Chandel Rajput

Chandel Rajput

Rājpūt, Chandel.—An important clan of Rājpūts, of which a small number reside in the northern Districts of Saugor, Damoh and Jubbulpore, and also in Chhattīsgarh. The name is derived by Mr. Crooke from the Sanskrit chandra, the moon. The Chandel are not included in the thirty-six royal races, and are supposed to have been a section of one of the indigenous tribes which rose to power. Mr. V.A. Smith states that the Chandels, like several other dynasties, first came into history early in the ninth century, when Nannuka Chandel about A.D. 831 overthrew a Parihār chieftain and became lord of the southern parts of Jejākabhukti or Bundelkhand. Their chief towns were Mahoba and Kālanjar in Bundelkhand, and they gradually advanced northwards till the Jumna became the frontier between their dominions and those of Kanauj. They fought with the Gūjar-Parihār kings of Kanauj and the Kālachuris of Chedi, who had their capital at Tewar in Jubbulpore, and joined in resisting the incursions of the Muhammadans. In A.D. 1182 Parmāl, the Chandel king, was defeated by Prithwi Rāja, the [441]Chauhān king of Delhi, after the latter had abducted the Chandel’s daughter. This was the war in which Alha and Udal, the famous Banāphar heroes, fought for the Chandels, and it is commemorated in the Chand-Raisa, a poem still well known to the people of Bundelkhand. In A.D. 1203 Kālanjar was taken by the Muhammadan Kutb-ud-Dīn Ibak, and the importance of the Chandel rulers came to an end, though they lingered on as purely local chiefs until the sixteenth century. The Chandel princes were great builders, and beautified their chief towns, Mahoba, Kālanjar and Khajurāho with many magnificent temples and lovely lakes, formed by throwing massive dams across the openings between the hills.1 Among these were great irrigation works in the Hamīrpur District, the forts of Kālanjar and Ajaighar, and the noble temples at Khajurāho and Mahoba.2 Even now the ruins of old forts and temples in the Saugor and Damoh Districts are attributed by the people to the Chandels, though many were in fact probably constructed by the Kālachuris of Chedi.

Mr. Smith derives the Chandels either from the Gonds or Bhars, but inclines to the view that they were Gonds. The following considerations tend, I venture to think, to favour the hypothesis of their origin from the Bhars. According to the best traditions, the Gonds came from the south, and practically did not penetrate to Bundelkhand. Though Saugor and Damoh contain a fair number of Gonds they have never been of importance there, and this is almost their farthest limit to the north-west. The Gond States in the Central Provinces did not come into existence for several centuries after the commencement of the Chandel dynasty, and while there are authentic records of all these states, the Gonds have no tradition of their dominance in Bundelkhand. The Gonds have nowhere else built such temples as are attributed to the Chandels at Khajurāho, whilst the Bhars were famous builders. “In Mīrzāpur traces of the Bhars abound on all sides in the shape of old tanks and village forts. The bricks found in the Bhar-dīhs or forts are of enormous dimensions, and frequently measure 19 by 11 inches, and [442]are 2¼ inches thick. In quality and size they are similar to bricks often seen in ancient Buddhist buildings. The old capital of the Bhars, five miles from Mīrzāpur, is said to have had 150 temples.”3 Elliot remarks4 that “common tradition assigns to the Bhars the possession of the whole tract from Gorakhpur to Bundelkhand and Saugor, and many old stone forts, embankments and subterranean caverns in Gorakhpur, Azamgarh, Jaunpur, Mīrzāpur and Allahābād, which are ascribed to them, would seem to indicate no inconsiderable advance in civilisation.” Though there are few or no Bhars now in Bundelkhand, there are a large number of Pāsis in Allahābād which partly belongs to it, and small numbers in Bundelkhand; and the Pāsi caste is mainly derived from the Bhars;5 while a Gaharwār dynasty, which is held to be derived from the Bhars, was dominant in Bundelkhand and Central India before the rise of the Chandels. According to one legend, the ancestor of the Chandels was born with the moon as a father from the daughter of the high priest of the Gaharwār Rāja Indrajīt of Benāres or of Indrajīt himself.6 As will be seen, the Gaharwārs were an aristocratic section of the Bhars. Another legend states that the first Chandel was the offspring of the moon by the daughter of a Brāhman Pandit of Kalanjar.7 In his Notes on the Bhars of Bundelkhand8 Mr. Smith argues that the Bhars adopted the Jain religion, and also states that several of the temples at Khajurāho and Mahoba, erected in the eleventh century, are Jain. These were presumably erected by the Chandels, but I have never seen it suggested that the Gonds were Jains or were capable of building Jain temples in the eleventh century. Mr. Smith also states that Maniya Deo, to whom a temple exists at Mahoba, was the tutelary deity of the Chandels; and that the only other shrine of Maniya Deo discovered by him in the Hamīrpur District was in a village reputed formerly to have been held by the Bhars.9 Two instances of intercourse between the Chandels and Gonds are given, but [443]the second of them, that the Rāni Dūrgavati of Mandla was a Chandel princess, belongs to the sixteenth century, and has no bearing on the origin of the Chandels. The first instance, that of the Chandel Rāja Kīrat Singh hunting at Maniagarh with the Gond Rāja of Garha-Mandla, cannot either be said to furnish any real evidence in favour of a Gond origin for the Chandels; it maybe doubted whether there was any Gond Rāja of Garha-Mandla till after the fall of the Kālachuri dynasty of Tewar, which is quite close to Garha-Mandla, in the twelfth century; and a reference so late as this would not affect the question.10 Finally, the Chandels are numerous in Mīrzāpur, which was formerly the chief seat of the Bhars, while the Gonds have never been either numerous or important in Mīrzāpur. These considerations seem to point to the possibility of the derivation of the Chandels from the Bhars rather than from the Gonds; and the point is perhaps of some interest in view of the suggestion in the article on Kol that the Gonds did not arrive in the Central Provinces for some centuries after the rise of the Chandel dynasty of Khajurāho and Mahoba. The Chandels may have simply been a local branch of the Gaharwārs, who obtained a territorial designation from Chanderi, or in some other manner, as has continually happened in the case of other clans. The Gaharwārs were probably derived from the Bhars. The Chandels now rank as a good Rājpūt clan, and intermarry with the other leading clans.

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1Early History of India, 3rd edition, pp. 390–394.

2Mr. Crooke’s Tribes and Castes, art. Chandel.

3Sherring’s Castes and Tribes, i. pp. 359, 360.

4Supplemental Glossary, art. Bhar.

5See art. Pāsi.

6Crooke’s Tribes and Castes, art. Chandel.

7Ibidem.

8J.A.S.B. vol. xlvi. (1877), p. 232.

9Ibidem, p. 233.

10J.A.S.B. vol. xlvi. (1877), p. 233.