’s east coast, Harsha now wanted to control its west coast as well, linking his territories to flourishing coastal trade routes in both directions. This threat may have been the trigger for the Latas to send tribute to Pulakeshin in place. If so, it was a dangerous gambit: as one scholar puts it, ‘the sovereign of the Deccan must have considered to be his natural birthright… unlimited access to ports of the Gulf of Cambay [Khambat]’.