The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c31.s9: IX. The Rājpūt Clans
The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c31.s9
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IX. The Rājpūt Clans
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Ethnological speculations, or discussions about facial angles, thick or thin noses, long skulls or broad skulls, the mystery of the origin of caste, and so forth, are foreign to the purpose of this work, and cannot be even lightly handled in these pages.² But the narrative sections of this chapter dealing with the political fortunes of many Rājpūt clans can hardly fail to suggest to the thoughtful reader inquiries which seem to demand with urgency some sort of answer. Who were these Rājpūts—Parihārs, Pawārs, Chandēls, and the rest—and why do they and their affairs make such a confused stir during the centuries intervening between the death of Harsha and the Muhammadan conquest? The dominance of the Rājpūt clans is at first sight the conspicuous fact differentiating the mediaeval from the ancient period in the history of Northern India, and the mind craves for an explanation. It is proverbially easier to ask questions than to answer them, and in this case the facts are far too complex and imperfectly known to admit of concise satisfactory explanations. Still it may be worth while to make a few observations on the subject, designed to help the weary reader in his endeavour to find some sort of clue to guide him through the maze of dynasties.
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² See Risley and Gait, *Census of India*, 1901, vol. i; Rose, *Census Report for the Panjāb*, 1901; the other *Census Reports*; Ibbetson, *Outlines of Panjab Ethnography*, 4to, Calcutta, 1883; and Baden-Powell, *Notes . . . on the Rājpūt Clans*, *J. R. A. S.*, 1899, pp. 533–63.
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The apparently sudden introduction of Rājpūt states on the stage during the eighth and ninth centuries is in part an illusion. Hardly anything is known about the caste or tribal position of the ancient ruling families. Nobody can tell exactly the rank of Hindu society to which the family of Asoka or Samudragupta belonged, and nothing is on record to indicate how far the kings whose names appear prominently on the scene were merely successful personal adventurers or how far they were the heads of dominant clans. In later times all Rājpūts have considered themselves to be Kshatriyas—members of the second of the four groups of castes according to the familiar Brahman theory.¹ So far back as the time when the *Dialogues of the Buddha* were composed the Kshatriyas were recognized as an important element in society, and in their own estimation stood higher than the Brahmans.¹ The fact probably is that from very remote days ruling clans of Kshatriyas, essentially similar to the Rājpūts of later days, existed and were continually forming new states, just in the same way as in the mediaeval period. But their records have perished, and only a few exceptionally conspicuous dynasties are at all remembered, and so stand out on the page of history in a manner that does not fully represent the truth. The term Kshatriya was, I believe, always one of very vague meaning, simply denoting the Hindu ruling classes which did not claim Brahman descent. Similarly all persons performing priestly functions could be regarded by Hindus only as Brahmans. Occasionally a Rāja might be a Brahman by caste, but the Brahman's natural place at court was that of minister rather than that of king.² Chandragupta Maurya presumably was considered to be a Kshatriya—his minister Chānakya or Kautilya certainly was a Brahman.
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¹ The four *varṇas* of the theory are Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, and Sūdras. The Brahmans appear to be as much mixed in blood as the Rājpūts. The Vaisyas are a very indefinite group, and Sūdras, as such, are hardly recognized in Northern India. For the true explanation of *varṇa* as meaning 'a group of castes (*jāti*)', and not 'a caste', see Ketkar's valuable *History of Caste in India*, esp. vol. i (1909), p. 77. Vol. ii appeared in 1911.
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¹ Rhys Davids, *Dialogues of the Buddha* (1899), pp. 59, 119; *J. R. A. S.* (1894), p. 342.
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² See the brilliant paper by K. P. Jayaswal, 'Revised Notes on the Brahman Empire' (*J. B. & O. Res. Soc.*, iv, pp. 257–65). The Sungas, as well as the Kānvas, were Brahmans, anti-Greek and anti-Buddhist. Hiuen Tsang mentions several Brahman Rājas, e. g. of Ujjain, Jijhoti, and Maheśvarapura (Beal, ii, 270, 271). See the explanation of *Brahmakshatra* in App. O *post*.
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The real difference between the ancient and mediaeval periods is that the living tradition concerning the former has been broken, while that concerning the latter survives. The Mauryas and Guptas belong to a dead and buried past, remembered only through books, inscriptions, and coins, whereas the clans whose ruling families came into notice during the mediaeval period are still very much alive, and in many cases form numerous and influential sections of the existing population.
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Tod and the other older writers perceived long ago that the Rājpūt clans are in large part of foreign, or, as they called it, 'Scythian' descent. The more exact researches of recent times have fully confirmed this opinion, and it is now possible to indicate with a considerable degree of precision the source of the foreign blood in several of the principal clans, and at the same time to recognize the closeness of their relationship with castes which occupy a social position lower than that of the Rājpūts.
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The earliest foreign immigration within the limits of the historical period which can be verified is that of the Sakas in the second century B. C. (*ante*, pp. 240, 265); and the next is that of the Yüe-chi or Kushāns in the first century after Christ (*ante*, p. 267). Probably none of the existing Rājpūt clans can carry back their genuine pedigrees nearly so far. I have no doubt that the ruling families of both the Sakas and the Kushāns when they became Hinduized were admitted to rank as Kshatriyas in the Hindu caste system, but the fact can be inferred only from the analogy of what is ascertained to have happened in later ages—it cannot be proved.
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The third recorded great irruption of foreign barbarians occurred during the fifth century and the early part of the sixth. There are indications that the immigration from Central Asia had continued during the third century (*ante*, p. 289), but, if it did, no distinct record of the event has been preserved, and, so far as positive knowledge goes, only three certain irruptions of foreigners on a large scale through the northern and north-western passes can be proved to have taken place within the historical period anterior to the Muhammadan invasions of the tenth and eleventh centuries. The first and second, as above observed, were those of the Sakas and Yüe-chi respectively, and the third was that of the Hūnas, or White Huns. These names, Saka, Yüe-chi, and Hūna, merely indicate the predominant elements in the invading swarms, which included many various races. The tradition of descent from the first and second swarms has been lost for ages. The Turkī Shāhiya kings of Kabul, who were displaced by the Hindu Shāhiyas in the ninth century, boasted their descent from the great Kushān king, Kanishka, but I do not know of any later claim on the part of an Indian ruling family to relationship with the Yüe-chi.
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The break in tradition seems to be due in large measure to the far-reaching effects of the third barbarian irruption, to which the name of Hūna is given. The meagre literary record of the Hun invasion is supplemented by so many miscellaneous observations in the domains of ethnology, archaeology, and numismatics, that a strong impression is produced on the mind of the student that the Hun invasions disturbed Hindu institutions and polity much more deeply than would be supposed from perusal of the *Purānas*, and other literary works. The Hindu writers display great unwillingness to dwell upon ‘barbarian’ invasions, uniting in ‘a conspiracy of silence’. They never allude to the existence of Alexander the Great, and the Gujarāt historians similarly ignore the sack of Somnāth by Mahmūd of Ghaznī.¹ If Muhammadan authors had not related in detail the story of that famous raid, no record of it would have been found in Indian literature or inscriptions. There is, therefore, no reason for surprise that the Hindu record of the Hun deluge is meagre, and that recognition of its importance has had to be won laboriously by the patient researches of modern archaeologists. It is impossible to set forth the complicated evidence in this place, and the reader must be asked to accept the assertion that the series of invasions by the Huns and associated foreign tribes in the fifth and sixth centuries shook Indian society in Northern India to its foundations, severed the chain of tradition, and brought about a rearrangement of both castes and ruling families. The effects of the Hun cataclysm are obscured partially by the brilliant achievement of Harsha in establishing for thirty-five years (612–47) a strong paramount power able to control the conflicting interests of the various races, clans, and creeds subject to his temporary sway.² When his heavy hand was removed all those elements broke loose, and, after a period of unrecorded anarchy, produced in the domain of politics the new grouping of states described in its leading features in this chapter.
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¹ *Bom. Gaz.*, vol. i, part i (1896), p. 164, note 5. The sack of Somnāth or Prabhāsa Pattan on the coast of Kāthiāwār was the object of Mahmūd's sixteenth raid. He left Ghaznī in December, A. D. 1023, and appeared before Somnāth about March, A. D. 1024. He spent about a year in Gujarāt and returned through Sind to Ghaznī, which he reached about April, 1026.
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² Harsha's reign began in 606, but his paramount power dates from A. D. 612 and continued until his death in 647.
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It seems to be clearly established that the Hun group of tribes or hordes made their principal permanent settlements in Rājputāna and the Panjāb. The most important element in the group, after the Huns themselves, was that of the Gurjaras, whose name still survives in the spoken form Gūjar as the designation of a widely diffused middle-class caste in North-Western India. The Gūjars, primarily a pastoral people, are, of course, like almost all Indian castes, largely engaged in agriculture. The Jāts or Jats, more exclusively agricultural, are recognized universally to be akin to the Gūjars, although it is impossible to define the relationship. Neither Jats or Gūjars are accounted to rank as Rājpūts or Kshatriyas, but most of the Panjāb Jats claim Rājpūt descent.¹
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¹ *Jāt* in United Provinces, *Jat* in Panjāb. *Panjāb Census Rep.*, 1901, pp. 324, 326.
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The prominent position occupied by Gurjara kingdoms in early mediaeval times is a recent discovery. The existence of a small Gurjara principality at Bharōch (Broach), and of a larger state in Rājputāna, had been known to archaeologists for many years, but the recognition of the fact that Bhoja, and the other kings of the powerful Kanauj dynasty in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries were Gurjaras is of recent date. Certain misreadings of epigraphic dates had obscured the true history of that dynasty, until the correct readings were established. It is now definitely proved that Bhoja (*c.* A. D. 840–90), his predecessors and successors, belonged to the Pratihāra (Parihār) clan of the Gurjara tribe or caste, and, consequently, that the well-known clan of Parihār Rājpūts is a branch of the Gurjara or Gūjar stock.²
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² The discovery is the work of Messrs. A. M. T. Jackson (*Bom. Gaz.*, vol. i, part i (1896), esp. p. 467); D. R. Bhandarkar, ‘Gurjaras’ (*J. Bo. Br. R. A. S.*, vol. xx); ‘Epigraphic Notes’ (ibid., vol. xxi); and Prof. Kielhorn, ‘Epigraphic Notes,’ No. 17, ‘The Gwālior Inscription of Mihira Bhoja’ (*Nachr. d. k. Gesellschaft d. Wissensch., Göttingen*, 1905). This important inscription has been edited also by Hīrānanda in the *Archaeol. S. India, Annual Rep.*, 1903–4, p. 277. Dr. Hoernle has laid stress on the discovery in his small *History of India*, and in articles in *J. R. A. S.*, 1903–5.
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A familiar legend appearing in the *Chand Rāīsā* and other late documents in variant forms groups together four Rājpūt clans—the Pawār (Pramāra), Parihār (Pratīhāra), Chauhān (Chāhumāna), and Solankī or Chaulukya—as being *Agnikula*, or 'fire-born', originating from a sacrificial fire-pit at Mount Ābū in Southern Rājputāna. The myth seems to express the historical truths that the four clans named are related, and all arose in Southern Rājputāna; and further, as Mr. Crooke justly observes, it 'represents a rite of purgation by fire, the scene of which was in Southern Rājputāna, whereby the impurity of the foreigners was removed and they became fitted to enter the Hindu caste system'.¹
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¹ 'Rajputs and Mahrattas' (*J. Roy. Anthrop. Inst.*, 1911, p. 42).
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The fact that one of the four clans, namely, the Parihār, undoubtedly is of the Gūjar stock, raises a strong presumption that the three others also are descended from Gurjaras or similar foreign immigrants. In this way the origin of some of the most notable of the Rājpūt clans is accounted for. The Gurjaras are believed to have entered India either along with or soon after the White Huns, and to have settled in large numbers in Rājputāna; but there is nothing to show what part of Asia they came from, or to what race they belonged.² The Pawār head-quarters were at Chandrāvatī and Achalgarh, near Mount Ābū, and in the seventh century the Parihārs ruled a large part of Rājputāna from Bhinmāl, some 50 miles to the north-west of Mount Ābū. About A. D. 800 Nāgabhata, king of the Gurjara country, conquered Kanauj on the Ganges, to which city he shifted his capital, and so founded the long line of Kanauj kings who ruled there until the advent of Mahmūd of Ghaznī at the beginning of A. D. 1019 (*ante*, p. 404). The discovery that the Rājas of Kanauj from 800 to 1018, some of whom enjoyed the rank of paramount sovereigns of Northern India, really were the descendants of 'barbarian' foreign immigrants into Rājputāna in the fifth or sixth century and cousins of the Gūjars, though recognized as high-class Rājpūts, is one of the most notable additions made to Indian historical knowledge for many years past. Although the history of the other Rājpūt clans of the north has not been worked out with equal fullness, a fair presumption arises that many of them were of similar origin. The truth seems to be that when a foreign clan or tribe became Hinduized the ruling families were readily recognized as Kshatriyas or Rājpūts, while the rank and file gradually lost their tribal organization, and developed into an Indian caste not regarded as aristocratic.
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² Sir J. M. Campbell identified the Gūjars with the Khazars (Ghusars, &c.), 'part of the great horde of which the Juān-Juān or Avārs, and the Ephthalites, Yetas, or White Hūnas were leading elements' (*Bom. Gaz.* 'Hindus of Gujarāt,' App. B, 'The Gūjars,' quoted in *Tribes and Castes of the C. P.*, 1916, vol. iii, p. 168). The Khazars included a Black and a White section.
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Some of the principal clans farther south spring from a different source, and apparently are descended from the so-called aboriginal tribes, Gonds, Bhars, Kols, and the like, whom Sir Herbert Risley designated by the singularly inappropriate generic name of 'Dravidians', one of the most misleading terms ever introduced.¹ The evidence of a close connexion between the Chandēls and the Gonds, who, again, were associated with the Bhars, is particularly strong; and the inference is fully justified that the Chandēl Rājpūts were originally Hinduized Bhars or Gonds, or both, who attained recognition as Kshatriyas or Rājpūts, when they acquired power and took up the business of kingship for which the Kshatriya group of castes was appropriated. The Gaharwārs similarly are associated with the Bhars; the Bundēlas and the northern Rāthōrs are offshoots of the Gaharwārs, and so on. The name of the great Rāshtrakūta clan of the Deccan, the political history of which will be treated in the next chapter, is etymologically identical with Rāthōr, but there is not, so far as I am aware, evidence of any racial connexion between the Rāshtrakūtas of the Deccan and the Rāthōrs of Hindustan. The former seem to have originated among some one or other of the indigenous tribes of the Deccan in much the same way as the Chandēls became differentiated from the Gonds of the territory which is now the Chhatarpur State.¹
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¹ Dravidian is the English form of the adjective *Drāvida*, with the meaning 'belonging to Draviḍa, or the Tamil country.' It is applied with propriety to the territory, people, or language of the extreme south, but is wholly inapplicable to the Gonds, Kols, Bhars, and other so-called 'non-Aryan' tribes of Central India and the North. The word *Drāvida* is said to be an Aryanized form of *Tamil*, meaning 'nice' or 'sweet', as applied to the language (*Ind. Ant.*, 1912, p. 229).
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¹ For the origin of the Chandēls, see my paper in *J. A. S. B.*, vol. xlvi, part i (1877), p. 233; and my monograph, ‘The History and Coinage of the Chandēl (Chandella) Dynasty of Bundelkhand (Jejākabhukti) from A. D. 831 to 1203’ (*Ind. Ant.*, 1908, pp. 114–48). For Gaharwārs, see Beames and Elliot, *Races of the N.W. Provinces*, and for all northern castes Mr. Crooke’s work in four volumes, *Tribes and Castes of the N.W. P.* For speculations about the Rāshtrakūtas, see *Bom. Gaz.*, vol. i, part i (1896), pp. 119–34; ibid., part ii, pp. 178, 384.
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The unceasing wars of the mediaeval period become a little more intelligible and interesting when they are regarded as being in large part a secular struggle between the foreign Rājpūts of the north and the indigenous Rājpūts of the south. Of course, this arrangement of the sides did not always hold good, and powers normally at feud sometimes made friends and contracted alliances one with the other, or all parties momentarily combined against the Muhammadans. But I think it is true that, as a general rule, the Rājpūts formed by the social promotion of ‘aborigines’ were inimical to the Rājpūts descended from ‘barbarian’ immigrants. In the northern group the clans most conspicuous in the historical field are the Chauhāns, Parihārs, Tomaras, and Pawārs; in the southern group the principal clans are the Chandēls, Kalachuris, or Haihayas, Gaharwārs, and Rāshtrakūtas. The origin of the Solankis or Chalukyas (Chaulukya, &c.) is disputed. They claim to come from Oudh, but it is more probable that they are really of foreign origin, like the three other clans with which they are associated in the ‘fire-pit’ story.²
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² *Bom. Gaz.*, vol. i, part i (1896), p. 465, &c. *Contra*, Ojha, *Early History of the Solankīs* (in Hindī), pp. 12–14.
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The main points to remember are that the Kshatriya or Rājpūt group of castes is essentially an occupational group, composed of all clans following the Hindu ritual who actually undertook the work of government¹; that, consequently, people of most diverse races were and are lumped together as Rājpūts; and that most of the great clans now in existence are descended either from foreign immigrants of the fifth or sixth century of the Christian era, or from indigenous races such as the Gonds and Bhars. This finding will, I fear, be displeasing to many families of Indian gentry, who naturally prefer to believe in orthodox Brahman-made pedigrees going back to the sun, moon, or fire-pit; but I am convinced that it is substantially true, although the evidence is of a kind difficult to grasp, and incapable of brief presentation. The references in the note will enable the curious reader to pursue the subject further.²
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¹ 'It may be assumed as certain that had the conquering Moghuls and Puthâns been without a vivid belief and an organized priesthood, they would have adopted Vedism and have become enrolled among the Kshutrees or ruling races' (Cunningham, *Hist. of the Sikhs* (1853), p. 347, App. IV).
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² Further references are: V. A. Smith, 'The Gurjaras of Rājputāna and Kanauj' (*J. R. A. S.*, 1909, Jan. and April); 'White Hun (Ephthalite) Coins from the Panjāb' (ibid., Jan., 1907); 'White Hun Coin of Vyāghramukha' (ibid., Oct., 1907); 'The Outliers of Rājasthānī' (*Ind. Ant.*, 1911); and D. R. Bhandarkar, 'The Gurjaras' (*J. Bo. Br. R. A. S.*, vol. xxi). The same author's paper 'Guhilots' (*J. & Proc. A. S. B.* (N.S.), vol. v, 1909), is most suggestive and valuable. He demonstrates that the Rānās of Mewār or Udaipur, admittedly the premier chiefs in Rājputāna and the leaders of the Rājpūt chivalry, are descended from Nāgar Brahmans; that their ancestors, after they became chiefs, were known as Brahmakshatris, and that they were closely associated with the kings of Valabhī, who belonged to the Hūna-Gurjara group. Bhandarkar's views about the descent of the Rānās are disputed at great length by Pandit Mohaulal Vishnulal Pandia, who criticizes his documents and upholds the tradition that the Rānās are descended from the kings of Valabhī (*J. & Proc. A. S. B.*, 1912, pp. 63-99). He does not, however, seriously shake Bhandarkar's close reasoning. There is no real proof of the descent of the Rānās from the Valabhī kings, but, as Bhandarkar shows, both parties, i. e. the Rānās (=Nāgar Brahmans) and the Valabhīs, seem to have been Maitrakas, and closely associated with the Gurjaras.