Posts
Sisodia Sisodiya Rajput
Sisodia / Sisodiya / Sesodia Rajput
Rājpūt, Sesodia, Gahlot, Ahāria.—The Gahlot or Sesodia is generally admitted to be the premier Rājpūt clan. Their chief is described by the bards as “The Sūryavānsi Rāna, of royal race, Lord of Chitor, the ornament of the thirty-six royal races.” The Sesodias claim descent from the sun, through Loh, the eldest son of the divine Rāma of Ajodhia. In token of their ancestry the royal banner of Mewār consisted of a golden sun on a crimson field. Loh is supposed to have founded Lahore. His descendants migrated to Saurāshtra or Kāthiāwār, where they settled at Vidurbha or Balabhi, the capital of the Valabhi dynasty. The last king of Valabhi was Silāditya, who was killed by an invasion of barbarians, and his posthumous son, Gohāditya, ruled in Idar and the hilly country in the south-west [462]of Mewār. From him the clan took its name of Gohelot or Gahlot. Mr. D.R. Bhandarkar, however, from a detailed examination of the inscriptions relating to the Sesodias, arrives at the conclusion that the founders of the line were Nāgar Brāhmans from Vadnagar in Gujarāt, the first of the line being one Guhadatta, from which the clan takes its name of Gahlot1 The family were also connected with the ruling princes of Valabhi. Mr. Bhandarkar thinks that the Valabhi princes, and also the Nāgar Brāhmans, belonged to the Maitraka tribe, who, like the Gūjars, were allied to the Huns, and entered India in the fifth or sixth century. Mr. Bhandarkar’s account really agrees quite closely with the traditions of the Sesodia bards themselves, except that he considers Guhadatta to have been a Nāgar Brāhman of Valabhi, and descended from the Maitrakas, a race allied to the Huns, while the bards say that he was a descendant of the Aryan Kshatriyas of Ajodhia, who migrated to Surat and established the Valabhi kingdom. The earliest prince of the Gahlot dynasty for whom a date has been obtained is Sīla, A.D. 646, and he was fifth in descent from Guhadatta, who may therefore be placed in the first part of the sixth century. Bāpa, the founder of the Gahlot clan in Mewār, was, according to tradition, sixth in descent from Gohāditya, and he had his capital at Nāgda, a few miles to the north of Udaipur city.2 A tradition quoted by Mr. Bhandarkar states that Bāpa was the son of Grahadāta. He succeeded in propitiating the god Siva. One day the king of Chitor died and left no heir to his throne. It was decided that whoever would be garlanded by a certain elephant would be placed on the throne. Bāpa was present on the occasion, and the elephant put the garland round his neck not only once, but thrice. Bāpa was thus seated on the throne. One day he was suffering from some eye-disease. A physician mixed a certain medicine in alcoholic liquor and applied it to his eyes, which were speedily cured. Bāpa afterwards inquired what the medicine was, and learnt the truth. He trembled like a reed and said, “I am a Brāhman, and you have given me medicine mixed in liquor. I have lost my caste,” So saying he drank molten lead (sīsa), and forthwith [463]died, and hence arose the family name Sesodia.3 This story, current in Rājputāna, supports Mr. Bhandarkar’s view of the Brāhman origin of the clan. According to tradition Bāpa went to Chitor, then held by the Mori or Prāmara Rājpūts, to seek his fortune, and was appointed to lead the Chitor forces against the Muhammadans on their first invasion of India.4 After defeating and expelling them he ousted the Mori ruler and established himself at Chitor, which has since been the capital of the Sesodias. The name Sesodia is really derived from Sesoda, the residence of a subsequent chief Rāhup, who captured Mundore and was the first to bear the title of Rāna of Mewār. Similarly Ahāria is another local name from Ahār, a place in Mewār, which was given to the clan. They were also known as Rāghuvansi, or of the race of king Rāghu, the ancestor of the divine Rāma. The Rāghuvansis of the Central Provinces, an impure caste of Rājpūt origin, are treated in a separate article, but it is not known whether they were derived from the Sesodias. From the fourteenth century the chronicles of the Sesodias contain many instances of Rājpūt courage and devotion. Chitor was sacked three times before the capital was removed to Udaipur, first by Ala-ul-Din Khilji in 1303, next by Bahādur Shāh, the Muhammadan king of Gujarāt in 1534, and lastly by Akbar in 1567. These events were known as Sāka or massacres of the clan. On each occasion the women of the garrison performed the Johar or general immolation by fire, while the men sallied forth, clad in their saffron-coloured robes and inspired by bhāng, to die sword in hand against the foe. At the first sack the goddess of the clan appeared in a dream to the Rāna and demanded the lives of twelve of its chiefs as a condition of its preservation. His eleven sons were in their turn crowned as chief, each ruling for three days, while on the fourth he sallied out and fell in battle.5Lastly, the Rāna devoted himself in order that his favourite son Ajeysi might be spared and might perpetuate the clan. At the second sack 32,000 were slain, and at the third 30,000. Finally Aurāngzeb destroyed the [464]temples and idols at Chitor, and only its ruins remain. Udaipur city was founded in 1559. The Sesodias resisted the Muhammadans for long, and several times defeated them. Udai Singh, the founder of Udaipur, abandoned his capital and fled to the hills, whence he caused his own territory to be laid waste, with the object of impeding the imperial forces. Of this period it is recorded that the Rānas were from father to son in outlawry against the emperor, and that sovereign had carried away the doors of the gate of Chitor, and had set them up in Delhi. Fifty-two rājas and chiefs had perished in the struggle, and the Rāna in his trouble lay at nights on a counterpane spread on the ground, and neither slept in his bed nor shaved his hair; and if he perchance broke his fast, had nothing better with which to satisfy it than beans baked in an earthen pot. For this reason it is that certain practices are to this day observed at Udaipur. A counterpane is spread below the Rāna’s bed, and his head remains unshaven and baked beans are daily laid upon his plate.6 A custom of perhaps somewhat similar origin is that in this clan man and wife take food together, and the wife does not wait till her husband has finished. It is said that the Sesodia Rājpūts are the only caste in India among whom this rule prevails, and it may have been due to the fact that they had to eat together in haste when occasion offered during this period of guerilla warfare.
In 1614 Rāna Amar Singh, recognising that further opposition was hopeless, made his submission to the emperor, on the condition that he should never have to present himself in person but might send his two sons in his place. This stipulation being accepted, the heir-apparent Karan Singh proceeded to Ajmer where he was magnanimously treated by Jahāngīr and shortly afterwards the imperial troops were withdrawn from Chitor. It is the pride of the Udaipur house that it never gave a daughter in marriage to any of the Musalmān emperors, and for many years ceased to intermarry with other Rājpūt families who had formed such alliances. But Amar Singh II. (1698–1710) made a league with the Mahārājas of Jodhpur and Jaipur for mutual protection against the Muhammadans; and it [465]was one of the conditions of the compact that the latter chiefs should regain the privilege of marriage with the Udaipur family which had been suspended since they had given daughters in marriage to the emperors. But the Rāna unfortunately added a proviso that the son of an Udaipur princess should succeed to the Jodhpur or Jaipur States in preference to any elder son by another mother. The quarrels to which this stipulation gave rise led to the conquest of the country by the Marāthas, at whose hands Mewār suffered more cruel devastation than it had ever been subjected to by the Muhammadans. Ruinous war also ensued between Jodhpur and Jaipur for the hand of the famous Udaipur princess Kishen Kumāri at the time when Rājputāna was being devastated by the Marāthas and Pindāris; and the quarrel was only settled by the voluntary death of the object of contention, who, after the kinsman sent to slay her had recoiled before her young beauty and innocence, willingly drank the draught of opium four times administered before the fatal result could be produced.7
The Mahārāna of Udaipur is entitled to a salute of nineteen guns. The Udaipur State has an area of nearly 13,000 square miles and a population of about a million persons. Besides Udaipur three minor states, Partābgarh, Dungarpur and Banswāra, are held by members of the Sesodia clan. In the Central Provinces the Sesodias numbered nearly 2000 persons in 1911, being mainly found in the districts of the Nerbudda Division.
1J.A.S.B. (1909), vol. v. p. 167.
2Imperial Gazetteer, loc. cit.
3Bhandarkar, loc. cit. p. 180.
4The following extracts from the history of the clan are mainly taken from the article on Udaipur State in the Imperial Gazetteer.
5Rājasthān, pp. 222, 223.
6Forbes, Rāsmala i. p. 400.
7Rajasthān i. pp, 398, 399. The death of the young princess was mainly the work of Amīr Khān Pindāri who brought pressure on the Rāna to consent to it in order to save his state.
