During the medieval and later feudal/colonial periods, many parts of the Indian subcontinent were ruled as sovereign or princely states by various dynasties of Rajputs.
The Rajputs rose to political prominence after the large empires of ancient India broke into smaller ones. The Rajputs became prominent in the early medieval period in about seventh century and dominated in regions now known as Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana, Western Gangetic plains and Bundelkhand.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]
However, the term "Rajput" has been used as an anachronistic designation for Hindu dynasties before the 16th century because the Rajput identity for a lineage did not exist before this time, and these lineages were classified as aristocratic Rajput clans in the later times. Thus, the term "Rajput" does not occur in Muslim sources before the 16th century.[11][12][13][14][15][16]
List
Following is the list of those ruling Rajput dynasties of the Indian Subcontinent:
- Kachhwahas of Jaipur, Alwar, Lawa,[17] Kohra[18] and Maihar[19]
- Sisodias of Mewar[20]
- Rathores of Jodhpur, Bikaner, Kishangarh, Jhabua, Ratlam, Alirajpur, Idar and Seraikela[21]
- Imperial Pratiharas of Kannauj[22]
- Chauhans of Sambhar, Nadol, Ranthambore and Jalor
- Tomars of Delhi[23]
- Chaulukyas (Solankis) and Vaghelas of Gujarat
- Paramaras of Malwa[24] and Chandravati[25]
- Gahadavalas of Varanasi and Kannauj
- Chandelas of Jejakabhukti (modern Bundelkhand)
- Guhilas of Medapata (modern Mewar)
- Dogras of Jammu & Kashmir[26]
- Chands of Kumaon[27]
- Katochs of Kangra[28][29]
- Panwars of Garhwal[30]
- Sodhas of Amarkot[31]
- Bhatis of Jaisalmer[19]
- Bundelas of Orchha[32]
See also
References
- ^ Hermann kulke (2004). A History of India. Psychology Press. p. 116. ISBN 978-0-415-32920-0.
When Harsha shifted the centre of north India history to Kannauj in mids of Ganga-Jamuna doab the tribes living in the west of this new centre also became more important for further courses of Indian history. They were first and foremost the Rajputs who now emerged into limelight of Indian history
- ^ Sailendra Nath Sen (1999). Ancient Indian History and Civilization. New Age International. p. 307. ISBN 978-81-224-1198-0.
The anarchy and confusion which followed the death of Harsha is a transitional period of history. This period was marked by the rise of the Rajput clans who began to play a conspicuous part in the history of northern and western India from eighth century A.D. onwards
- ^ Alain Danielou (2003). A Brief History of India. Simon and Schuster. p. 87. ISBN 978-1-59477-794-3.
The Rajputs The rise of Rajputs in the history of northern and central India is considerable, as they dominated the scene between the death of Harsha and the establishment of the Muslim Empire
- ^ Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya (2006). Studying Early India: Archaeology, Texts and Historical Issues. Anthem. p. 116. ISBN 978-1-84331-132-4.
The period between the seventh and the twelfth century witnessed gradual rise of a number of new royal-lineages in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, which came to constitute a social-political category known as 'Rajput'. Some of the major lineages were the Pratiharas of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and adjacent areas, the Guhilas and Chahamanas of Rajasthan, the Caulukyas or Solankis of Gujarat and Rajasthan and the Paramaras of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
- ^ Satish Chandra (1996). Historiography, Religion, and State in Medieval India. Har-Anand Publications. p. 115. ISBN 978-81-241-0035-6.
"In north India, dominant features of the period between 7th and 12th centuries have been identified as the growing weakness of state; the growth of power of local landed elittes and their decentralising authority by acquiring greater administrative, economic and political roles, the decline of towns, the setback to trades, This period between 7th to 12th century is also noted for rise of Rajputs
- ^ Sara R. Farris (5 September 2013). Max Weber's Theory of Personality: Individuation, Politics and Orientalism in the Sociology of Religion. BRILL. p. 145. ISBN 978-90-04-25409-1.
"In about the eight century the Rajput thus began to perform the functions that had formerly belonged to the Kshatriya, assuming their social and economic position and substituting them as the new warrior class
- ^ Eugenia Vanina (2012). Medieval Indian Mindscapes: Space, Time, Society, Man. Primus Books. p. 140. ISBN 978-93-80607-19-1.
By the period of seventh–eights centuries AD when the first references to the Rajput clans and their chieftains were made
- ^ Peter Robb (21 June 2011). A History of India. Macmillan International Higher Education. p. 103. ISBN 978-0-230-34549-2.
From around 1000 ce notable among these regional powers were various Rajput dynasties in the west and north
- ^ Burton Stein (2010). Arnold, D. (ed.). A History of India (2nd ed.). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 109.
The Rajput claim as a community were recorded in Sanskrit inscriptions that constituted as well as recorded in Rajasthan during the seventh century, when Rajputs begins to make themselves lords of various localities
- ^ David Ludden (2013). India and South Asia: A Short History. Oneworld Publications. pp. 88–. ISBN 978-1-78074-108-6.
By contrast in Rajasthan a single warrior group evolved called Rajput (from Rajaputra-sons of kings): they rarely engaged in farming, even to supervise farm labour as farming was literally beneath them, farming was for their peasant subjects. In the ninth century separate clans of Rajputs Cahamanas (Chauhans), Paramaras (Pawars), Guhilas (Sisodias) and Caulukyas were splitting off from sprawling Gurjara Pratihara clans...
- ^ Talbot 2015, p. 33-35.
- ^ Peabody, Norbert (2003). Hindu Kingship and Polity in Precolonial India. Cambridge University Press. pp. 38–. ISBN 978-0-521-46548-9.
As Dirk Kolff has argued, it was privileged, if not initially inspired, only in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Mughal perceptions of Rajputs which, in a pre-form of orientalism, took patrilineal descent as the basis for Rajput social Organization and consequently as the basis for their political inclusion into the empire. Prior to the Mughals, the term 'Rajput' was equally an open-ended, generic name applied to any '"horse soldier", "trooper", or "headman of a village"' regardless of parentage, who achieved his status through his personal ability to establish a wide network of supporters through his bhaibandh (lit. 'ie or bond of brothers'; that is, close collateral relations by male blood) or by means of naukari (military service to a more powerful overlord) and sagai (alliance through marriage). Thus the language of kinship remained nonetheless strong in this alternative construction of Rajput identity but collateral and affinal bonds were stressed rather than those of descent. During the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
- ^ Jackson, Peter (2003). The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History. Cambridge University Press. pp. 9–. ISBN 978-0-521-54329-3.
Confronting the Ghurid ruler now were a number of major Hindu powers, for which the designation 'Rajput' (not encountered in the Muslim sources before the sixteenth century) is a well-established anachronism. Chief among them was the Chahamana (Chawhan) kingdom of Shakambhari (Sambhar), which dominated present-day Rajasthan from its capital at Ajmer
- ^ Bayly, Susan (2001). Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age. Cambridge University Press. pp. 39–. ISBN 978-0-521-79842-6.
Yet the varna archetype of the Kshatriya-like man of prowess did become a key reference point for rulers and their subjects under the Mughals and their immediate successors. The chiefs and warriors whom the Mughals came to honour as Rajput lords in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may not even have been descendants of Rajasthan's earlier pre-Mughal elites.
- ^ Behl, Aditya (2012). Wendy Doniger (ed.). Love's Subtle Magic: An Indian Islamic Literary Tradition, 1379-1545. Oxford University Press. pp. 364–. ISBN 978-0-19-514670-7.
The term Rajput is a retrospective invention, as most of the martial literature of resistance to Turkish conquest dates only from the mid-fifteenth century onward. As Dirk Kolff has noted in his Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), the invention of "Rajput" identity can be dated to the sixteenth-century narratives of nostalgia for lost honor and territory.
- ^ Richard M. Eaton (25 July 2019). India in the Persianate Age: 1000-1765. Penguin UK. pp. 51–. ISBN 978-0-14-196655-7. OCLC 1088599361.
Often projected back to the twelfth century or even earlier, the term 'Rajput' has been called a 'well-established anachronism
- ^ Ashutosh Kumar (2017). Rethinking State Politics in India. Taylor and Francis group. p. 400. ISBN 978-1-138-22886-3.
- ^ Rathore, Abhinay. "Kohra (Taluk)". Rajput Provinces of India. Retrieved 30 December 2023.
- ^ a b Allen, Charles; Dwivedi, Sharada (1998). Lives of the Indian Princes. BPI Publishing. p. 292. ISBN 978-81-86982-05-1.
- ^ Melia Belli Bose (2015). Royal Umbrellas of Stone: Memory, Politics, and Public Identity in Rajput Funerary Art. Brill. p. 248. ISBN 9789004300569.
These lofty cenotaphs commemorate the Sisodia Rajput rulers of Mewar and fashion a distinctive posthumous identity for them.
- ^ Dhananajaya Singh (1994). The House of Marwar. Lotus Collection, Roli Books. p. 13.
He was the head of the Rathore clan of Rajputs, a clan which besides Jodhpur had ruled over Bikaner, Kishengarh, Idar, Jhabhua, Sitamau, Sailana, Alirajpur and Ratlam, all States important enough to merit gun salutes in the British system of protocol. These nine Rathore States collectively brought to India territory not less than 60,000 square miles in area.
- ^ Satish Chandra (2006). Medieval India: From Sultanat to the Mughals (1206–1526). Vol. 1. Har-Anand Publications. p. 19. ISBN 978-81-241-1064-5.
The middle of the tenth century saw the decay of two of the most powerful Rajput states which had dominated northern and central India during precedding centuries. These were Gurjara Pratihara Empire with their capital at Kannauj the first of the major Rajput kingdom
- ^ Mala Dayal (August 2010). Celebrating Delhi. Penguin UK. ISBN 978-81-8475-273-1.
- ^ Nandini Chatterjee (2020). Land and Law in Mughal India: A Family of Landlords across Three Indian Empires. Cambridge University Press. p. 51. ISBN 978-1-108-48603-3.
- ^ John Gordon Lorimer (8 May 1970). Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, ʻOmān, and Central Arabia: Historical. 4 v. p. 52 and 55.
- ^ "Dogra Dynasty". Britannica.
- ^ Nutan Tyagi (1991). Hill Resorts of U.P. Himalaya,: A Geographical Study. Indus publishing. p. 63. ISBN 978-81-85182-62-9.
- ^ Rana Mohd Sarwar Khan (2005). The Rajputs: History, Clans, Culture, and Nobility, Volume 1.
- ^ J. Mark Baker (2011). The Kuhls of Kangra: Community-Managed Irrigation in the Western Himalaya. University of Washington Press. p. 101. ISBN 978-0-295-80091-2.
- ^ Ramachandra Guha (2000). The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya. University of California Press. p. 63. ISBN 9780520222359.
- ^ Aashirbadi Lal Shrivastava (1964). The Mughal Empire, 1526-1803 A.D. SL Agrawala. p. 63.
- ^ Mehta, Jaswant Lal (2005). Advanced Study in the History of Modern India 1707-1813. Sterling Publishers. p. 105. ISBN 978-1-93270-554-6.
Bibliography
- Talbot, Cynthia (2015). The Last Hindu Emperor: Prithviraj Cauhan and the Indian Past, 1200–2000. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107118560.