About this Repository
This site is a structured online companion to Varaha — Hunnic Migration to Hind by Amit Singh (Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 2024). It exists to put the surviving evidence for the Varaha Rajput clan in one place — chronicles, epigraphy, numismatics, art-historical material, and modern genetic data — and to make the long arc of that history navigable to readers, researchers, and members of the Varaha community.
The argument in brief
The Varaha Rajputs of Ambota (district Una, Himachal Pradesh) are not, the book argues, a small endogamous Hill clan with a circumscribed local history. They are the descendants of a much older line — a steppe lineage that emerged from the Altai mountains in the late Bronze and early Iron Ages, kin to the Xiongnu of Mongolia but on a parallel westward track. Climatic stress and pressure from the cousin-Xiongnu’s wars with Han China pushed the western Altai clans into Bactria, where Iranian and Chinese sources begin to call them Hephthalites; their ruling lineage was admitted into Sassanian Persia as the House of Waraz, one of the seven great houses of the empire. A southern branch — the Alkhan — crossed the Hindu Kush and ruled Gandhara and the Punjab from the late fifth century onward, leaving inscriptions at Eran, Gardez, the Salt Range, and Sanjeli, and minting coinage that names Khingila, Toramana, and Mihirakula in Brahmi, Bactrian, and Greek script.
From the Alkhan came the Turk Shahi dynasty (founded by Barha Tegin, c. 666 CE) and from the Turk Shahi, by way of a minister-led succession, the Hindu Shahi dynasty of Kallar/Lalliya, Bhima, Jayapala, Anandapala, and Trilocanapala — six generations of frontier kings who held the passes of the Hindu Kush against the Caliphate and, finally, against Mahmud of Ghazna. After the Battle of Wahind in 1008 CE and the loss of the Kangra Fort, the survivors moved south-east through Bhatinda and Sirhind, and then up into the Shivalik foothills, where the maternal grandfather of the founding family is said to have granted them five villages around what is now Ambota.
That continuity — Altai → Bactria → Persia → Gandhara → Punjab → Himachal — is reconstructed in the book through Persian, Chinese, Korean, Armenian, Greek, Sanskrit, and Pali sources, modern numismatics, the Schøyen Copper Scroll, and Y-chromosome haplogroup Q1b (Q-L275) with Mongolia North Neolithic admixture.
Why the story has been forgotten
Three forces, the book argues, account for the Varahas’ near-disappearance from textbook history. First, hostile chroniclers controlled the surviving record — the Ghaznavid court historians (Al-Utbi, Firishta, and later Barani) wrote of the Hindu Shahis only as defeated antagonists, while rival Rajput clans absorbed Varaha territory in the centuries after 1026 CE and rewrote local genealogies accordingly. Second, Indian historians from the colonial period onward leaned heavily on Sanskrit and Persian sources read in isolation, and rarely cross-referenced the dense Chinese and Central Asian record where the Hephthalites and Alkhans are named under different ethnonyms. Third, European scholars — most notably John Marshall in his 1951 Taxila volumes — conflated the destructive reputation of Attila’s western Huns with the actual patron-and-builder character of the Alkhans, who minted coins in honour of Hindu and Buddhist deities, gifted viharas, and consecrated the Gardez Ganesha as Maha-Vinayaka.
Recovering the Varahas means reading those sources together — and being willing to follow the boar (Sanskrit varāha; Pahlavi warāz; Old Turkic and Pecheneg thonuzoba) wherever it goes.
How the repository is organised
Eight pillar pages each cover one era of the migration. Within each era, posts go deeper on the rulers, inscriptions, and clans relevant to that era. Three reference pages — the Timeline, the Vanshavali from state revenue records, and the Sources & Bibliography — cut across all eras.
- Origins — The Altai Steppe — c. 1000 BCE to the 4th century CE.
- Migration West — Bactria, Sassanian Persia, the House of Waraz.
- Hephthalites & Alkhans — Khingila, Toramana, Mihirakula; the Schøyen Scroll.
- Turk Shahi — Barha Tegin to Lagaturman, 666–843 CE.
- Hindu Shahi — Kallar to Trilocanapala, 843–1026 CE.
- Final Settlement — Bhatinda, Sirhind, Ambota.
- Genealogy & Allied Clans — Bhatti, Chauhan, Pratihara, Jhala, Makwana, Tak, Janjua, Gil Jat.
- Genetic Evidence — Y-DNA Q1b, qpAdm modelling, Mongolia North Neolithic admixture.
Method
Wherever a claim rests on a primary source, the source is named in the body of the page and listed in full on the Sources page. Where two sources disagree — and they often do, especially on Mihirakula’s death and on the dating of the Battle of Wahind — both readings are given, with the strongest argument for each. Where a name has multiple spellings (Varaha / Varāha / Varaz / Waraz / Warz / Barah / Birah / Birāhān / Varihaha) the variants are listed once on the relevant page, and a single canonical spelling is used thereafter.
Inscriptions are quoted in the original script’s transliteration, with a translation. Coins are described by Pfisterer’s typology where applicable. Genetic claims are presented as ranges with their published confidence intervals, and qpAdm models are credited to the lab that ran them.
About the author
Amit Singh — a Varaha by descent — is the author of Varaha — Hunnic Migration to Hind (Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 2024). The book builds on his father Prof. Narinder Kumar Singh‘s earlier work Coronation of Shiva — Rediscovering Masrur Temple (Har-Anand, 2009), which proposed that the rock-cut Masrur temple complex in Kangra was built and patronised by the Hindu Shahi dynasty and looted by Mahmud of Ghazna in the wake of the 1008 CE Battle of Wahind.
Corrections & contributions
This is a living repository. If you find an error, hold a primary source that should be cited, or have material — a coin, a copper plate, an oral tradition, a Y-DNA result — that bears on this history, please get in touch through the contact form. Substantive corrections will be gredited on the page they affect.
