Makwana

Saurashtra Rajput parent-line of the Jhalas — the Macchu-kantha settlement

The Makwanas are the parent line of the Jhalas. By their own tradition they came from Karenti in Sindh to Patdi in Saurashtra under Harpaldev in the late eleventh century, settling the Machhu country (Macchu-kantha). The house’s own records (Jhala & Jhala, Genealogy, Archive, Image, 2017) and the Bombay Gazetteer (Campbell, 1896) trace this line to the White Huns — naming Toramana and Mihirakula and the Jauvla stock-title — not to the Varaha.

The further reading that the Makwanas are a westward branch of the Varaha is Prof. G. S. L. Devra’s (2003), argued from the marriage-circle preserved in Muhnot Nainsi’s Khyat and the Jaisalmer chronicles, in which — across four and a half centuries — every Varaha bride given to the Bhatti house carries the title Makwani or Jhali. We set this down as Devra’s reading and an open possibility, not a proven descent: Nainsi records the marriages and the brides’ titles, but the equation of Varaha with Makwana is Devra’s inference drawn from them, not Nainsi’s own statement, and no independent source equates the two clans. What the two certainly share is a Hunnic horizon and a marriage-circle; a demonstrated common ancestor is not yet in evidence.

The branch-point — a hypothesis

If the connection holds, the two lines part not recently but at the Alkhan root itself — the generation of Toramana and Javukha, named together on the Talagan (Schøyen) copper scroll of 492–493 CE, with Toramana styled Jauvla at Kura around 510. Because Rajputs marry outside their own clan, the Varaha and the Makwana/Jhala must already have been distinct by the time they intermarried — and the first union in Devra’s table falls about 553 CE, a generation or two after that Alkhan horizon. On Hans Bakker’s reading of the Alkhan as a confederacy of four allied houses, each with its own totem, the Varaha (boar) and the Jauvla may never have been one house at all but two confederate houses, kin and equal — which would explain the intermarriage directly. Either way the shared root sits around 500 CE and the distinct Jhala dynasty forms around 1090: the two are kin-but-separate for roughly five to six centuries. This is a reconstruction on bardic and epigraphic threads, offered as hypothesis, not documented genealogy.

Sources

• Devra, “Political Wilderness and Social Dismemberment” (2003) — the Varaha link, as his reading of the marriage-circle in Nainsi and the Jaisalmer khyats
• Muhnot Nainsi, Khyat (17th c.) — the marriages and the Makwani/Jhali bride-titles (the data Devra reads)
• Jhala & Jhala, Genealogy, Archive, Image (2017) — the Makwana–Jhala descent and the White-Hun/Jauvla tradition; does not equate Makwana with Varaha
• Campbell, Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency: History of Gujarát (1896) — derives Jhálá from Jáuvla (White Hun); does not equate with Varaha

This repository is a living record: entries are revised and expanded as new evidence comes to light, and readings offered as hypothesis or tradition are marked as such and may change. Last edited 18 October 2026.