History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v2.c28.22

v2.c28.22

As is generally known, this story of four warrior clans having been created out of fire by Vashishtha was first told by Chand the bard of Prithviraj in his epic the Prithviraj Rasa on the exploits of this last chivalrous Rajput king. The story shortly is that when this world was oppressed by Rakshasas or Mlechchas, Vasiṣṭha created from his sacrificial fire four warriors in succession viz., first the Paramāra, then the Chālukya, then the Parihāra and when these could not destroy the Rākṣasas, the terrible Chāhomāna from whom the poet's hero Pṛthvīrāja was decended. This story along with the Rāsā became by and by extremely popular and was eventually accepted by all Rajputs and what is strange by the descendants of these four clans themselves. Naturally the great historian of the Rajputs Col. Tod accepted it and incorporated it in his history. These four clans, it is now currently believed, cannot trace their pedigree to the sun or the moon as the other Kṣatriyas do, but are fire-born thus giving colour to the theory that these clans are really foreigners who have been transformed into Kṣatriyas by the Brahmins by a fiction of purification by fire.