Chauhan

Sapadalaksha dynasty of Sambhar and Ajmer — absorbed Varaha territory after 1192 CE

The Chauhan (Chahamana) dynasty of Sapadalaksha — ruling from Sambhar and later Ajmer — is the Rajput line that absorbs much of the surviving Varaha territory after the Ghorid invasions of the twelfth century. Prithviraj Chauhan‘s defeat at the Second Battle of Tarain in 1192 CE ends the political independence of the entire Rajput frontier; Varaha clansmen who had drifted south-east from Bhatinda after 1130 either become Chauhan vassals or move further into the lower hills.

Genealogical absorption

By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, several Varaha cadet branches in eastern Rajasthan and southern Punjab had been formally absorbed into the Chauhan genealogical tradition. The boar-totem persists as a clan emblem on Chauhan fortifications and seals, but the explicit Varaha identity is lost. Dashrath Sharma‘s 1943 paper “Identification of the Birāhān” reconstructs a fragment of this absorption.

Sources

• Sharma, D., “Identification of the Birāhān”, Poona Orientalist 8 (1943)
• Hooja, A History of Rajasthan (2006)
• Asopa, A Socio-Political and Economic Study, Northern India (1990)