CHAPTER 7

Having discussed the ancient genealogies of the martial races of Rajasthan, as well as the chief points in their character and religion analogous to those of early Europe, we proceed to the catalogue of the Chhattis Rajkula, or ‘thirty-six royal races.’[2.7.1]

The table before the reader presents, at one view, the authorities on which this list is given: they are as good as abundant. The first is from a detached leaf of an ancient work, obtained from a Yati of a Jain temple at the old city of Nadol, in Marwar. The second is from the poems of Chand,[2.7.2] the bard of the last Hindu king of Delhi. The third is from an estimable work contemporary with Chand’s, the Kumarpal Charitra[2.7.3] or “History of the Monarchy of Anhilwara Patan.” The fourth list is from the Khichi bard.[2.7.4] The fifth, from a bard of Saurashtra.

From every one of the bardic profession, from all the collectors and collections of Rajasthan, lists have been received, from which the catalogue No. 6 has been formed, admitted by the genealogists to be more perfect than any existing document. From it, therefore, in succession, each race shall have its history rapidly sketched; though, as a text, a single name is sufficient to fill many pages.

The first list is headed by an invocation to Mata Sakambhari Devi, or mother-goddess, protectress of the races (sakha) [the mother of vegetation].

Each race (sakha) has its Gotracharya,[2.7.5] a genealogical creed, describing [82] the essential peculiarities, religious tenets, and pristine locale of the clan. Every Rajput should be able to repeat this; though it is now confined to the family priest or the genealogist. Many chiefs, in these degenerate days, would be astonished if asked to repeat their gotracharya, and would refer to the bard. It is a touchstone of affinities, and guardian of the laws of intermarriage. When the inhibited degrees of propinquity have been broken, it has been known to rectify the mistake, where, however, “ignorance was bliss.”[2.7.6]

LIST OF THE THIRTY-SIX ROYAL RACES OF RAJASTHAN.—OM! SAKAMBHARI MATA ──────────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────── ANCIENT MSS.[t.1] │ CHAND BARDAI.[t.2] ──────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────── Ikshwaku. │ Ravya or Surya. Surya. │ Sahsa or Soma. Soma or Chandra. │ Yadu. Yadu. │ Kakustha. 5 Chahuman (Chauhan). │ 5 Pramara. Pramara. │ Chauhan. Chalukya or Solanki. │ Chalukya. Parihara. │ Chandak. Chawara. │ Silar. 10 Dudia. │ 10 Abhira. Rathor. │ Makwahana. Gohil. │ Gohil. Dabhi. │ Chapotkat. Makwahana. │ Parihara. 15 Norka. │ 15 Rathor. Aswaria. │ Deora. Salar or Silara. │ Tak. Sinda. │ Sindhu. Sepat. │ Ananga. 20 Hun or Hūn. │ 20 Patak. Kirjal. │ Pritihara. Haraira. │ Didiota. Rajpali. │ Karitpal. Dhanpali. │ Kotpala. 25 Agnipali. │ 25 Hul. Bala. │ Gaur. Jhala. │ Nikumbha. Bhagdola. │ Rajpalaka. Motdan. │ Kani. 30 Mohor. │ 30 Kalchorak or Kurkara. Kagair. │ Karjeo. │ Chadlia. │ Pokara. │ Nikumbha. │ 36 Salala. │ ──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── KUMAR PAL CHARITRA.[t.3] ──────────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────── Sanskrit Edition—MSS. │ Gujarati Dialect—MSS. Ikshwaku. │ Gotchar Gohil. Soma. │ Ani Gohil. Yadu. │ Kathi. Pramara. │ Kaser. 5 Chauhan. │ 5 Nikumbha. Chalukya. │ Barbeta. Chandak. │ Bawariya. Silar (_Raj Tilak_) │ Maru. Chapotkat. │ Makwahana. 10 Pritihara. │ 10 Dahima. Sakranka. │ Dudia. Kurpala. │ Bala. Chandal. │ Baghel. Ohil. │ Yadu. 15 Palaka. │ 15 Jethwa. Maurya. │ Jareja. Makwahana. │ Jat. Dhanpala. │ Solanki. Rajpalaka. │ Pramara. 20 Dahya. │ 20 Kaba. Turandalika. │ Chawara. Nikumbha. │ Chaurasima. Hun. │ Khant. Bala. │ Khyera. 25 Harial. │ 25 Rawali. Mokar. │ Masania. Pokara. │ Palani. │ Hala. │ Jhala │ 30 Daharia. │ Baharia. │ Sarweya "_Chhattrya_ │ _tin Sar_." │ Parihara. │ Chauhan. ──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────

──────────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────── KHICHI BARD.[t.4] │ CORRECTED LIST BY THE AUTHOR. ──────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────── Guhilot. │ Ikshwaku, Kakutstha, or Surya. Pramara. │ Anwai, Indu, Som, or Chandra. Chauhan. │ Grahilot or Guhilot 24 Sakha. Solanki. │ Yadu. 4 Rathor. │ 5 Tuar. 17 Tuar. │ Rathor. 13 Bargujar. │ Kushwaha or Kachhwaha. Parihara. │ Pramara. 35 Jhala. │ Chahuman or Chauhan. 26 10 Yadu. │ 10 Chalukya or Solanki. 16 Kachhwaha. │ Parihara. 12 Gaur. │ Chawara. Single. These subdivide: the │ Tak, Tāk, or Takshak. following do not, and are │ Jat or Geta. called Yaka, or single. │ 15 Hun or Hūn. Sengar. │ Kathi. Bala. │ Bala. 15 Kharwar. │ Jhala. 2 Chawara. │ Jethwa or Kamari. Dahima. │ 20 Gohil. Dahya. │ Sarweya. Bais. │ Silar. 20 Gaharwal. │ Dabhi. Nikumbha. │ Gaur 5 Dewat. │ 25 Doda or Dor. Johya. │ Gaharwal. Sikarwal. │ Bargujar 3 25 Dabhia. │ Sengar. Single. Doda. │ Sikarwal. do. Maurya. │ 30 Bais do. Mokara. │ Dahia. Abhira. │ Johya. 30 Kalchorak (Haya race). │ Mohil. Agnipala. │ Nikumbha. Aswaria or Sarja. │ Rajpali. Hul. │ 36 Dahima. do. Manatwal. │ Malia. │ Extra. 36 Chahil. │ Hul. │ Daharya. ──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────

Footnote t.1:

The author, after the invocation to “the mother protectress,” says, “I write the names of the thirty-six royal tribes.”

Footnote t.2:

The bard Chand says, “Of the thirty-six races, the four Agnipalas are the greatest—the rest are born of woman, but these from fire.”

Footnote t.3:

As the work is chiefly followed with the exploits of Kumarpal, who was of Chauhan tribe, the author reserves it for a peroration to the last “of all the mightiest is the Chauhan.”

Footnote t.4:

By name Moghji.

Most of the kula (races) are divided into numerous branches[2.7.7] (sakha), and these sakha subdivided into innumerable clans (gotra),[2.7.8] the most important of which shall be given. A few of the kula never ramified: these are termed _eka_, or ‘single’; and nearly one-third are _eka_.

A table of the ‘eighty-four’ mercantile tribes, chiefly of Rajput origin, shall also be furnished, in which the remembrance of some races are preserved which would have perished. Lists of the aboriginal, the agricultural and the pastoral tribes are also given to complete the subject.

=Solar and Lunar Races.=—In the earlier ages there were but two races, Surya and Chandra, to which were added the four Agnikulas[2.7.9]; in all six. The others are subdivisions of Surya and Chandra, or the sakha of Indo-Scythic origin, who found no difficulty in obtaining a place (though a low one), before the Muhammadan era, amongst the thirty-six regal races of Rajasthan. The former we may not unaptly consider as to the time, as the Celtic, the latter as the Gothic, races of India. On the generic terms Surya and Chandra, I need add nothing [83].

=Grahilot or Guhilot.=—_Pedigree_[2.7.10] _of the Suryavansi Rana, of royal race, Lord of Chitor, the ornament of the thirty-six royal races._

By universal consent, as well as by the gotra of this race, its princes are admitted to be the direct descendants of Rama, of the Solar line. The pedigree is deduced from him, and connected with Sumitra, the last prince mentioned in the genealogy of the Puranas.

As the origin and progressive history of this family will be fully discussed in the “Annals of Mewar,” we shall here only notice the changes which have marked the patronymic, as well as the regions which have been under their sway, from Kanaksen, who, in the second century, abandoned his native kingdom, Kosala, and established the race of Surya in Saurashtra.

On the site of Vairat, the celebrated abode of the Pandavas during exile, the descendant of Ikshwaku established his line, and his descendant Vijaya, in a few generations, built Vijayapur.[2.7.11]

They became sovereigns, if not founders, of Valabhi, which had a separate era of its own, called the Valabhi Samvat, according with S. Vikrama 375.[2.7.12] Hence they became the Balakaraes, or kings of Valabhi; a title maintained by successive dynasties of Saurashtra for a thousand years after this period, as can be satisfactorily proved by genuine history and inscriptions.

Gajni, or Gaini, was another capital, whence the last prince, Siladitya (who was slain), and his family, were expelled by Parthian invaders in the sixth century.

A posthumous son, called Grahaditya, obtained a petty sovereignty at Idar. The change was marked by his name becoming the patronymic, and Grahilot, _vulgo_ Guhilot, designated the Suryavansa of Rama.

With reverses and migration from the wilds of Idar to Ahar,[2.7.13] the Guhilot was changed to Aharya, by which title the race continued to be designated till the twelfth century, when the elder brother, Rahup, abandoned his claim to "the [84] throne of Chitor," obtained[2.7.14] by force of arms from the Mori,[2.7.15] and settled at Dungarpur, which he yet holds, as well as the title Aharya; while the younger, Mahup, established the seat of power at Sesoda, whence Sesodia set aside both Aharya and Guhilot.

Sesodia is now the common title of the race; but being only a subdivision, the Guhilot holds its rank in the kula.

The Guhilot kula is subdivided into twenty-four sakha,[2.7.16] or ramifications, few of which exist:

1. Aharya At Dungarpur. 2. Mangalia In the Deserts. 3. Sesodia Mewar. 4. Pipara In Marwar. 5. Kalam ┐ 6. Gahor │ 7. Dhornia │ 8. Goda │ 9. Magrasa │ 10. Bhimla ├ In few numbers, and mostly 11. Kamkotak │ now unknown. 12. Kotecha │ 13. Sora │ 14. Uhar │ 15. Useba │ 16. Nirrup ┘

17. Nadoria ┐ 18. Nadhota │ 19. Ojakra │ 20. Kuchhra ├ Almost extinct. 21. Dosadh │ 22. Betwara │ 23. Paha │ 24. Purot ┘ [85]

=Yadu, Yādava.=—The Yadu was the most illustrious of all the tribes of Ind, and became the patronymic of the descendants of Budha, progenitor of the Lunar (Indu) race. Yudhishthira and Baladeva, on the death of Krishna and their expulsion from Delhi and Dwaraka, the last stronghold of their power, retired by Multan across the Indus. The two first are abandoned by tradition; but the sons of Krishna, who accompanied them after an intermediate halt in the further Duab[2.7.17] of the five rivers, eventually left the Indus behind, and passed into Zabulistan,[2.7.18] founded Gajni, and peopled these countries even to Samarkand.

The annals of Jaisalmer, which give this early history of their founder, mix up in a confused manner[2.7.19] the cause of their being again driven back into India; so that it is impossible to say whether it was owing to the Greek princes who ruled all these countries for a century after Alexander, or to the rise of Islamism.

Driven back on the Indus, they obtained possession of the Panjab and founded Salivahanpur. Thence expelled, they retired across the Sutlej and Ghara into the Indian deserts; whence expelling the Langahas, the Johyas, Mohilas, etc., they founded successively Tanot, Derawar, and Jaisalmer,[2.7.20] in S. 1212,[2.7.21] the present capital of the Bhattis, the lineal successors of Krishna.

=Bhatti= was the exile from Zabulistan, and as usual with the Rajput races on any such event in their annals, his name set aside the more ancient patronymic, Yadu. The Bhattis subdued all the tracts south of the Ghara; but their power has been greatly circumscribed since the arrival of the Rathors. The Map defines their existing limits, and their annals will detail their past history.

=Jāreja, Jādeja= is the most important tribe of Yadu race next to the Bhatti. Its history is similar. Descended from Krishna, and migrating simultaneously with the remains of the Harikulas, there is the strongest ground for believing that their range was not so wide as that of the elder branch, but that they settled themselves in the valley of the Indus, more especially on the west shore in Seistan; and in nominal and armorial distinctions, even in Alexander’s time, they retained the marks of their ancestry [86].

Sambos, who brought on him the arms of the Grecians, was in all likelihood a Harikula; and the Minnagara of Greek historians Samanagara (‘city of Sama’), his capital.[2.7.22]

The most common epithet of Krishna, or Hari, was Shama or Syama, from his dark complexion. Hence the Jareja bore it as a patronymic, and the whole race were Samaputras (children of Sama), whence the titular name Sambos of its princes.[2.7.23]

The modern Jareja, who, from circumstances has so mixed with the Muhammadans of Sind as to have forfeited all pretensions to purity of blood, partly in ignorance and partly to cover disgrace, says that his origin is from Sham, or Syria, and of the stock of the Persian Jamshid: consequently, Sam has been converted into Jam[2.7.24]; which epithet designates one of the Jareja petty governments, the Jam Raj.

These are the most conspicuous of the Yadu race; but there are others who still bear the original title, of which the head is the prince of the petty State of Karauli on the Chambal.

This portion of the Yadu stock would appear never to have strayed far beyond the ancient limits of the Suraseni,[2.7.25] their ancestral abodes. They held the celebrated Bayana; whence expelled, they established Karauli west, and Sabalgarh east, of the Chambal. The tract under the latter, called Yaduvati, has been wrested from the family by Sindhia. Sri Mathura[2.7.26] is an independent fief of Karauli, held by a junior branch.

The Yadus, or as pronounced in the dialects Jadon, are scattered over India, and many chiefs of consequence amongst the Mahrattas are of this tribe.

There are eight sakha of the Yadu race:

1. Yadu Chief Karauli. 2. Bhatti Chief Jaisalmer. 3. Jareja Chief Cutch Bhuj. 4. Samecha Muhammadans in Sind. 5. Madecha ┐ 6. Bidman ├ Unknown [87]. 7. Badda │ 8. Soha ┘

=Tuar, Tonwar, Tomara.=—The Tuar, though acknowledged as a subdivision of the Yadu, is placed by the best genealogists as one of the ‘thirty-six,’ a rank to which its celebrity justly entitles it.

We have in almost every case the etymon of each celebrated race. For the Tuar we have none; and we must rest satisfied in delivering the dictum of the Bardai, who declares it of Pandu origin.

If it had to boast only of Vikramaditya, the paramount lord of India, whose era, established fifty-six years before the Christian, still serves as the grand beacon of Hindu chronology, this alone would entitle the Tuar to the highest rank. But it has other claims to respect. Delhi, the ancient Indraprastha, founded by Yudhishthira, and which tradition says lay desolate for eight centuries, was rebuilt and peopled by Anangpal Tuar, in S. 848 (A.D. 792), who was followed by a dynasty of twenty princes, which concluded with the name of the founder, Anangpal, in S. 1220 (A.D. 1164),[2.7.27] when, contrary to the Salic law of the Rajputs, he abdicated (having no issue) in favour of his grandchild, the Chauhan Prithviraja.

The Tuar must now rest on his ancient fame; for not an independent possession remains to the race[2.7.28] which traces its lineage to the Pandavas, boasts of Vikrama, and which furnished the last dynasty, emperors of Hindustan.

It would be a fact unparalleled in the history of the world, could we establish to conviction that the last Anangpal Tuar was the lineal descendant of the founder of Indraprastha; that the issue of Yudhishthira sat on the throne which he erected, after a lapse of 2250 years. Universal consent admits it, and the fact is as well established as most others of a historic nature of such a distant period: nor can any dynasty or family of Europe produce evidence so strong as the Tuar, even to a much less remote antiquity.

The chief possessions left to the Tuars are the district of Tuargarh, on the right bank of the Chambal towards its junction with the Jumna, and the small [88] chieftainship of Patan Tuarvati in the Jaipur State, and whose head claims affinity with the ancient kings of Indraprastha.

=Rāthor.=—A doubt hangs on the origin of this justly celebrated race. The Rathor genealogies trace their pedigree to Kusa, the second son of Rama; consequently they would be Suryavansa. But by the bards of this race they are denied this honour; and although Kushite, they are held to be the descendants of Kasyapa, of the Solar race, by the daughter of a Daitya (Titan). The progeny of Hiranyakasipu is accordingly stigmatized as being of demoniac origin. It is rather singular that they should have succeeded to the Lunar race of Kusanabha, descendants of Ajamidha, the founders of Kanauj. Indeed, some genealogists maintain the Rathors to be of Kusika race.

The pristine locale of the Rathors is Gadhipura, or Kanauj, where they are found enthroned in the fifth century; and though beyond that period they connect their line with the princes of Kosala or Ayodhya, the fact rests on assertion only.

From the fifth century their history is cleared from the mist of ages, which envelops them all prior to this time; and in the period approaching the Tatar conquest of India, we find them contesting with the last Tuar and Chauhan kings of Delhi, and the Balakaraes of Anhilwara, the right to paramount importance amidst the princes of Ind. The combats for this phantom supremacy destroyed them all. Weakened by internal strife, the Chauhan of Delhi fell, and his death exposed the north-west frontier. Kanauj followed; and while its last prince, Jaichand, found a grave in the Ganges, his son sought an asylum in Marusthali, ‘the regions of death.’[2.7.29] Siahji was this son; the founder of the Rathor dynasty in Marwar, on the ruins of the Pariharas of Mandor. Here they brought their ancient martial spirit, and a more valiant being exists not than can be found amongst the sons of Siahji. The Mogul emperors were indebted for half their conquests to the _Lakh Tarwar Rathoran_, ‘the 100,000 swords of the Rathors’; for it is beyond a doubt that 50,000 of the blood of Siahji have been embodied at once. But enough of the noble Rathors for the present.

The Rathor has twenty-four sakha: Dhandal, Bhadel, Chachkit, Duharia, Khokra, Badara, Chajira, Ramdeva, Kabria, Hatundia, Malavat, Sunda, Katecha, Maholi, Gogadeva, Mahecha, Jaisingha, Mursia, Jobsia, Jora, etc., etc.[2.7.30] [89].

_Rathor Gotracharya._—Gotama[2.7.31] Gotra (race),—Mardawandani Sakha (branch),—Sukracharya Guru (Regent of the planet Venus, Preceptor),—Garupata Agni,[2.7.32]—Pankhani Devi (tutelary goddess, winged).[2.7.33]

=Kachhwāha.=—The Kachhwaha race[2.7.34] is descended from Kusa, the second son of Rama. They are the Kushites[2.7.35] as the Rajputs of Mewar are the Lavites of India. Two branches migrated from Kosala: one founded Rohtas on the Son, the other established a colony amidst the ravines of the Kuwari, at Lahar.[2.7.36] In the course of time they erected the celebrated fortress of Narwar, or Nirwar, the abode of the celebrated Raja Nala, whose descendants continued to hold possession throughout all the vicissitudes of the Tatar and Mogul domination, when they were deprived of it by the Mahrattas, and the abode of Nala is now a dependency of Sindhia.

In the tenth century a branch emigrated and founded Amber, dispossessing the aborigines, the Minas, and adding from the Rajput tribe Bargujar, who held Rajor and large possessions around. But even in the twelfth century the Kachhwahas were but principal vassals to the Chauhan king of Delhi; and they have to date their greatness, as the other families (especially the Ranas of Mewar) of Rajasthan their decline, from the ascent of the house of Timur to the throne of Delhi. The map shows the limits of the sway of the Kachhwahas, including their branches, the independent Narukas of Macheri, and the tributary confederated Shaikhavats. The Kachhwaha subdivisions have been mislaid;[2.7.37] but the present partition into Kothris (chambers), of which there are twelve, shall be given in their annals.

=Agnikulas, Pramāra.=—1st _Pramara_. There are four races to whom the Hindu genealogists have given Agni, or the element of fire, as progenitor. The Agnikulas are therefore the sons of Vulcan, as the others are of Sol,[2.7.38] Mercurius, and Terra [90].

The Agnikulas are the Pramara, the Parihara, the Chalukya or Solanki, and the Chauhan.[2.3.39]

That these races, the sons of Agni, were but regenerated, and converted by the Brahmans to fight their battles, the clearest interpretations of their allegorical history will disclose; and, as the most ancient of their inscriptions are in the Pali character, discovered wherever the Buddhist religion prevailed, their being declared of the race of Tasta or Takshak,[2.3.40] warrants our asserting the Agnikulas to be of this same race, which invaded India about two centuries before Christ. It was about this period that Parsvanatha the twenty-third Buddha,[2.3.41] appeared in India; his symbol, the serpent. The legend of the snake (Takshak) escaping with the celebrated work Pingala, which was recovered by Garuda, the eagle of Krishna, is purely allegorical; and descriptive of the contentions between the followers of Parswanatha, figured under his emblem, the snake, and those of Krishna, depicted under his sign, the eagle.

The worshippers of Surya probably recovered their power on the exterminating civil wars of the Lunar races, but the creation of the Agnikulas is expressly stated to be for the preservation of the altars of Bal, or Iswara, against the Daityas, or Atheists.

The celebrated Abu, or Arbuda, the Olympus of Rajasthan, was the scene of contention between the ministers of Surya and these Titans, and their relation might, with the aid of imagination, be equally amusing with the Titanic war of the ancient poets of the west [91]. The Buddhists claim it for Adinath, their first Buddha; the Brahmans for Iswara, or, as the local divinity styled Achaleswara.[2.7.42] The Agnikunda is still shown on the summit of Abu, where the four races were created by the Brahmans to fight the battles of Achaleswara and polytheism, against the monotheistic Buddhists, represented as the serpents or Takshaks. The probable period of this conversion has been hinted at; but of the dynasties issuing from the Agnikulas, many of the princes professed the Buddhist or Jain faith, to periods so late as the Muhammadan invasion.

The Pramara, though not, as his name implies, the ‘chief warrior,’ was the most potent of the Agnikulas. He sent forth thirty-five sakha, or branches, several of whom enjoyed extensive sovereignties. ‘The world is the Pramar’s,’ is an ancient saying, denoting their extensive sway; and the Naukot[2.7.43] Marusthali signified the nine divisions into which the country, from the Sutlej to the ocean, was partitioned amongst them.

Maheswar, Dhar, Mandu, Ujjain, Chandrabhaga, Chitor, Abu, Chandravati, Mhau Maidana, Parmavati, Umarkot, Bakhar, Lodorva, and Patan are the most conspicuous of the capitals they conquered or founded.

Though the Pramara family never equalled in wealth the famed Solanki princes of Anhilwara, or shone with such lustre as the Chauhan, it attained a wider range and an earlier consolidation of dominion than either, and far excelled in all, the Parihara, the last and least of the Agnikulas, which it long held tributary.

Maheswar, the ancient seat of the Haihaya kings, appears to have been the first seat of government of the Pramaras. They subsequently founded Dharanagar, and Mandu on the crest of the Vindhya hills; and to them is even attributed the city of Ujjain, the first meridian of the Hindus, and the seat of Vikrama.

There are numerous records of the family, fixing eras in their history of more modern times; and it is to be hoped that the interpretation of yet undeciphered inscriptions may carry us back beyond the seventh century.

The era[2.7.44] of Bhoj, the son of Munja, has been satisfactorily settled; and an [92] inscription[2.7.45] in the nail-headed character, carries it back a step further,[2.7.46] and elicits an historical fact of infinite value, giving the date of the last prince of the Pramaras of Chitor, and the consequent accession of the Guhilots.

The Nerbudda was no limit to the power of the Pramaras. About the very period of the foregoing inscription, Ram Pramar held his court in Telingana, and is invested by the Chauhan Bard, Chand, with the dignity of paramount sovereign of India, and head of a splendid feudal[2.7.47] association, whose members became independent on his death. The Bard makes this a voluntary act of the Pramaras; but coupled with the Guhilots’ violent acquisition of Chitor, we may suppose the successor of Ram was unable to maintain such supremacy.

While Hindu literature survives the name of Bhoj Pramara and ‘the nine gems’ of his court cannot perish; though it is difficult to say which of the three[2.7.48] princes of this name is particularly alluded to, as they all appear to have been patrons of science.

Chandragupta, the supposed opponent of Alexander, was a Maurya, and in the sacred genealogies is declared of the race of Takshak. The ancient inscriptions of the Pramars, of which the Maurya is a principal branch, declare it of the race of Tasta and Takshak, as does that now given from the seat of their power, Chitor.[2.7.49]

Salivahana, the conqueror of Vikramaditya, was a Takshak, and his era set aside that of the Tuar in the Deccan.

Not one remnant of independence exists to mark the greatness of the Pramaras: ruins are the sole records of their power. The prince of Dhat,[2.7.50] in the Indian [93] desert, is the last phantom of royalty of the race; and the descendant of the prince who protected Humayun, when driven from the throne of Timur, in whose capital, Umarkot, the great Akbar was born, is at the foot of fortune’s ladder; his throne in the desert, the footstool of the Baloch, on whose bounty he is dependent for support.

Among the thirty-five sakha of the Pramaras the Vihal was eminent, the princes of which line appear to have been lords of Chandravati, at the foot of the Aravalli. The Rao of Bijolia, one of the sixteen superior nobles of the Rana’s court, is a Pramara of the ancient stock of Dhar, and perhaps its most respectable representative.

THIRTY-FIVE SAKHA OF THE PRAMARAS

_Mori_ [or _Maurya_].—Of which was Chandragupta, and the princes of Chitor prior to the Guhilot.

_Sodha._—Sogdoi of Alexander, the princes of Dhat in the Indian desert.

_Sankhla._—Chiefs of Pugal, and in Marwar.

_Khair._—Capital Khairalu.

_Umra and Sumra._—Anciently in the desert, now Muhammadans.

_Vihal, or Bihal._—Princes of Chandravati.

_Mepawat._—Present chief of Bijolia in Mewar.

_Balhar._—Northern desert.

_Kaba._—Celebrated in Saurashtra in ancient times, a few yet in Sirohi.

_Umata._—The princes of Umatwara in Malwa, there established for twelve generations. Umatwara is the largest tract left to the Pramaras. Since the war in 1817, being under the British interference, they cannot be called independent.

_Rehar_ ┐ _Dhunda_ ├ Girasia petty chiefs in Malwa. _Sorathia_ │ _Harer_[2.7.51] ┘

Footnote 2.7.51:

[For a different list see _Census Report Rajputana, 1911_, i. 255.]

Besides others unknown; as Chaonda, Khejar, Sagra, Barkota, Puni, Sampal, Bhiba, Kalpusar, Kalmoh, Kohila, Papa, Kahoria, Dhand, Deba, Barhar, Jipra, Posra, Dhunta, Rikamva, and Taika. Many of these are proselytes to Islamism, and several beyond the Indus [94].

=Chahuman or Chauhan.=—On this race so much has been said elsewhere,[2.7.52] that it would be superfluous to give more than a rapid sketch of them here.

This is the most valiant of the Agnikulas, and it may be asserted not of them only, but of the whole Rajput race. Actions may be recorded of the greater part of each of the Chhattis-kula, which would yield to none in the ample and varied pages of history; and though the ‘Talwar Rathoran’ would be ready to contest the point, impartial decision, with a knowledge of their respective merits, must assign to the Chauhan the van in the long career of arms.

Its branches (sakha) have maintained all the vigour of the original stem; and the Haras, the Khichis, the Deoras, the Sonigiras, and others of the twenty-four, have their names immortalised in the song of the bard.

The derivation of Chauhan is coeval with his fabulous birth: ‘the four-handed warrior’ (_Chatur-bhuja Chatur-bahu Vira_). All failed when sent against the demons, but the Chauhan, the last creation of the Brahmans to fight their battles against infidelity.

A short extract may be acceptable from the original respecting the birth of the Chauhan, to guard the rites of our Indian Jove on this Olympus, the sacred Abu: “the Guru of mountains, like Sumer or Kailas, which Achaleswara made his abode. Fast but one day on its summit, and your sins will be forgiven; reside there for a year, and you may become the preceptor of mankind.”

=The Agnikunda Fire-pit.=—Notwithstanding the sanctity of Abu, and the little temptation to disturb the anchorites of Bal, “the Munis, who passed their time in devotion, whom desire never approached, who drew support from the cow, from roots, fruits, and flowers,” yet did the Daityas, envying their felicity, render the sacrifice impure, and stop in transit the share of the gods. “The Brahmans dug the pit for burnt-sacrifice to the south-west (nairrit); but the demons[2.7.53] raised storms which darkened the air and filled it with clouds of sand, showering ordure, blood, bones and flesh, with every impurity, on their rites. Their penance was of no avail.”

Again they kindled the sacred fire; and the priests, assembling round the Agnikunda,[2.7.54] prayed for aid to Mahadeo [95]. "From the fire-fountain a figure issued forth, but he had not a warrior’s mien. The Brahmans placed him as guardian of the gate, and thence his name, Prithivi-dwara.[2.7.55] A second issued forth, and being formed in the palm (_challu_) of the hand was named Chalukya. A third appeared and was named Pramara.[2.7.56] He had the blessing of the Rishis, and with the others went against the demons, but they did not prevail. Again Vasishtha,[2.7.57] seated on the lotus, prepared incantations; again he called the gods to aid: and, as he poured forth the libation, a figure arose, lofty in stature, of elevated front, hair like jet, eyes rolling, breast expanded, fierce, terrific, clad in armour, quiver filled, a bow in one hand and a brand in the other, quadriform (_Chaturanga_),[2.7.58] whence his name, _Chauhan_.

“Vasishtha prayed that his hope[2.7.59] might be at length fulfilled, as the Chauhan was despatched against the demons. Sakti-devi[2.7.60] on her lion, armed with the trident, descended, and bestowed her blessing on the Chauhan, and as Asapurna, or Kalika, promised always to hear his prayer. He went against the demons; their leaders he slew. The rest fled, nor halted till they reached the depths of hell. Anhal slew the demons. The Brahmans were made happy; and of his race was Prithwiraja.”[2.7.61]

The genealogical tree of the Chauhans exhibits thirty-nine princes, from Anhal, the first created Chauhan, to Prithwiraja, the last of the Hindu emperors of India.[2.7.62] But whether the chain is entire we cannot say. The inference is decidedly against its being so; for this creation or regeneration is assigned to an age centuries anterior to Vikramaditya: and we may safely state these converts to be of the Takshak race, invaders of India at a very early period.

Ajaipal is a name celebrated in the Chauhan chronicles, as the founder of the fortress of Ajmer, one of the earliest establishments of Chauhan power.[2.7.63]

Sambhar,[2.7.64] on the banks of the extensive salt lake of the same name, was probably anterior to Ajmer, and yielded an epithet to the princes of this race, who [96] were styled Sambhari Rao. These continued to be the most important places of Chauhan power, until the translation of Prithwiraja to the imperial throne of Delhi threw a parting halo of splendour over the last of its independent kings. There were several princes whose actions emblazon the history of the Chauhans. Of these was Manika Rae, who first opposed the progress of the Muhammadan arms. Even the history of the conquerors records that the most obstinate opposition which the arms of Mahmud of Ghazni encountered was from the prince of Ajmer,[2.7.65] who forced him to retreat, foiled and disgraced, from this celebrated stronghold, in his destructive route to Saurashtra.

The attack on Manika Rae appears to have been by Kasim, the general of Walid, on the close of the first century of the Hegira.[2.7.66] The second attack was at the end of the fourth century. A third was during the reign of Bisaladeva, who headed a grand confederacy of the Rajput princes against the foes of their religion. The celebrated Udayaditya Pramar is enumerated amongst the chiefs acting in subserviency to the Chauhan prince on this occasion, and as his death has been fixed by unerring records in A.D. 1096, this combination must have been against the Islamite king Maudud, the fourth from Mahmud; and to this victory is the allusion in the inscription on the ancient pillar of Delhi.[2.7.67] But these irruptions continued to the captivity and death of the last of the Chauhans, whose reign exhibits a splendid picture of feudal manners.

The Chauhans sent forth twenty-four branches, of whom the most celebrated are the existing families of Bundi and Kotah, in the division termed Haravati. They have well maintained the Chauhan reputation for valour. Six princely brothers shed their blood in one field, in the support of the aged Shah Jahan against his rebellious son Aurangzeb, and of the six but one survived his wounds.

The Khichis[2.7.68] of Gagraun and Raghugarh, the Deoras of Sirohi, the Sonigiras of Jalor, the Chauhans of Sui Bah and Sanchor, and the Pawechas of Pawagarh, have all immortalized themselves by the most heroic and devoted deeds. Most of these families yet exist, brave as in the days of Prithwiraja.

Many chiefs of the Chauhan race abandoned their faith to preserve their lands, the Kaimkhani,[2.7.69] the Sarwanis, the Lowanis, the Kararwanis, and the Bedwanas [97], chiefly residing in Shaikhavati, are the most conspicuous. No less than twelve petty princes thus deserted their faith: which, however, is not contrary to the Rajput creed; for even Manu says, they may part with wife to preserve their land. Isaridas, nephew of Prithwiraja, was the first who set this example.

_Twenty-four Sakha of the Chauhans._—Chauhan, Hara, Khichi, Sonigira, Deora, Pabia, Sanchora, Goelwal, Bhadauria, Nirwan, Malani, Purbia, Sura, Madrecha, Sankrecha, Bhurecha, Balecha, Tasera, Chachera, Rosia, Chanda, Nikumbha, Bhawar, and Bankat.[2.7.70]

=Chalukya or Solanki.=—Though we cannot trace the history of this branch of the Agnikulas to such periods of antiquity as the Pramara or Chauhan, it is from the deficiency of materials, rather than any want of celebrity, that we are unable to place it, in this respect, on a level with them. The tradition of the bard makes the Solankis important as princes of Sura on the Ganges, ere the Rathors obtained Kanauj.[2.7.71] The genealogical test[2.7.72] claims Lohkot, said to be the ancient Lahore, as a residence, which makes them of the same Sakha (Madhwani) as the Chauhans. Certain it is, that in the eighth century we find the Langahas[2.7.73] and Togras inhabiting Multan and the surrounding country, the chief opponents of the Bhattis on their establishment in the desert. They were princes of Kalyan, on the Malabar coast,[2.7.74] which city still exhibits vestiges of ancient grandeur. It was from Kalyan that a scion of the Solanki tree was taken, and engrafted on the royal stem of the Chawaras of Anhilwara Patan.

It was in S. 987 (A.D. 931) that Bhojraj, the last of the Chawaras, and the Salic law of India were both set aside, to make way for the young Solanki, Mulraj,[2.7.75] who ruled Anhilwara for the space of fifty-eight years. During the reign of his son and successor, Chamund Rae,[2.7.76] Mahmud of Ghazni carried his desolating arms into the kingdom of Anhilwara. With its wealth he raised those [98] magnificent trophies of his conquest, among which the ‘Celestial Bride’ might have vied with anything ever erected by man as a monument of folly.[2.7.77] The wealth abstracted, as reported in the history of the conquerors, by this scourge of India, though deemed incredible, would obtain belief, if the commercial riches of Anhilwara could be appreciated. It was to India what Venice was to Europe, the entrepôt of the products of both the eastern and western hemispheres. It fully recovered the shock given by Mahmud and the desultory wars of his successors; and we find Siddharaja Jayasingha,[2.7.78] the seventh from the founder, at the head of the richest, if not the most warlike, kingdom of India. Two-and-twenty principalities at one time owned his power, from the Carnatic to the base of the Himalaya Mountains; but his unwise successor drew upon himself the vengeance of the Chauhan, Prithwiraja, a slip of which race was engrafted, in the person of Kumarapala, on the genealogical tree of the Solankis;[2.7.79] and it is a curious fact that this dynasty of the Balakaraes alone gives us two examples of the Salic law of India being violated. Kumarapala, installed on the throne of Anhilwara, ‘tied round his head the turban of the Solanki.’ He became of the tribe into which he was adopted. Kumarapala, as well as Siddharaja, was the patron of Buddhism;[2.7.80] and the monuments erected under them and their successors claim our admiration, from their magnificence and the perfection of the arts; for at no period were they more cultivated than at the courts of Anhilwara.

The lieutenants of Shihābu-d-din disturbed the close of Kumarapal’s reign; and his successor, Balo Muldeo, closed this dynasty in S. 1284 (A.D. 1228), when a new dynasty, called the Vaghela (descendants of Siddharaja) under Bīsaldeo, succeeded.[2.7.81] The dilapidations from religious persecution were repaired; Somnath, renowned as Delphos of old, rose from its ruins, and the kingdom of the Balakaraes was attaining its pristine magnificence, when, under the fourth prince, Karandeva, the angel of destruction appeared in the shape of Alau-d-din, and the kingdom of Anhilwara was annihilated. The lieutenants of the Tatar despot of Delhi let loose the spirit of intolerance and avarice on the rich cities and fertile plains of Gujarat and Saurashtra. In contempt of their faith, the altar of an Islamite Darvesh was placed in contact with the shrine of Adinath, on the [99] most accessible of their sacred mounts:[2.7.82] the statues of Buddha [the Jain Tirthankaras] were thrown down, and the books containing the mysteries of their faith suffered the same fate as the Alexandrian library. The walls of Anhilwara were demolished; its foundations excavated, and again filled up with the fragments of their ancient temples.[2.7.83]

The remnants of the Solanki dynasty were scattered over the land, and this portion of India remained for upwards of a century without any paramount head, until, by a singular dispensation of Providence, its splendour was renovated, and its foundations rebuilt, by an adventurer of the same race from which the Agnikulas were originally converts, though Saharan the Tak hid his name and his tribe under his new epithet of Zafar Khan, and as Muzaffar ascended the throne of Gujarat, which he left to his son. This son was Ahmad, who founded Ahmadabad, whose most splendid edifices were built from the ancient cities around it.[2.7.84]

=Bāghels.=—Though the stem of the Solankis was thus uprooted, yet was it not before many of its branches (Sakha), like their own indigenous bar-tree, had fixed themselves in other soils. The most conspicuous of these is the Baghela[2.7.85] family, which gave its name to an entire division of Hindustan; and Baghelkhand has now been ruled for many centuries by the descendants of Siddharaja.

Besides Bandhugarh, there are minor chieftainships still in Gujarat of the Baghela tribe. Of these, Pethapur and Tharad are the most conspicuous. One of the chieftains of the second class in Mewar is a Solanki, and traces his line immediately from Siddharaja: this is the chief of Rupnagar,[2.7.86] whose stronghold commands one of the passes leading to Marwar, and whose family annals would furnish a fine picture of the state of border-feuds. Few of them, till of late years, have died natural deaths.

The Solanki is divided into sixteen branches [100].

1. Baghela—Raja of Baghelkhand (capital Bandhugarh), Raos of Pitapur, Tharad, and Adalaj, etc. 2. Birpura—Rao of Lunawara. 3. Bahala—Kalyanpur in Mewar, styled Rao, but serving the chief of Salumbar. 4. Bhurta[2.7.87] ┐ In Baru, Tekra, and Chahir, in Jaisalmer. 5. Kalacha[2.7.87] ┘ 6. Langaha—Muslims about Multan. 7. Togra—Muslims in the Panjnad. 8. Brika— ” ” 9. Surki—In Deccan. 10. Sarwaria[2.7.88]—Girnar in Saurashtra. 11. Raka—Toda in Jaipur. 12. Ranakia—Desuri in Mewar. 13. Kharara—Alota and Jawara, in Malwa. 14. Tantia—Chandbhar Sakanbari.[2.7.89] 15. Almecha—No land. 16. Kalamor—Gujarat.[2.7.90]

=Pratihāra or Parihāra.=—Of this, the last and least of the Agnikulas, we have not much to say. The Pariharas never acted a conspicuous part in the history of Rajasthan. They are always discovered in a subordinate capacity, acting in feudal subjection to the Tuars of Delhi or the Chauhans of Ajmer; and the brightest page of their history is the record of an abortive attempt of Nahar Rao to maintain his independence against Prithwiraja. Though a failure, it has immortalized his name, and given to the scene of action,[2.7.91] one of the passes of the Aravalli, a merited celebrity. Mandor[2.7.91] (classically Maddodara) was the capital of the Parihars, and was the chief city of Marwar which owned the sway of this tribe prior to the invasion and settlement of the Rathors. It is placed five miles northward of the modern [101] Jodhpur, and preserves some specimens of the ancient Pali character, fragments of sculpture and Jain temples.

The Rathor emigrant princes of Kanauj found an asylum with the Parihars. They repaid it by treachery, and Chonda, a name celebrated in the Rathor annals, dispossessed the last of the Parihars, and pitched the flag of the Rathors on the battlements of Mandor. The power of the Parihars had, however, been much reduced previously by the princes of Mewar, who not only abstracted much territory from them, but assumed the title of its princes—Rana.[2.7.92]

The Parihara is scattered over Rajasthan, but I am unaware of the existence of any independent chieftainship there. At the confluence of the Kuhari, the Sind, and the Chambal, there is a colony of this race, which has given its name to a commune of twenty-four villages, besides hamlets, situated amidst the ravines of these streams. They were nominally subjects of Sindhia; but it was deemed requisite for the line of defence along the Chambal that it should be included within the British demarcation, by which we incorporated with our rule the most notorious body of thieves in the annals of Thug history.

The Parihars had twelve subdivisions, of which the chief were the Indha and Sindhal: a few of both are still to be found about the banks of the Luni.[2.7.93]

=Chāwara or Chaura.=—This tribe was once renowned in the history of India, though its name is now scarcely known, or only in the chronicles of the bard. Of its origin we are in ignorance. It belongs neither to the Solar nor Lunar race, and consequently we may presume it to be of Scythic origin.[2.7.94] The name is unknown in Hindustan, and is confined, with many others originating from beyond the Indus, to the peninsula of Saurashtra. If foreign to India proper, its establishment must have been at a remote period, as we find individuals of it intermarrying with the Suryavansa ancestry of the present princes of Mewar, when this family were the lords of Valabhi.

The capital of the Chawaras was the insular Deobandar, on the coast of Saurashtra, and the celebrated temple of Somnath, with many others on this coast, dedicated to Balnath, or the sun, is attributed to this tribe of the Sauras,[2.7.95] or [102] worshippers of the sun; most probably the generic name of the tribe as well as of the peninsula.[2.7.96]

By a natural catastrophe, or as the Hindu superstitious chroniclers will have it, as a punishment for the piracies of the prince of Deo, the element whose privilege he abused rose and overwhelmed his capital. As all this coast is very low, such an occurrence is not improbable; though the abandonment of Deo might have been compelled by the irruptions of the Arabians, who at this period carried on a trade with these parts, and the plunder of some of their vessels may have brought this punishment on the Chawaras. That it was owing to some such political catastrophe, we have additional grounds for belief from the annals of Mewar, which state that its princes inducted the Chawaras into the seats of the power they abandoned on the continent and peninsula of Saurashtra.

At all events, the prince of Deo laid the foundation of Anhilwara Patan in S. 802 (A.D. 746), which henceforth became the capital city of this portion of India, in lieu of Valabhipura, which gave the title of Balakaraes to its princes, the Balhara of the earlier Arabian travellers, and following them, the geographers of Europe.[2.7.97]

Vana Raja (or, in the dialects, Banraj) was this founder, and his dynasty ruled for one hundred and eighty-four years, when, as related in the sketch of the Solanki tribe, Bhojraj, the seventh from the founder, was deposed by his nephew.[2.7.98] It was during this dynasty that the Arabian travellers[2.7.99] visited this court, of which they have left but a confused picture. We are not, however, altogether in darkness regarding the Chawara race, as in the Khuman Raesa, one of the chronicles of Mewar, mention is made of the auxiliaries under a leader named Chatansi, in the defence of Chitor against the first attack on record of the Muhammadans.

When Mahmud of Ghazni invaded Saurashtra and captured its capital, Anhilwara, he deposed its prince, and placed upon the throne, according to Ferishta, a prince of the former dynasty, renowned for his ancient line and purity of blood, and who is styled Dabichalima; a name which has puzzled all European commentators. Now the Dabhi was a celebrated tribe, said by some to be a branch of the [103] Chawara, and this therefore may be a compound of Dabhi Chawara, or the Chaurasima, by some called a branch of the ancient Yadus.[2.7.100]

This ancient connexion between the Suryavansi chiefs and the Chawaras, or Sauras, of Saurashtra, is still maintained after a lapse of more than one thousand years; for although an alliance with the Rana’s family is deemed the highest honour that a Hindu prince can obtain, as being the first in rank in Rajasthan, yet is the humble Chawara sought out, even at the foot of fortune’s ladder, whence to carry on the blood of Rama. The present heir-apparent of a line of ‘one hundred kings,’ the prince Jawān Singh [1828-38], is the offspring of a Chawara mother, the daughter of a petty chieftain of Gujarat.

It were vain to give any account of the present state of the families bearing this name. They must depend upon the fame of past days; to this we leave them.

=Tāk or Takshak.=—Takshak appears to be the generic term of the race from which the various Scythic tribes, the early invaders of India, branched off. It appears of more ancient application than Getae, which was the parent of innumerable sakha. It might not be judicious to separate them, though it would be speculative to say which was the primitive title of the races called Scythic, after their country, Sakatai or Sakadwipa, the land of the great Getae.

Abulghazi makes Taunak[2.7.101] the son of Turk or Targetai, who appears to be the Turushka of the Puranas, the Tukyuks of the Chinese historians, the nomadic Tokhari of Strabo, who aided to overturn the Greek kingdom of Bactria, and gave their name to the grand division of Asia, Tokharistan[2.7.102] or Turkistan: and there is every appearance of that singular race, the Tajik,[2.7.103] still scattered over these [104] regions, and whose history appears a mystery, being the descendants of the Takshak.

It has been already observed, that ancient inscriptions in the Pali or Buddhist character have been discovered in various parts of Rajasthan, of the race called Tasta, Takshak, and Tak, relating to the tribes, the Mori [or Maurya], Pramara, their descendants. Naga and Takshak are synonymous appellations in Sanskrit for the snake, and the Takshak is the celebrated Nagvansa of the early heroic history of India. The Mahabharata describes, in its usual allegorical style, the wars between the Pandavas of Indraprastha and the Takshaks of the north. The assassination of Parikshita by the Takshak, and the exterminating warfare carried on against them by his son and successor, Janamejaya, who at last compelled them to sign tributary engagements, divested of its allegory,[2.7.104] is plain historical fact.

When Alexander invaded India, he found the Paraitakai, the mountain (_pahar_) Tak, inhabiting the Paropamisos range; nor is it by any means unlikely that Taxiles,[2.7.105] the ally of the Macedonian king, was the chief (_es_) of the Taks; and in the early history of the Bhatti princes of Jaisalmer, when driven from Zabulistan, they dispossessed the Taks on the Indus, and established themselves in their land, the capital of which was called Salivahanpura; and as the date of this event is given as 3008 of the Yudhishthira era, it is by no means unlikely that Salivahana, or Salbhan (who was a Takshak), the conqueror of the Tuar Vikrama, was of the very family dispossessed by the Bhattis, who compelled them to migrate to the south.

The calculated period of the invasion of the Takshaks, or Nagvansa, under Sheshnag, is about six or seven centuries before the Christian era, at which very [105] period the Scythic invasion of Egypt and Syria, “by the sons of Togarmah riding on horses” (the Aswas, or Asi), is alike recorded by the prophet Ezekiel and Diodorus. The Abu Mahatma calls the Takshaks “the sons of Himachal,” all evincing Scythic descent; and it was only eight reigns anterior to this change in the Lunar dynasties of India, that Parsvanath, the twenty-third Buddha [Jain Tirthankara], introduced his tenets into India, and fixed his abode in the holy mount Sarnet.[2.7.106]

Enough of the ancient history of the Tak; we will now descend to more modern times, on which we shall be brief. We have already mentioned the Takshak Mori [or Maurya] as being lords of Chitor from a very early period; and but a few generations after the Guhilots supplanted the Moris, this palladium of Hindu liberty was assailed by the arms of Islam. We find amongst the numerous defenders who appear to have considered the cause of Chitor their own, “the Tak from Asirgarh.”[2.7.107] This race appears to have retained possession of Asir for at least two centuries after this event, as its chieftain was one of the most conspicuous leaders in the array of Prithwiraja. In the poems of Chand he is called the “standard-bearer, Tak of Asir.”[2.7.108]

This ancient race, the foe of Janamejaya and the friend of Alexander, closed its career in a blaze of splendour. The celebrity of the kings of Gujarat will make amends for the obscurity of the Taks of modern times, of whom a dynasty of fourteen kings followed each other in succession, commencing and ending with the proud title of Muzaffar. It was in the reign of Muhammad,[2.7.109] son of the first Tughlak, that an accident to his nephew Firoz proved the dawn of the fortunes of the Tak; purchased, however, with the change of name and religion. Saharan the Tak was the first apostate of his line, who, under the name of Wajihu-l-mulk, concealed both his origin and tribe. His son, Zafar Khan, was raised by his patron Firoz to the government of Gujarat, about the period when Timur invaded India. Zafar availed himself of the weakness of his master and the distraction of the times, and mounted the throne of Gujarat under the name of [106] Muzaffar.[2.7.110] He was assassinated by the hand of his grandson, Ahmad, who changed the ancient capital, Anhilwara, for the city founded by himself, and called Ahmadabad, one of the most splendid in the east. With the apostasy of the Tak,[2.7.111] the name appears to have been obliterated from the tribes of Rajasthan; nor has my search ever discovered one of this name now existing.

=Jat, Jāt.=—In all the ancient catalogues of the thirty-six royal races of India the Jat has a place, though by none is he ever styled ‘Rajput’; nor am I aware of any instance of a Rajput’s intermarriage with a Jat.[2.7.112] It is a name widely disseminated over India, though it does not now occupy a very elevated place amongst the inhabitants, belonging chiefly to the agricultural classes.

In the Panjab they still retain their ancient name of Jat. On the Jumna and Ganges they are styled Jāts, of whom the chief of Bharatpur is the most conspicuous. On the Indus and in Saurashtra they are termed Jats. The greater portion of the husbandmen in Rajasthan are Jats; and there are numerous tribes beyond the Indus, now proselytes to the Muhammadan religion, who derive their origin from this class.

Of its ancient history sufficient has been already said. We will merely add, that the kingdom of the great Getae, whose capital was on the Jaxartes, preserved its integrity and name from the period of Cyrus to the fourteenth century, when it was converted from idolatry to the faith of Islam. Herodotus [iv. 93-4] informs us that the Getae were theists and held the tenet of the soul’s immortality; and De Guignes,[2.7.113] from Chinese authorities, asserts that at a very early period they had embraced the religion of Fo or Buddha.

The traditions of the Jats claim the regions west of the Indus as the cradle of the race, and make them of Yadu extraction; thus corroborating the annals of the Yadus, which state their migration from Zabulistan, and almost inducing us to [107] dispense with the descent of this tribe from Krishna, and to pronounce it an important colony of the Yueh-chi, Yuti, or Jats. Of the first migration from Central Asia of this race within the Indus we have no record; it might have been simultaneous with the Takshak, from the wars of Cyrus or his ancestors.

It has been already remarked that the Jat divided with the Takshak the claim of being the parent name of the various tribes called Scythic, invaders of India; and there is now before the author an inscription of the fifth century applying both epithets to the same prince,[2.7.114] who is invested moreover with the Scythic quality of worshipping the sun. It states, likewise, that the mother of this Jat prince was of Yadu race: strengthening their claims to a niche amongst the thirty-six Rajkulas, as well as their Yadu descent.

The fifth century of the Christian era, to which this inscription belongs, is a period of interest in Jat history. De Guignes, from original authorities, states the Yueh-chi or Jats to have established themselves in the Panjab in the fifth and sixth centuries, and the inscription now quoted applies to a prince whose capital is styled Salindrapura in these regions; and doubtless the Salivahanpur[2.7.115] where the Yadu Bhattis established themselves on the expulsion of the Tak.

How much earlier than this the Jat penetrated into Rajasthan must be left to more ancient inscriptions to determine: suffice it that in A.D. 440 we find him in power.[2.7.116]

When the Yadu was expelled from Salivahanpura, and forced to seek refuge [108] across the Sutlej among the Dahia and Johya Rajputs of the Indian desert, where they founded their first capital, Derawar, many from compulsion embraced the Muhammadan faith; on which occasion they assumed the name of Jat,[2.7.117] of which at least twenty different offsets are enumerated in the Yadu chronicles.

That the Jats continued as a powerful community on the east bank of the Indus and in the Panjab, fully five centuries after the period our inscription and their annals illustrate, we have the most interesting records in the history of Mahmud, the conqueror of India, whose progress they checked in a manner unprecedented in the annals of continental warfare. It was in 416 of the Hegira (A.D. 1026) that Mahmud marched an army against the Jats, who had harassed and insulted him on the return from his last expedition against Saurashtra. The interest of the account authorizes its being given from the original.

“The Jats inhabited the country on the borders of Multan, along the river that runs by the mountains of Jud.[2.7.118] When Mahmud reached Multan, finding the Jat country defended by great rivers, he built fifteen hundred boats,[2.7.119] each armed with six iron spikes projecting from their prows, to prevent their being boarded by the enemy, expert in this kind of warfare. In each boat he placed twenty archers, and some with fire-balls of naphtha to burn the Jat fleet. The monarch having determined on their extirpation, awaited the result at Multan. The Jats sent their wives, children, and effects to Sind Sagar,[2.7.120] and launched four thousand, or, as others say, eight thousand boats well armed to meet the Ghaznians. A terrible conflict ensued, but the projecting spikes sunk the Jat boats while others were set on fire. Few escaped from this scene of terror; and those who did, met with the more severe fate of captivity.”[2.7.121]

Many doubtless did escape; and it is most probable that the Jat communities, on whose overthrow the State of Bikaner was founded, were remnants of this very warfare [109].

Not long after this event the original empire of the Getae was overturned, when many fugitives found a refuge in India. In 1360 Togultash Timur was the great Khan of the Getae nation; idolaters even to this period. He had conquered Khorasan, invaded Transoxiana (whose prince fled, but whose nephew, Amir Timur, averted its subjugation), gained the friendship of Togultash, and commanded a hundred thousand Getae warriors. In 1369, when the Getic Khan died, such was the ascendancy obtained by Timur over his subjects, that the Kuriltai, or general assembly, transferred the title of Grand Khan from the Getic to the Chagatai Timur. In 1370 he married a Getic princess, and added Khokhand and Samarkand to his patrimony, Transoxiana. Rebellions and massacres almost depopulated this nursery of mankind, ere the Getae abandoned their independence; nor was it till 1388, after six invasions, in which he burnt their towns, brought away their wealth, and almost annihilated the nation, that he felt himself secure.[2.7.122]

In his expedition into India, having overrun great part of Europe, “taken Moscow, and slain the soldiers of the barbarous Urus,” he encountered his old foes “the Getae, who inhabited the plains of Tohim, where he put two thousand to the sword, pursuing them into the desert and slaughtering many more near the Ghaggar.”[2.7.123]

Still the Jat maintained himself in the Panjab, and the most powerful and independent prince of India at this day is the Jat prince of Lahore, holding dominion over the identical regions where the Yueh-chi colonized in the fifth century, and where the Yadus, driven from Ghazni, established themselves on the ruins of the Taks. The Jat cavalier retains a portion of his Scythic manners, and preserves the use of the chakra or discus, the weapon of the Yadu Krishna in the remote age of the Bharat.

=Hun or Hūn.=—Amongst the Scythic tribes who have secured for themselves a niche with the thirty-six races of India, is the Hun. At what period this race, so well known by its ravages and settlement in Europe, invaded India, we know not.[2.7.124] Doubtless it was in the society of many others yet found in the peninsula of [110] Saurashtra, as the Kathi, the Bala, the Makwana, etc. It is, however, confined to the genealogies of that peninsula; for although we have mention of the Hun in the chronicles and inscriptions of India at a very early period, he failed to obtain a place in the catalogue of the northern bards.

The earliest notice of the tribe is in an inscription[2.7.125] recording the power of a prince of Bihar, who, amidst his other conquests, “humbled the pride of the Huns.” In the annals of the early history of Mewar, in the catalogue of princes who made common cause with this the chief of all the Rajputs, when Chitor was assailed in the first irruption of the Muhammadans, was Angatsi, lord of the Huns, who led his quota on this occasion. De Guignes[2.7.126] describes Angat as being the name of a considerable horde of Huns or Moguls; and Abulghazi says that the Tartar tribe who guarded the great wall of China were termed Angatti, who had a distinct prince with high pay and honour. The countries inhabited by the Hiong-nou and the Ou-huon, the Turks and Moguls, called ‘Tatar’ from Tatan,[2.7.127] the name of the country from the banks of the Irtish along the mountains of Altai to the shores of the Yellow Sea, are described at large by the historian of the Huns: following whom and other original sources, the historian of the Fall of Rome has given great interest to his narrative of their march into Europe. But those who are desirous to learn all that relates to the past history and manners of this people, must consult that monument of erudition and research, the Geography of Malte-Brun.[2.7.128]

D’Anville,[2.7.129] quoting Cosmas the traveller, informs us that the White Huns (λευκοὶ Ούννοι)[2.7.130] occupied the north of India; and it is most probable a colony of these found their way into Saurashtra and Mewar.

It is on the eastern bank of the Chambal, at the ancient Barolli, that tradition assigns a residence to the Hun; and one of the celebrated temples at that place, called the Singar Chaori, is the marriage hall of the Hun prince, who is also declared to have been possessed of a lordship on the opposite bank, occupying the [111] site of the present town of Bhainsror. In the twelfth century the Hun must have possessed consequence, to occupy the place he holds in the chronicle of the princes of Gujarat. The race is not extinct. One of the most intelligent of the living bards of India assured the author of their existence; and in a tour where he accompanied him, redeemed his pledge, by pointing out the residence of some in a village on the estuary of the Mahi, though degraded and mixed with other classes.[2.7.131]

We may infer that few convulsions occurred in Central Asia, which drove forth these hordes of redundant population to seek subsistence in Europe, without India participating in such overflow. The only singular circumstance is, by what means they came to be recognized as Hindus, even though of the lowest class. Sudra we cannot term them; for although the Kathi and the Bala cannot be regarded as, or classed with Rajputs, they would scorn the rank of Sudra.

=Kāthi.=—Of the ancient notices of this people much has been already said, and all the genealogists, both of Rajasthan and Saurashtra, concur in assigning it a place amongst the royal races of India. It is one of the most important tribes of the western peninsula, and which has effected the change of the name from Saurashtra to Kathiawar.

Of all its inhabitants the Kathi retains most originality: his religion, his manners, and his looks, all are decidedly Scythic. He occupied, in the time of Alexander, that nook of the Panjab near the confluent five streams. It was against these Alexander marched in person, when he nearly lost his life, and where he left such a signal memorial of his vengeance. The Kathi can be traced from these scenes to his present haunts. In the earlier portion of the Annals of Jaisalmer mention is made of their conflicts with the Kathi; and their own traditions[2.7.132] fix their settlement in the peninsula from the south-eastern part of the valley of the Indus, about the eighth century.

In the twelfth century the Kathi were conspicuous in the wars with Prithwiraja, there being several leaders of the tribe attached to his army, as well as to that of [112] his rival, the monarch of Kanauj.[2.7.133] Though on this occasion they acted in some degree of subservience to the monarch of Anhilwara, it would seem that this was more voluntary than forced.

The Kathi still adores the sun,[2.7.134] scorns the peaceful arts, and is much less contented with the tranquil subsistence of industry than the precarious earnings of his former predatory pursuits. The Kathi was never happy but on horseback, collecting his blackmail, lance in hand, from friend and foe.

We will conclude this brief sketch with Captain Macmurdo’s character of this race. “The Kathi differs in some respects from the Rajput. He is more cruel in his disposition, but far exceeds him in the virtue of bravery;[2.7.135] and a character possessed of more energy than a Kathi does not exist. His size is considerably larger than common, often exceeding six feet. He is sometimes seen with light hair and blue-coloured eyes. His frame is athletic and bony, and particularly well adapted to his mode of life. His countenance is expressive, but of the worst kind, being harsh, and often destitute of a single mild feature.”[2.7.136]

=Bāla.=—All the genealogists, ancient and modern, insert the Bala tribe amongst the Rajkulas. The birad, or ‘blessing,’ of the bard is _Tatta Multan ka rao_,[2.7.137] indicative of their original abodes on the Indus. They lay claim, however, to descent from the Suryavansi, and maintain that their great ancestor, Bala or Bapa, was the offspring of Lava, the eldest son of Rama; that their first settlement in Saurashtra was at the ancient Dhank, in more remote periods called Mungi Paithan; and that, in conquering the country adjacent, they termed it Balakshetra (their capital Valabhipura), and assumed the title of Balarae. Here they claim identity with the Guhilot race of Mewar: nor is it impossible that they may be a branch of this family, which long held power in Saurashtra.[2.7.138] Before the Guhilots adopted the worship of Mahadeo, which period is indicated in their annals, the chief object of their adoration was the sun, giving them that Scythic resemblance to which the Balas have every appearance of claim [113].

The Balas on the continent of Saurashtra, on the contrary, assert their origin to be Induvansa, and that they are the Balakaputras who were the ancient lords of Aror on the Indus. It would be presumption to decide between these claims; but I would venture to surmise that they might be the offspring of Salya, one of the princes of the Mahabharata, who founded Aror.

The Kathis claim descent from the Balas: an additional proof of northern origin, and strengthening their right to the epithet of the bards, ‘Lords of Multan and Tatta.’ The Balas were of sufficient consequence in the thirteenth century to make incursions on Mewar, and the first exploit of the celebrated Rana Hamir was his killing the Bala chieftain of Chotila.[2.7.139] The present chief of Dhank is a Bala, and the tribe yet preserves importance in the peninsula.

=Jhāla Makwāna.=—This tribe also inhabits the Saurashtra peninsula. It is styled Rajput, though neither classed with the Solar, Lunar, nor Agnikula races; but though we cannot directly prove it, we have every right to assign to it a northern origin. It is a tribe little known in Hindustan or even Rajasthan, into which latter country it was introduced entirely through the medium of the ancient lords of Saurashtra, the present family of Mewar; a sanction which covers every defect. A splendid act of self-devotion of the Jhala chief, when Rana Partap was oppressed with the whole weight of Akbar’s power, obtained, with the gratitude of this prince, the highest honours he could confer,—his daughter in marriage, and a seat on his right hand. That it was the act, and not his rank in the scale of the thirty-six tribes, which gained him this distinction, we have decided proof in later times, when it was deemed a mark of great condescension that the present Rana should sanction a remote branch of his own family bestowing a daughter in marriage on the Jhala ruler of Kotah.[2.7.140] This tribe has given its name to one of the largest divisions of Saurashtra, Jhalawar, which possesses several towns of importance. Of these Bankaner, Halwad, and Dhrangadra are the principal.

Regarding the period of the settlement of the Jhalas tradition is silent, as also on their early history: but the aid of its quota was given to the Rana against the [114] first attacks of the Muhammadans; and in the heroic history of Prithwiraja we have ample and repeated mention of the Jhala chieftains who distinguished themselves in his service, as well as in that of his antagonist, and the name of one of these, as recorded by the bard Chand, I have seen inscribed on the granite rock of the sacred Girnar, near their primitive abodes, where we leave them. There are several subdivisions of the Jhala, of which the Makwana is the principal.

=Jethwa, Jaithwa, Kamāri.=—This is an ancient tribe, and by all authorities styled Rajput; though, like the Jhala, little known out of Saurashtra, to one of the divisions of which it has given its name, Jethwar. Its present possessions are on the western coast of the peninsula: the residence of its prince, who is styled Rana, is Porbandar.

In remote times their capital was Ghumli, whose ruins attest considerable power, and afford singular scope for analogy, in architectural device, with the style termed Saxon of Europe.[2.7.141] The bards of the Jethwas run through a long list of one hundred and thirty crowned heads, and in the eighth century have chronicled the marriage of their prince with the Tuar refounder of Delhi. At this period the Jethwa bore the name of Kamar; and Sahl Kamar is reported to be the prince who was driven from Ghumli, in the twelfth century, by invaders from the north. With this change the name of Kamar was sunk, and that of Jethwa assumed, which has induced the author to style them Kamari;[2.7.142] and as they, with the other inhabitants of this peninsula, have all the appearance of Scythic descent, urging no pretensions to connexion with the ancient races of India, they may be a branch of that celebrated race, the Cimmerii of higher Asia, and the Cimbri of Europe.

Their legends are as fabulous as fanciful. They trace their descent from the monkey-god Hanuman, and confirm it by alleging the elongation of the spine of their princes, who bear the epithet of Puncharia, or the ‘long-tailed,’ Ranas of Saurashtra. But the manners and traditions of this race will appear more fully in the narrative of the author’s travels amongst them.

=Gohil.=[2.7.143]—This was a distinguished race: it claims to be Suryavansi, and with some pretension. The first residence of the Gohils was Juna Khergarh, near the bend of the Luni in Marwar.[2.7.144] How long they had been established here we know not. They took it from one of the aboriginal Bhil chiefs named Kherwa, and had been in possession of it for twenty generations when expelled by the [115] Rathors at the end of the twelfth century. Thence migrating to Saurashtra, they fixed at Piramgarh;[2.7.145] which being destroyed, one branch settled at Bhagwa, and the chief marrying the daughter of Nandanagar or Nandod,[2.7.146] he usurped or obtained his father-in-law’s estates; and twenty-seven generations are enumerated, from Sompal to Narsingh, the present Raja of Nandod. Another branch fixed at Sihor, and thence founded Bhaunagar and Gogha. The former town, on the gulf of the Mahi, is the residence of the Gohils, who have given their name, Gohilwar, to the eastern portion of the peninsula of Saurashtra. The present chief addicts himself to commerce, and possesses ships which trade to the gold coast of Sofala.

=Sarwaiya or Sariaspa.=—Of this race tradition has left us only the knowledge that it once was famous; for although, in the catalogues of the bard, it is introduced as the “essence of the Khatri race,”[2.7.147] we have only a few legends regarding its present degradation. Its name, as well as this epithet of the bard, induces a belief that it is a branch of the Aswas, with the prefix of _sar_, denoting ‘essence,’ or priority. But it is useless to speculate on a name.

=Silār or Salār.=—Like the former, we have here but the shade of a name; though one which, in all probability, originated the epithet Larike, by which the Saurashtra peninsula was known to Ptolemy and the geographers of early Europe. The tribe of Lar was once famous in Saurashtra, and in the annals of Anhilwara mention is made of Siddharaja Jayasingha having extirpated them throughout his dominions. Salar, or Silar, would therefore be distinctively _the_ Lar.[2.7.148] Indeed, the author of the Kumarpal Charitra styles it Rajtilak, or ‘regal prince’; but the name only now exists amongst the mercantile classes professing the faith of Buddha [Jainism]: it is inserted as one of the eighty-four. The greater portion of these are of Rajput origin.

=Dabhi.=—Little can be said of this tribe but that it was once celebrated in Saurashtra. By some it is called the branch of the Yadu, though all the genealogists give it distinct importance. It now possesses neither territory nor numbers.[2.7.149]

=Gaur.=—The Gaur tribe was once respected in Rajasthan, though it never there attained to any considerable eminence. The ancient kings of Bengal were of this race, and gave their name to the capital, Lakhnauti [116].

We have every reason to believe that they were possessors of the land afterwards occupied by the Chauhans, as they are styled in all the old chronicles the ‘Gaur of Ajmer.’ Repeated mention is made of them in the wars of Prithwiraja, as leaders of considerable renown, one of whom formed a small State in the centre of India, which survived through seven centuries of Mogul domination, till it at length fell a prey indirectly to the successes of the British over the Mahrattas, when Sindhia in 1809 annihilated the power of the Gaur and took possession of his capital, Sheopur.[2.7.150] A petty district, yielding about £5000 annually, is all this rapacious head of a predatory government has left to the Gaur, out of about twelve lacs of annual revenue. The Gaur has five sakha: Untahar, Silhala, Tur, Dusena, and Budana.[2.7.151]

=Dor or Doda.=—We have little to say of this race. Though occupying a place in all the genealogies, time has destroyed all knowledge of the past history of a tribe, to gain a victory over whom was deemed by Prithwiraja worthy of a tablet.[2.7.152]

=Gaharwār.=—The Gaharwar Rajput is scarcely known to his brethren in Rajasthan, who will not admit his contaminated blood to mix with theirs; though, as a brave warrior, he is entitled to their fellowship. The original country of the Gaharwar is in the ancient kingdom of Kasi.[2.7.153] Their great ancestor was Khortaj Deva, from whom Jasaunda, the seventh in descent, in consequence of some grand sacrificial rites performed at Vindhyavasi, gave the title of Bundela to his issue. Bundela has now usurped the name of Gaharwar, and become the appellation of the immense tract which its various branches inhabit in Bundelkhand, on the ruins of the Chandelas, whose chief cities, Kalanjar, Mohini, and Mahoba, they took possession of.[2.7.154]

=Chandel.=—The Chandela, classed by some of the genealogists amongst the thirty-six tribes, were powerful in the twelfth century, possessing the whole of the regions between [117] the Jumna and Nerbudda, now occupied by the Bundelas and Baghelas. Their wars with Prithwiraja, forming one of the most interesting of his exploits, ended in the humiliation of the Chandela, and prepared the way for their conquest by the Gaharwars; the date of the supremacy of the Bundela Manvira was about A.D. 1200. Madhukar Sah, the thirteenth in descent from him, founded Orchha on the Betwa, by whose son, Birsingh Deva, considerable power was attained. Orchha became the chief of the numerous Bundela principalities; but its founder drew upon himself everlasting infamy, by putting to death the wise Abu-l Fazl,[2.7.155] the historian and friend of the magnanimous Akbar, and the encomiast and advocate of the Hindu race.

From the period of Akbar the Bundelas bore a distinguished part in all the grand conflicts, to the very close of the monarchy: nor, amongst all the brave chiefs of Rajasthan, did any perform more gallant or faithful services than the Bundela chieftains of Orchha and Datia. Bhagwan of Orchha commanded the advanced guard of the army of Shah Jahan. His son, Subhkarana, was Aurangzeb’s most distinguished leader in the Deccan, and Dalpat fell in the war of succession on the plains of Jajau.[2.7.156] His descendants have not degenerated; nor is there anything finer in the annals of the chivalry of the West, than the dignified and heroic conduct of the father of the present chief.[2.7.157] The Bundela is now a numerous race, while the name Gaharwar remains in their original haunts.

=Bargūjar.=—This race is Suryavansi, and the only one, with the exception of the Guhilot, which claims from Lava, the elder son of Rama. The Bargujar held considerable possessions in Dhundhar,[2.7.158] and their capital was the hill fortress of Rajor[2.7.159] in the principality of Macheri. Rajgarh and Alwar were also their [118] possessions. The Bargujars were expelled these abodes by the Kachhwahas. A colony found refuge and a new residence at Anupshahr on the Ganges.

=Sengar.=—Of this tribe little is known, nor does it appear ever to have obtained great celebrity. The sole chieftainship of the Sengars is Jagmohanpur on the Jumna.[2.7.160]

=Sakarwāl.=—This tribe, like the former, never appears to have claimed much notice amidst the princes of Rajasthan; nor is there a single independent chieftain now remaining, although there is a small district called after them, Sakarwar, on the right bank of the Chambal, adjoining Jaduvati, and like it now incorporated in the province of Gwalior, in Sindhia’s dominions. The Sakarwal is therefore reduced to subsist by cultivation, or the more precarious employment of his lance, either as a follower of others, or as a common depredator. They have their name from the town of Sikri (Fatehpur), which was formerly an independent principality.[2.7.161]

=Bais.=—The Bais has obtained a place amongst the thirty-six races, though the author believes it but a subdivision of the Suryavansi, as it is neither to be met with in the lists of Chand, nor in those of the Kumarpal Charitra. It is now numerous, and has given its name to an extensive district, Baiswara in the Duab, or the land between the Ganges and Jumna.[2.7.162]

=Dahia.=—This is an ancient tribe, whose residence was the banks of the Indus, near its confluence with the Sutlej; and although they retain a place amongst the thirty-six royal races, we have not the knowledge of any as now existing. They are mentioned in the annals of the Bhattis of Jaisalmer, and from name as well as from locale, we may infer that they were the Dahae of Alexander.[2.7.163]

=Joiya, Johya.=—This race possessed the same haunts as the Dahia, and are always coupled with them. They, however, extended across the Ghara into the northern desert of India, and in ancient chronicles are entitled ‘Lords of Jangaldesa,’ a tract which comprehended Hariana, Bhatner, and Nagor. The author possesses a work relative to this tribe, like the Dahia, now extinct.[2.7.164]

=Mohil.=—We have no mode of judging of the pretensions of this race to the place it is allowed to occupy by the genealogists. All that can be learned of its past history is, that it inhabited a considerable tract so late as the foundation of the present State of Bikaner, the Rathor founders of which expelled, if not extirpated, the Mohil. With the Malan, Malani, and Mallia, also extinct, it may [119] claim the honour of descent from the ancient Malloi, the foes of Alexander, whose abode was Multan. (_Qu._ Mohilthan?)[2.7.165]

=Nikumbha.=—Of this race, to which celebrity attaches in all the genealogies, we can only discover that they were proprietors of the district of Mandalgarh prior to the Guhilots.[2.7.166]

=Rājpāli.=—It is difficult to discover anything regarding this race, which, under the names of Rajpali, Rajpalaka, or simply Pala, are mentioned by all the genealogists; especially those of Saurashtra, to which in all probability it was confined. This tends to make it Scythic in origin; the conclusion is strengthened by the derivation of the name, meaning ‘royal shepherd’: it was probably a branch of the ancient Pali.[2.7.167]

=Dahariya.=—The Kumarpal Charitra is our sole authority for classing this race with the thirty-six. Of its history we know nothing. Amongst the princes who came to the aid of Chitor, when first assailed by the arms of Islam, was ‘the lord of Debal, Dahir, Despati.’[2.7.168] From the ignorance of the transcriber of the Guhilot annals, _Delhi_ is written instead of _Debal_; but we not only have the whole of the names of the Tuar race, but Delhi was not in existence at this time. Slight as is the mention of this prince in the Chitor annals, it is nevertheless of high value, as stamping them with authenticity; for this Dahir was actually the despot of Sind, whose tragical end in his capital Debal is related by Abu-l Fazl. It was in the ninety-ninth year of the Hegira that he was attacked by Muhammad bin Kasim, the lieutenant of the Caliph of Bagdad, and treated with the greatest barbarity.[2.7.169] Whether this prince used Dahir as a proper name, or as that of his tribe, must be left to conjecture.

=Dahima.=—The Dahima has left but the wreck of a great name.[2.7.170] Seven centuries have swept away all recollection of a tribe who once afforded one of the proudest themes for the song of the bard. The Dahima was the lord of Bayana, and one of the most powerful vassals of the Chauhan emperor, Prithwiraja. Three brothers of this house held the highest offices under this monarch, and the period during which the elder, Kaimas, was his minister, was the brightest in the history of the Chauhan: but he fell a victim to a blind jealousy. Pundir, the second brother [120], commanded the frontier at Lahore. The third, Chawand Rae, was the principal leader in the last battle, where Prithwiraja fell, with the whole of his chivalry, on the banks of the Ghaggar. Even the historians of Shihabu-d-din have preserved the name of the gallant Dahima, Chawand Rae, whom they style Khandirai; and to whose valour, they relate, Shihabu-d-din himself nearly fell a sacrifice. With the Chauhan, the race seems to have been extinguished. Rainsi, his only son, was by this sister of Chawand Rae, but he did not survive the capture of Delhi. This marriage forms the subject of one of the books of the bard, who never was more eloquent than in the praise of the Dahima.[2.7.171]

ABORIGINAL RACES[2.7.172]

Bagri, Mer, Kaba, Mina, Bhil, Sahariya, Thori, Khangar, Gond, Bhar, Janwar, and Sarad.

AGRICULTURAL AND PASTORAL TRIBES

Abhira or Ahir, Goala, Kurmi or Kulumbi, Gujar, and Jat

RAJPUT TRIBES TO WHICH NO SAKHA IS ASSIGNED

Jalia, Peshani, Sohagni, Chahira, Ran, Simala, Botila, Gotchar, Malan, Uhir, Hul, Bachak, Batar, Kerach, Kotak, Busa, and Bargota.

CATALOGUE OF THE EIGHTY-FOUR MERCANTILE TRIBES

Sri Sri Mal, Srimal, Oswal, Bagherwal, Dindu, Pushkarwal, Mertawal, Harsora, Surawal, Piliwal, Bhambu, Kandhelwal, Dohalwal, Kederwal, Desawal, Gujarwal, Sohorwal, Agarwal, Jaelwal, Manatwal, Kajotiwal, Kortawal, Chehtrawal, Soni, Sojatwal, Nagar, Mad, Jalhera, Lar, Kapol, Khareta, Barari, Dasora, Bambarwal, Nagadra, Karbera, Battewara, Mewara, Narsinghpura, Khaterwal, Panchamwal, Hanerwal, Sirkera, Bais, Stukhi, Kambowal, Jiranwal, Baghelwal, Orchitwal, Bamanwal, Srigur, Thakurwal, Balmiwal, Tepora, Tilota, Atbargi, Ladisakha, Badnora, Khicha, Gasora, Bahaohar, Jemo, Padmora, Maharia, Dhakarwal, Mangora, Goelwal, Mohorwal, Chitora, Kakalia, Bhareja, Andora, Sachora, Bhungrawal, Mandahala, Bramania, Bagria, Dindoria, Borwal, Sorbia, Orwal, Nuphag, and Nagora. (One wanting.)

Footnote 2.7.1:

[This catalogue is now of historical or traditional, rather than of ethnographical value. It includes some which are admittedly extinct: others which are proved to be derived from Gurjara and other foreign tribes, while it omits many clans which are most influential at the present day, and some of those included in the list are now represented by scattered groups outside Rājputāna.]

Footnote 2.7.2:

Of his works I possess the most complete copy existing.

Footnote 2.7.3:

Presented to the Royal Asiatic Society.

Footnote 2.7.4:

Moghji, one of the most intelligent bards of the present day; but, heartbroken, he has now but the woes of his race to sing. Yet has he forgot them for a moment to rehearse the deeds of Parsanga, who sealed his fidelity by his death on the Ghaggar. Then the invisible mantle of Bhavani was wrapt around him; and with the birad (_furor poeticus_) flowing freely of their deeds of yore, their present degradation, time, and place were all forgot. But the time is fast approaching when he may sing with the Cambrian bard:

“Ye lost companions of my tuneful art, Where are ye fled?”

Footnote 2.7.5:

One of two specimens shall be given in the proper place.

Footnote 2.7.6:

A prince of Bundi had married a Rajputni of the Malani tribe, a name now unknown: but a bard repeating the ‘gotracharya,’ it was discovered to have been about eight centuries before a ramification (sakha) of the Chauhan, to which the Hara of Bundi belonged—divorce and expiatory rites, with great unhappiness, were the consequences. What a contrast to the unhallowed doctrines of polyandry, as mentioned amongst the Pandavas, the Scythic nations, the inhabitants of Sirmor of the present day, and pertaining even to Britain in the days of Caesar!—“Uxores habent deni duodenique inter se communes,” says that accurate writer, speaking of the natives of this island; “et maximè fratres cum fratribus, parentesque cum liberis: sed si qui sint ex his nati, eorum habentur liberi, quo primum virgo quaeque deducta est.”

Footnote 2.7.7:

_Aparam sakham_, ‘of innumerable branches,’ is inscribed on an ancient tablet of the Guhilot race.

Footnote 2.7.8:

_Got_, _khanp_, denote a clan; its subdivisions have the patronymic terminating with the syllable ‘_ot_,’ ‘_awat_,’ ‘_sot_,’ in the use of which euphony alone is their guide: thus, _Saktawat_, ‘sons of Sakta’; _Kurmasot_, ‘of Kurma’; _Mairawat_, or _mairot_, mountaineers, ‘sons of the mountains.’ Such is the Greek _Mainote_, from _maina_, a mountain, in the ancient Albanian dialect, of eastern origin.

Footnote 2.7.9:

From _agni_ (_qu._ _ignis?_) ‘fire,’ the sons of Vulcan, as the others of Sol and Luna, or Lunus, to change the sex of the parent of the Indu (moon) race.

Footnote 2.7.10:

_Vansavali, Suryavansi Rajkuli Rana Chitor ka Dhani, Chhattis Kuli Sengar._—MSS. from the Rana’s library, entitled _Khuman Raesa_.

Footnote 2.7.11:

Always conjoined with Vairat—‘Vijayapur Vairatgarh.’ [Vairāt forty-one miles north of Jaipur city. The reference in the text is merely a bardic fable, there being no connexion between Vijaya and this place (_ASR_, ii. 249).]

Footnote 2.7.12:

A.D. 319. The inscription recording this, as well as others relating to Valabhi and this era, I discovered in Saurashtra, as well as the site of this ancient capital, occupying the position of ‘Byzantium’ in Ptolemy’s geography of India. They will be given in the _Transactions_ of the Royal Asiatic Society. [The Valabhi agrees with the Gupta era (Smith, _EHI_, 20).]

Footnote 2.7.13:

Anandpur Ahar, or ‘Ahar the city of repose.’ By the tide of events, the family was destined to fix their last capital, Udaipur, near Ahar.

Footnote 2.7.14:

The middle of the eighth century.

Footnote 2.7.15:

[Or Maurya], a Pramara prince.

Footnote 2.7.16:

[For a different list, see _Census Report, Rajputana, 1911_, i. 256.]

Footnote 2.7.17:

The place where they found refuge was in the cluster of hills still called _Yadu ka dang_, ‘the Yadu hills’:—the _Joudes_ of Rennell’s geography [see p. 75 above].

Footnote 2.7.18:

[Zabulistan, with its capital, Ghazni, in Afghanistan.]

Footnote 2.7.19:

The date assigned long prior to the Christian era, agrees with the Grecian, but the names and manners are Muhammadan.

Footnote 2.7.20:

Lodorwa Patan, whence they expelled an ancient race, was their capital before Jaisalmer. There is much to learn of these regions.

Footnote 2.7.21:

A.D. 1155.

Footnote 2.7.22:

[The capital of Sambos was Sindimana, perhaps the modern Sihwān (Smith, _EHI_, 101).]

Footnote 2.7.23:

[This is very doubtful.]

Footnote 2.7.24:

They have an infinitely better etymology for this, in being descendants of Jambuvati, one of Hari’s eight wives. [The origin of the term Jām is very doubtful: see Yule, _Hobson-Jobson_, s.v.]

Footnote 2.7.25:

The Suraseni of Vraj, the tract so named, thirty miles around Mathura.

Footnote 2.7.26:

Its chief, Rao Manohar Singh, was well known to me, and was, I may say, my friend. For years letters passed between us, and he had made for me a transcript of a valuable copy of the Mahabharata.

Footnote 2.7.27:

[Vigraha-rāja, known as Vīsaladeva, Bīsal Deo, in the middle of the twelfth century, is alleged to have conquered Delhi from a chief of the Tomara clan. That chief was a descendant of Ānangapāla, who, a century before, had built the Red Fort (Smith, _EHI_, 386).]

Footnote 2.7.28:

Several Mahratta chieftains deduce their origin from the Tuar race, as Ram Rao Phalkia, a very gallant leader of horse in Sindhia’s State.

Footnote 2.7.29:

[This is a pure myth (Smith, _EHI_, 385, 413).]

Footnote 2.7.30:

[For a fuller list, see _Census Report, Rajputana, 1911_, i. 255 f.]

Footnote 2.7.31:

From this I should be inclined to pronounce the Rathors descendants of a race (probably Scythic) professing the Buddhist faith, of which Gotama was the last great teacher, and disciple of the last Buddha Mahivira, in S. 477 (A.D. 533). [Buddhism and Jainism are, as usual, confused.]

Footnote 2.7.32:

Enigmatical—‘Clay formation by fire’ (_agni_).

Footnote 2.7.33:

[The Kuldevi, or family goddess, of the Rāthors in Nāgnaichiān, whose original title was Rājeswari or Ratheswari, her present name being taken from the village of Nāgāna in Pachbhadra; and she has a temple in the Jodhpur fort, with shrines under the _nīm_ tree (_Azadirachta Indica_) which is held sacred in all Rathor settlements (_Census Report, Marwar, 1891_, ii. 25).]

Footnote 2.7.34:

Erroneously written and pronounced Kutchwaha.

Footnote 2.7.35:

The resemblance between the Kushite Ramesa of Ayodhya and the Rameses of Egypt is strong. Each was attended by his army of satyrs, Anubis and Cynocephalus, which last is a Greek misnomer, for the animal bearing this title is of the Simian family, as his images (in the Turin museum) disclose, and the brother of the faithful Hanuman. The comparison between the deities within the Indus (called _Nilab_, ‘blue waters’) and those of the Nile in Egypt, is a point well worth discussion. [These speculations are untenable.]

Footnote 2.7.36:

A name in compliment, probably, to the elder branch of their race, Lava.

Footnote 2.7.37:

[See a list in _Census Report, Rajputana, 1911_, i. 255.]

Footnote 2.7.38:

There is a captivating elegance thrown around the theogonies of Greece and Rome, which we fail to impart to the Hindu; though that elegant scholar, Sir William Jones, could make even Sanskrit literature fascinating; and that it merits the attempt intrinsically, we may infer from the charm it possesses to the learned chieftain of Rajasthan. That it is perfectly analogous to the Greek and Roman, we have but to translate the names to show. For instance:—

Solar. Lunar.

Maricha (Lux) Atri.

Kasyapa (Uranus) Samudra (Oceanus).

Vaivaswata or Surya (Sol) Soma, or Ind (Luna; _qu._ Lunus?).

Vaivaswa Manu (Filius Solis) Brihaspati (Jupiter).

Ila (Terra) Budha (Mercurius).

Footnote 2.3.39:

[Hoernle (_JRAS_, 1905, p. 20) believes that the Parihāras were the only sept which claimed fire-origin before Chand (_flor._ A.D. 1191). But a legend of the kind was current in South India in the second century A.D. (_IA_, xxxiv. 263).]

Footnote 2.3.40:

Figuratively, ‘the serpent.’

Footnote 2.3.41:

To me it appears that there were four distinguished Buddhas or wise men, teachers of monotheism in India, which they brought from Central Asia, with their science and its written character, the arrow or nail-headed, which I have discovered wherever they have been,—in the deserts of Jaisalmer, in the heart of Rajasthan, and the shores of Saurashtra; which were their nurseries.

The first Budha is the parent of the Lunar race, A.C. 2250. The second (twenty-second of the Jains), Nemnath, A.C. 1120. The third (twenty-third do. ), Parsawanath, A.C. 650. The fourth (twenty-fourth do. ), Mahivira, A.C. 533.

[The author confuses Budha, Mercury, with Buddha, the Teacher, and mixes up Buddhists with Jains.]

Footnote 2.7.42:

_Achal_, ‘immovable,’ _eswara_, ‘lord.’

Footnote 2.7.43:

It extended from the Indus almost to the Jumna, occupying all the sandy regions, Naukot, Arbuda or Abu, Dhat, Mandodri, Kheralu, Parkar, Lodorva, and Pugal.

Footnote 2.7.44:

See _Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society_, vol. i. p. 227. [Rāja Munja of Mālwa reigned A.D. 974-995. The famous Bhoja, his nephew, not his son, 1018-60 (Smith, _EHI_, 395).]

Footnote 2.7.45:

Which will be given in the _Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society_.

Footnote 2.7.46:

S. 770, or A.D. 714.

Footnote 2.7.47:

“When the Pramar of Tilang took sanctuary with Har, to the thirty-six tribes he made gifts of land. To Kehar he gave Katehr, to Rae Pahar the coast of Sind, to the heroes of the shell the forest lands. Ram Pramar of Tilang, the Chakravartin lord of Ujjain, made the gift. He bestowed Delhi on the Tuars, and Patan on the Chawaras; Sambhar on the Chauhans, and Kanauj on the Kamdhuj; Mardes on the Parihar, Sorath on the Jadon, the Deccan on Jawala, and Cutch on the Charan” (_Poems of Chand_). [This is an invention of the courtly bard.]

Footnote 2.7.48:

The inscription gives S. 1100 (A.D. 1044) for the third Bhoj: and this date agrees with the period assigned to this prince in an ancient Chronogrammatic Catalogue of reigns embracing all the Princes of the name of Bhoj, which may therefore be considered authentic. This authority assigns S. 631 and 721 (or A.D. 575 and 665) to the first and second Bhoj.

Footnote 2.7.49:

Herbert has a curious story of Chitor being called Taxila; thence the story of the Ranas being sons of Porus. I have an inscription from a temple on the Chambal, within the ancient limits of Mewar, which mentions Takshasilanagara, ‘the stone fort of the Tak,’ but I cannot apply it. The city of Toda (Tonk, or properly Tanka) is called in the Chauhan chronicles, Takatpur. [Takshasila, the Taxila of the Greeks, the name meaning ‘the hewn rock,’ or more probably, ‘the rock of Taksha,’ the Nāga king, is the modern Shāhderi in the Rāwalpindi District, Panjāb (_IGI_, xxii. 200 f.).]

Footnote 2.7.50:

Of the Sodha tribe, a grand division of the Pramaras, and who held all the desert regions in remote times. Their subdivisions, Umra and Sumra, gave the names to Umarkot and Umrasumra, in which was the insular Bakhar, on the Indus: so that we do not misapply etymology, when we say in Sodha we have the Sogdoi of Alexander.

Footnote 2.7.52:

See _Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society_, vol. i. p. 133, ‘Comments on a Sanskrit Inscription.’

Footnote 2.7.53:

Asura-Daitya, which Titans were either the aboriginal Bhils or the Scythic hordes.

Footnote 2.7.54:

I have visited this classic spot in Hindu mythology. An image of Adipal (the ‘first-created’), in marble, still adorns its embankment, and is a piece of very fine sculpture. It was too sacred a relic to remove.

Footnote 2.7.55:

‘Portal or door (_dwar_) of the earth’; contracted to Prithihara and Parihara.

Footnote 2.7.56:

‘The first striker.’

Footnote 2.7.57:

[In the Hāra version of the legend the presiding priest is Visvāmitra.]

Footnote 2.7.58:

_Chatur_; _anga_, ‘body’ [_chaturbāhu_].

Footnote 2.7.59:

_Asa_, ‘hope,’ _purna_, to ‘fulfil’; whence the tutelary goddess of the Chauhan race, Asapurna.

Footnote 2.7.60:

The goddess of energy (_Sakti_).

Footnote 2.7.61:

[Cunningham points out that in the original story only the Chauhān was created from the fire-pit, the reference to other clans being a later addition (_ASR_, ii. 255).]

Footnote 2.7.62:

Born in S. 1215, or A.D. 1159. [Anhala or Agnipāla is here the head of the Chauhān line; but a different list appears in the _Hammīra Mahākāvya_ of Nayachhandra Sūri (_IA_, viii. 55 ff.).]

Footnote 2.7.63:

[Ajmer is commonly said to have been founded by Rāja Aja, A.D. 145. It was founded by Ajayadeva Chauhān about A.D. 1100 (_IA_, xxv. 162 f.).]

Footnote 2.7.64:

A name derived from the goddess Sakambhari, the tutelary divinity of the tribes, whose statue is in the middle of the lake.

Footnote 2.7.65:

Dharma Dhiraj, father of Bisaladeva, must have been the defender on this occasion.

Footnote 2.7.66:

[Muhammad bin Kāsim seems to have marched along the Indus valley, not in the direction of Ajmer (Malik Muhammad Din, _Bahawalpur Gazetteer_, i. 28).]

Footnote 2.7.67:

[This is doubtful. Maudūd seems to have not come further south than Siālkot (Al Badaoni, _Muntakhabu-t-tawārīkh_, i. 49; Elliot-Dowson ii. 273, iv. 139 f., 199 f., v. 160 f.).]

Footnote 2.7.68:

[The author has barely noticed the Khīchis; for an account of them see _ASR_, ii. 249 ff.]

Footnote 2.7.69:

About Fatehpur Jhunjhunu.

Footnote 2.7.70:

[For a different list see _Rajputana Census Report, 1911_, i. 255.]

Footnote 2.7.71:

[The Chalukya is a Gurjara tribe, the name being the Sanskritized form of the old dynastic title, Chalkya, of the Deccan dynasty (A.D. 552-973); and of this Solanki is a dialectical variant (_IA_, xi. 24; _BG_, i. Part i. 156, Part ii. 336).]

Footnote 2.7.72:

Solanki Gotracharya is thus: “Madhwani Sakha—Bharadwaja Gotra—Garh Lohkot nikas—Sarasvati Nadi (river)—Sama Veda—Kapaliswar Deva—Karduman Rikheswar—Tin Parwar Zunar (zone of three threads)—Keonj Devi—Mahipal Putra (one of the Penates).” [Lohkot is Lohara in Kashmīr (Stein, _Rājatarangini_, i. Introd. 108, ii. 293 ff.).]

Footnote 2.7.73:

Called Malkhani, being the sons of Mal Khan, the first apostate from his faith to Islamism. Whether these branches of the Solankis were compelled to quit their religion, or did it voluntarily, we know not.

Footnote 2.7.74:

Near Bombay. [In Thana District, not Malabar coast.]

Footnote 2.7.75:

Son of Jai Singh Solanki, the emigrant prince of Kalyan, who married the daughter of Bhojraj. These particulars are taken from a valuable little geographical and historical treatise, incomplete and without title. [Mūlarāja Chaulukya, A.D. 961-96, was son of Bhūbhata: Chāmunda, A.D. 997-1010; it was in the reign of Bhīma I. (1022-64) that Mahmūd’s invasion in A.D. 1024 occurred (_BG_, i. Part i. 156 ff. 164).]

Footnote 2.7.76:

Called Chamund by Muhammadan historians.

Footnote 2.7.77:

[Ferishta i. 61.]

Footnote 2.7.78:

He ruled from S. 1150 to 1201 [A.D. 1094-1143]. It was his court that was visited by El Edrisi, commonly called the Nubian geographer, who particularly describes this prince as following the tenets of Buddha. [He was probably not a Jain (_BG_, i. Part i. 179).]

Footnote 2.7.79:

[The Gujarāt account of the campaign is different (_BG_, i. Part i. 184 f.).]

Footnote 2.7.80:

[Kumārapāla made many benefactions to the Jains (_Ibid._ i. Part i. 190 f.).]

Footnote 2.7.81:

[Ajayapāla succeeded Kumārapāla. Bhima II. (A.D. 1179-1242), called Bholo, ‘the simpleton,’ was the last of the Chaulukya dynasty, which was succeeded by that of the Vāghelas (1219-1304). Vīsaladeva reigned A.D. 1243-61. See a full account, _Ibid._ 194 ff.]

Footnote 2.7.82:

Satranjaya. [_IGI_, xix. 361 ff.]

Footnote 2.7.83:

In 1822 I made a journey to explore the remains of antiquity in Saurashtra. I discovered a ruined suburb of the ancient Patan still bearing the name of _Anhilwara_, the _Nahrwara_, which D’Anville had “fort à cœur de retrouver.” I meditate a separate account of this kingdom, and the dynasties which governed it.

Footnote 2.7.84:

[Zafar Khān, son of Sahāran of the Tānk tribe of Rājputs, embraced Islam, and became viceroy of Gujarāt. According to Ferishta, he threw off his allegiance to Delhi in 1396, or rather maintained a nominal allegiance till 1403. Ahmad was grandson, not son, of Muzaffar. (Ferishta iv. 2 f.; Bayley, _Dynasties of Gujarat_, 67 ff.; _BG_, i.