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History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c84.s3: Bundelkhand

History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c84.s3

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Bundelkhand

§ 15. Chhatra Sal Bundela's early life : as a Mughal captain.

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When the rebel and general robber Champat Rao Bundela was hunted down by order of Aurangzib (1661), he left five sons behind him. The fourth of these, named Chhatra Sal,[*] was then a boy of eleven only, but he lived to defy the imperial Government with success for half a century, keep his own province in constant turmoil, invade Malwa, and finally to carve out an independent principality in Eastern Malwa, with its capital at Panna. His long life of 81 years ended in 1731 with the complete effacement of Mughal rule in Bundelkhand.

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∗ Chhatra Sal : (*M.U.* ii. 510—512 useless and incorrect); service with Jai Singh (*H.A.* Paris MS. 111, Ben. MS. 64a, 73a); *Chhatraprakash*, cantos 10 (Deogarh expedition), 11 (interviews with Shivaji and Sujan Singh), 12 (meeting with Ratan Shah, 13 *et seq* (war against the Mughals.) In *M.U.*

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For some years before his death, Champat had robbed the territories of other Bundela chiefs as freely as the Mughal dominion. His orphans were, therefore, left utterly friendless and found no honourable career open to them anywhere. Chhatra Sal and his elder brother Angad repeatedly entreated Mirza Rajah Jai Singh to befriend them and give them employment and the chance of distinction in the Emperor's service by taking them with him to the war against Shivaji (1665). Jai Singh moved cautiously and first employed the two brothers in his own contingent, promising to recommend them

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Chhatra Sal Bundela has been confounded with Chhatra Sal Rathor (son of Ratan Singh), a loyal servant of Aurangzib and qiladar in the Deccan, who rose to be a commander of 1500 in 1703. The mistake originated in the news-writers of the imperial Court, in their hurry, giving the latter's title as Bundela in some places (and Rathor in others), though his father's name is given as Ratan Singh Rathor. M.A. using one such wrong Akhbarat called the qiladar C.S. Bundela; M.U. and Irvine's Later Mughals repeated the error, from M.A. It is only the study of the mass of original Akhbarat that has enabled me to detect and rectify this mistake. C.S. Bundela never served under Aurangzib between 1670 and 1704.

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for enlistment in the imperial army only if they did good service. The two youths did distinguish themselves at the siege of Purandhar, and Jai Singh kept his promise by getting (3rd Aug. 1665) for Angad and Chhatra Sal the mansabs of hazari and 3-sadi respectively.

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They also followed him in his invasion of Bijapur (Dec. 1665—Feb. 1666.) Chhatra Sal was next employed in the Mughal attack on Deogarh by Dilir Khan.* Here he fought heroically and was severely wounded, but we must reject his Court-poet's hyperbole that the Mughal victory was solely due to a charge made by Chhatra Sal single-handed, while the rest of the army hung back in fear! Whatever grain of truth the story may have contained, the young Bundela prince felt that he was not being rewarded as he deserved, and that a subaltern's career in the Mughal army did not offer full scope to his soaring ambition. He dreamt of taking to a life of adventure and independence in imitation of Shivaji, which meant a defiance of the Mughal Government.

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∗ Here the Chhatraprakash (canto 10) presents several difficulties: (1) The Mughal general is called Bahadur Khan (Kokah or foster-brother of Aurangzib); but we know from official records that both in 1667 and 1669 it was Dilir Kh. who commanded the Mughal forces in Deogarh, (2) Chhatra Sal is said to have been detached to Deogarh by Jai Singh, though the latter died early in July 1667. (3) The Mughals are said to have fought a severe battle before the Deogarh Rajah was compelled to submit; but we know from the Alamgirnamah that the expedition of 1667 resulted in no fighting, as the Deogarh Rajah submitted in fear. In 1669 there was some fighting, but that was long after Jai Singh's death.

§ 16. Chhatra Sal aims at independence.

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Young Chhatra Sal with his wife left the Mughal army under the pretext of hunting, and made a perilous journey to the Court of Shivaji, under whom he begged employment. But the Maratha king advised him to return to his own country and use his local influence to promote risings against Aurangzib, so as to distract the Mughal forces. Meeting with disappointment at the Maratha Court, Chhatra Sal next paid a visit to Subh-karn Bundela, a loyal officer and favourite of the Emperor, then serving in the Deccan at the head of a large contingent of his clansmen. This general held Chhatra Sal's plan of a national rising against the Mughals to be a wild and futile dream; his own loyalty could not be shaken, he was contented with Mughal service, and merely offered to beg the Emperor for a high command for Chhatra Sal. The latter refused it and returned home.

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It seemed to all that Chhatra Sal, without troops treasure stronghold or even country, could not attack the mighty Mughal empire with success. But just at this time Aurangzib's blind fanaticism played into the hands of the young Bundela patriot. The policy of temple destruction on which Aurangzib launched in 1670, created an opening which Chhatra Sal at once improved. The Hindu population of Bundelkhand and the adjoining province of Malwa took up arms in defence of the altars of their gods. An attempt of Fidai Khan, the governor of Gwalior (1670) to demolish the famous temple of Urchha led to his defeat and repulse by the Bundelas under Dharmangad. The feelings of the entire clan were outraged by this wanton attack on their religion, and even those Bundela chiefs who had been so long loyally serving the ungrateful Mughal Government, now gave their secret sympathies to their rebel brethren, and could not be ordered out against them.

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The people in Bundelkhand sighed for a bold leader who would repeat Champat's spirited defiance of the Mughal Emperor and protect their religion. Chhatra Sal was, therefore, hailed as the champion of the Hindu faith and Kshatriya honour. Even Sujan Singh, the loyal Bundela Rajah of Urchha, sent him a secret message of praise and good wishes.

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But an attack on the great Mughal power required long and careful preparation. And therefore Chhatra Sal next set about to find allies. He first visited Baldev (called in the poem, the diwan) at Aurangabad, and induced him to be his partner in the projected war with the Mughals. Baldev agreed and held himself ready to join the movement when the time for action would come.

§ 17. Chhatra Sal's early war with Mughal Government.

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Then crossing the Narmada, Chhatra Sal re-entered Bundelkhand (1671) to fight the greatest monarch of the age. He was a youth of 21, with only five horsemen and 25 foot-soldiers at his back. His own brother, Ratan Shah (of Bijauri*) though entreated for 18 days to join him, shrank from a contest with Aurangzib as a hopeless task.

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After leaving Bijauri, Chhatra Sal was joined by Baldev with his men at Bichhuré, and then they began the war. "The news of Chhatra Sal's advance was grateful to Bundela ears." He was joined by Baqi Khan, who is called a Bundela in the Hindi poem, but whom I take to be an Afghan brigand chief settled in the district and a natural enemy of the Mughal, and indeed of every orderly Government. The rebels elected Chhatra Sal as their leader and the king of all the Bundelas, with a right to 55 per cent of the booty, while Baldev was to get the remaining 45 per cent. The new monarch's army mustered 35 horse and 300 foot at this time.

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But he soon received large reinforcements. The hope of plunder drew vast numbers of recruits from this martial tribe. Champat, during his lifetime, had been the captain of a numerous band of brigands and soldiers of fortune, and these men had so long remained without work; they now hastened from all sides to the standard of his son. Hindus in general flocked to the enemy of Aurangzib. Many petty chiefs, living along the path of the advancing rebel, could offer no resistance and saved themselves by joining him. The few who opposed were easily routed and their lands plundered.

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∗ Bijaur, 20 m. south of Chhatrapur (Ind. Atlas, 70 N. E.)

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In the earlier part of his career, Chhatra Sal’s raiding activities were mostly directed against the Dhamuni district, which barred the path of his advance south-westwards and against the rich city of Sironj which lay 65 miles west of it. He looted the villages of these two regions year after year. Successive Mughal faujdars of Dhamuni resisted him with indifferent results; they were usually defeated by him and could boast of victory only on rare occasions.*

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∗ Among these local officers, Khaliq was captured in battle and held to ransom for Rs. 30,000; Kesho Rai Bundela, the collector of revenue in Bansa, was killed in single combat; Randaulah Kh. (probably a mistake of Lal Kavi for Ruhullah Kh., the faujdar of Dhamuni in 1673) with a loyal Bundela contingent (evidently the troops of Rajah Jaswant Singh of Urchha, who was ordered against the rebels in Sep. 1678), could effect nothing; nor could Mukhtar Khan (the subahdar of Malwa from 1697 to 1701) with his Turkish (Rumi) retainers gain better success. The names of the other vanquished opponents of Chhatra Sal are given in Chhatraprakash, cantos 13—23. Several of them were faujdars of Dhamuni, Mandesor, Dhar or Mandu in Aurangzib’s closing years, as we know from Persian sources. In July 1688, Dilawwar Khan, the faujdar of Dhamuni, was reported to have defeated “the sons of Champat” with heavy slaughter. (Akhbarat, 9 Aug.)

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In a short time Chhatra Sal's repeated successes decided the waverers. His brother Ratan Shah and many other petty chiefs joined him, and even Durjan Sal, the Hada usurper of Bundi, allied himself with the rebels of Bundelkhand. Chhatra Sal followed the Maratha system of sparing the places that paid him a blackmail of one-fourth of their standard revenue (*chauth*) and plundering those that refused or resisted.

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Years passed on, and he remained still unsubdued. Then, as Aurangzib became more and more deeply entangled in the Deccan, his local agents in Northern and Central India grew weaker and more helpless, and Chhatra Sal achieved more brilliant triumphs, including the capture of Kalinjar and Dhamuni and the loot of Bhilsa. The range of his raids was greatly extended and reached Narwar in the north-west and even beyond it, while southwards he joined forces with Nima Sindhia who periodically invaded Berar. The whole of Malwa from the Jamuna to the Rajput border and the Narmada was his happy hunting ground, and he became a nucleus round which all lawless men of this region assembled.

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§ 18. Chhatra Sal's later career and success.

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Leaving out of consideration the exaggerated and jumbled account of his career given in the epic of his Court-poet Lal Kavi, we can reconstruct Chhatra Sal's history during the last years of Aurangzib's reign on the safe basis of the information supplied by the Court news-letters, though with many gaps caused by the loss of records.

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In March 1699, Sher Afkan Khan, the faujdar of Ranod (70 m.n. of Sironj), marched against him, and attacked him near Suraj-Mau* where he was then living. After a severe battle, Chhatra Sal fled into the fort, which the Khan besieged, but the Bundela chief escaped from it. In this campaign the Khan lost 700 men besides exhausting his private means in keeping up a contingent of 6,000 troopers and 8,000 infantry. Soon afterwards, Chhatra Sal's follower Chhatra-Mukut Bundela went over to the Mughals. [Akh. 21 and 25 Apr., 28 June, 1699.] Sher Afkan next conquered the pargana of Gagron, which had been held for 20 years by Chhatra Sal's son Gharibdas, and was highly rewarded by the Emperor for these successes, being appointed faujdar of Dhamuni, Ranod, &c., and given the above pargana as well as a large cash reward. [Akh. 26 July.]

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But Chhatra Sal had his revenge next year. On 24th April 1700 Sher Afkan Khan attacked him near Jhuna and Barna, slew about 700 of his men, and dispersed the rest after wounding Chhatra Sal himself. But the Khan was mortally wounded by a musket-shot and carried off by Chhatra Sal. The latter very chivalrously wrote to Jafar Ali, the son of the Khan, "Your father has a little life left. Send your servants to take him away." The son sent a *palki*, but it arrived too late. [*Akh.* 12 and 21 May, 1700.]

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∗ There is a Mau, 36 m.e. of Jhansi, and another Mau, 26 m. s.e. of the former Mau, and 10 m. n.w. of Chhatrapur.

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Another son of the deceased, named Ali Quli had evacuated the fort of Shahabad (in his father's jurisdiction) and it was seized by Devi Singh, son of Shahman Dhamdhera. But in October the faujdar of Gwalior recovered it from the rebel. [*Akh.* 11 June, 23 Oct. 1700.]

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The campaign against Chhatra Sal after Sher Afkan's death had been entrusted to Khairandesh Khan, the faujdar of Ranod and Dhamuni. In April 1701 he laid siege to Kalinjar, where Chhatra Sal's family was then living. But the attack evidently failed.

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In 1705 Firuz Jang induced the Emperor to make terms with the irrepressible Bundela. Chhatra Sal was created a 4-*hazari* in the Mughal peerage and induced to visit the Emperor in the Deccan. Here he lived in peace for a year and a half, and then, on Aurangzib's death, returned home to renew his career of independence, as the fullest success was now assured by the decay of the imperial power under the unworthy successors of Aurangzib.∗

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∗ *Dil.* 157*b*; *M. U.* ii. 512. The full history of Chhatra Sal's later career, based upon original Persian and Marathi sources, is given in my edition of Irvine's *Later Mughals*, ii. 227—241.

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