- Give an account for the origins of the Rajputs.
The word ‘Rajput’ is a corrupted version of the Vedic word ‘Rajaputra’. In relative early works such as the ‘Kumarapalacharita’ and the ‘Varnaratnakara’, ‘Rajaputrakah’ is used in sense of the Rajputs. In Kalhana’s Rajtarangini, a text of the twelfth century, it is used in terms of a landowner. However, this text goes on to say that these ‘Rajputras’ claimed their birth from the thirty-six clans of the Rajputs. Hemachandra’s ‘Trisashtisalakapurushacharita’ and the Varnaratnakara also number the Rajput clans as thirty-six. The criterion for inclusion in the list of Rajputs clans was perhaps, provided by the contemporary social and political standing of the clan in at least the early stages of the consolidation of Rajput power. The names of certain clans like the Chahamanas and Pratiharas occur frequently in the lists, suggesting their political dominance. An inscription at Mt. Abu speaks of ‘all the Rajputras of the illustrous clan’. Thus, literature and inscriptional evidence show that the Rajputs as clans had come into existence by the beginning of the twelfth century AD.
The question of the origin of the Rajputs has always been looked upon as controversial. Tod and Crooke regarded the Rajputs as descendants of the Scythic people of Central Asia, while C.V. Vaidya tried to prove that the Rajputs were the descendants of the Vedic Aryans, and thus were Ksạtriyas. J. Kennedy says that some of the clans of the Rajputs like the Chauhans, Solankis and Guhilots had a foreign origin, some were allied to the to the Indo-Scythic Jats and Gujaras and others represented ancient ruling families. These writings reveal an extreme polarity of opinions in tracing the origins of the Rajputs. This is a result of the separate treatment meted out to the different rajput dynasties and kingdoms of western India.
In traditional accounts the origins of the Rajputs have been looked upon as a sudden event. Many Rajputs, like the Paramaras, traced their origins to the ‘Agnikula’. According to the Agnikula myth, in 747 AD, a great fire ceremony took place at Mt. Abu by which all rajput clans were purified and admitted to the status of Rajputs. Several texts like Padmagupta’s Navasahasanka Charita and Chandavardayi’s Prithviraja Raso ascribe to this myth. The latter says that the Chalukyas, Pratiharas, Chahamanas and Paramaras came from Vasistha’s fire pit. This is also mentioned in an early tamil poem included in the Purananuru.
Many historians see these claims made by the Rajputs as attempts to get away from their actual origins rather than revealing it. Kulke believes that by tracing their origins to Agni, the Rajputs wanted to be on par with the royal lineages of the sun (Suryavamsa) and the moon (Candravamsa), which went back to Rama and Krishna. It was from these lineages that many traditional ruling families claimed their ancestry.
Some scholars think that most of the important Rajput tribes were of Gurjar stock. A.M.T Jackson was the first to suggest that the Agnivamsas or the Agnikula families were Gurjaras in origin. The prevalence of names such as ‘Pavar’ (from Pratihara) and ‘Chavan’ (from Chahamana) among the Gurjars in remote provinces suggest that along with the other two tribes, the Chahamanas and Pratiharas were Gurjaras in origin. The antecedents of this tribe are unknown, although it is usually believed that the Gurjaras were a tribe who migrated to ̣India in the wake of the Huna invasions and became part of the local tribes. Their migration can be traced from Punjab to Rajasthan till they settled west of the Aravallis. Documents dating from the seventh century suggest a wide distribution of the Gurjaras as a political power in western ̣India. In the Nilgund, Radhanpur, Deoli and Karhad inscriptions, the Gurjaras referred to, are the Pratiharas. Even the Gurjaras in the early Chandella inscriptions are the Pratiharas.
But Dashratha Sharma believes that they were identified as Gurjaras because the Pratiharas originally belonged to ‘Gurjaradesa’. He says that it was customary for a ruler in this period, to be referred not by his clan, but by his territorial possessions. When the Prathiras declined in power, the Chalukyas for the next few centuries were called Gurjaras. This was because the Chalukyas and not the Pratiharas controlled the Gurjara territory. He cites Hemachandra’s Mahaviracharita, Vinayachandra’s Kavyasiksa, Prabhavakacharita and Vividhatirthakalpa as evidence for Gurjara as a territory. However, RC Majumdar points out that the name Gurjara was not applied to any geographical tract of land in older literature. Even in later periods, the word ‘Gurjara’ by itself is not found as a geographical territory.
The strength of the Gurjara Pratihara dynasty had been based to a large extent on the integration of various clans and tribes. When their power declined in the early 10th century, many clans established their own kingdoms. More prominent amongst these were the Chalukyas or Solankis of Kathiawar and Gujrat, and the Chahamanas of Eastern Rajasthan.
It appears that a majority of these newly emerging royal lines declared themselves as belonging to ‘Brahma-Ksatra’ kula. Halayudha, in his Pingala Sutravritti mentions Raja Munja of the Paramara dynasty as belonging to the ‘Brahma-Ksatra’ kula or a combined brahmana and ksạtriya dynasty. GH Ojha says that the term was used for those royal families who had qualities of both Brahmana and Ksatriya in them. It is believed that the Pratiharas of Mandor and Kanauj both originated from the Brahman Harichandra. The Chahamanas were called both Agnivamsis and Vatsa-gotris, indicating a Brahman origin. Even the Chalukyas are thought to have been Brahmanas to begin with. If this is accepted, then this transitional status was to explain their authentic transition from Brahmana to Ksatriya, and was projected to legitimize their new Ksạtriya role.
In a comparison between two Pratihara inscriptions of the ninth century, the origin of the Pratiharas is given—in the older inscription—in terms of the Brahmana Harichandra, having two wives, one Ksạtriya and the other ‘Bhadra’, a Brahmana. In the later inscription, the Brahmana wife is dropped from the genealogical list, possibly in an attempt to portray an undiluted Ksatriya ancestry. According to Romila Thapar, the rise of local ruling families to political power was perhaps faster in the post-Gupta period when ‘memories of their lower caste origins could be expunged’. Thus, the importance of genealogies increased with an increase in small regional kingdoms.
According to B.D. Chattopadhya, the attempts to reconstruct the early history of the Rajputs tend to rationalize the inscriptions of rulers of uncertain dates and genealogies, bestowing temporal and genetic relationships on them when the data provides for neither. The genealogies cannot be used to divine the Rajputs’ actual origins. But the different stages in the fabrication of their genealogies reveal a political process of ‘upward mobility’, a transition from a feudatory to an independent status. This can be seen in the cases of two tribes who were included in the list of the Rajput clans. The first were the Medas who are said to have reached Rajput status from a tribal background. The other tribe was the Hunas. The inclusion of these two groups contradicts all assumptions that this structure could be composed only of those groups who were linked by descent, either foreign or indigenous.
The emergence of the Rajput clans was within an existing political structure and, like other Varna categories was assimilated over a period of time. The rise of the Rajputs should thus, be studied in the context of state formation. The spread of their culture is called ‘Rajputization’. This concept makes it necessary to view the emergence of the Rajputs in the early medieval period in terms of a process, rather than in terms of ancestry. There were three or four processes that were connected in Rajputization. At one level, the process of Rajputization may have to be juxtaposed with expansion in the number of settlements in new areas. Evidence for this, comes from not only widespread archaeological remains, but also in epigraphic records, suggesting an expansion of agrarian economy. The term ‘Sapadalaksa’, used to denote the territory of the Chahamanas, may indicate that like the territorial divisions of the Deccan were suffixed with numbers, so was too the case here. The Nadol Chahamana kingdom was known as ‘Saptasata’.
Another process was the assimilation of new social groups— like the indigenous tribes of the Sabaras and Pulindas who had earlier remained on the peripheries of society—into caste society. In order to achieve political power, both the conquest of territory and incorporation of existing tribal societies was sought in the area of influence of the dynasty. The association with tribal people or strong local chiefs was not unusual, especially for those claiming Ksạtriya status. The Sisodia Rajputs had links with the Bhils while the Chandellas associated with the Gonds.
The third operation of Rajputization, which was also a consequence of the second process, was the proliferation of new ruling lineages. These new lineages required ideological legitimization. One such way—as mentioned earlier—was by creating new genealogies. The second way was by creating a sort of ‘royal mystique’. A network of integrated symbols, related to royalty, would be established through works of art like court epics, royal biographies and in the form of other ornate inscriptions. A third method, which was also the chief historical instrument for legitimization, was through ‘Bhakti’ ideology. If landgrants to the Brahmans had ensured the territorial spread of state society, Bhakti ideology by integrating local cults into the Puranic fold made the temple the institutional focus that linked temporal power with sacred domain in the early medieval period. Royal patronage shifted its emphasis to places of pilgrimage and cults. These ‘imperial’ temples popularized mythical accounts of the royal donors, both past and present. The king seeking to appropriate temporal power with sacred domain did so through a process of identification with the divinity enshrined in the temple.
While the king’s dependence on the Brahmana to legitimize his position has often been highlighted, Louis Dumont and J.C. Heesterman offer an alternate perpective. They highlight the dependence of the priest on the king for subistance to such an extent, that the Brahman would trade his authority to legitimize temporal power in return for material benefit.
B.D Chattopadhya also talks of ‘integrated politics’ in relation to the state formation in early medieval ̣Rajasthan. When a local lineage expanded itself into a supra-local power, it did so, not by eliminating the other tribes and clans, but by integrating them into its political fold. The constant division of rajput tribes into small exogamous clans led to the development of a complicated network of marital alliances. For example, Harichandra Pratihara, a brahman married Bhadra, a ksạtriya and Raja Allata of Mewad married a Huna, Hariya Devi. These kind of inter-clan marriages produced a fusion of Rajput leadership. The consolidation of the Rajput structure can be looked upon as a collaboration between the emerging clans, not only through inter-clan marriage relationships but also in terms of participation at various levels of the polity.
Although the beginning of this process may be traced to the feudatory-overlord relationship between the Chahamanas, Pratiharas and others, a wider network of relationships appears to have spread to the other levels of polity only gradually. The Hansi stone inscription of Prithviraja Chahamana contains some relevant information regarding these inter-clan relationships. It says that a fort, ‘Asikadurga’ was given to a member of the Guhila clan and also that a person of to the Dodạ̄ subclan was a subordinate to Prithviraja’s maternal uncle. Both references show the inclusion of other clans in Chahamana polity. This kind of information can be found in other kingdoms as well. Between the middle of the 12th and the early part of the 13th centuries, the feudatories of the Chalukyas in southern India comprised of the Paramaras and Chahamanas.
These few examples serve to show that apart from kinship ties, inter clan relationships that governed the distribution of power helped consolidate the structure of Rajput polity in the early medieval period.
Bibliography
Romila Thapar Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History
Nandini Sinha Kapur State Formation in Rajasthsn (Mewar during the 7th-15th Centuries)
Herman Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund A History of India
Dasharatha Sharma Rajasthan Through the Ages (volume I)
B.D Chattopadhya The Making of Early Medieval India
Asopa The Origin of the Rajputs