Final Settlement — Bhatinda, Sirhind, Ambota

11th – 17th centuries CE · Bhatinda → Sirhind → the Shivalik foothills

After the fall of Trilocanapala and his son Bhimapala in 1026 CE, the surviving Varaha-Shahi clan retreated from the Punjab to the desert margin and the lower hills. Three way-stations punctuate the migration — Bhatinda on the desert edge, Sirhind on the Sutlej, and finally Ambota in the Shivalik foothills of district Una, Himachal Pradesh.

Bhatinda — the desert frontier

The first refuge is Bhatinda (Vatinda / Tabarhindh in the Persian sources), where the Varaha line had ruled long before the loss of Udabhandapura. Col. James Tod‘s Annals of Rajasthan records the Jhalrapatan inscription of S. 748 (692 CE) of Raja Doorgangul / Durgagana — a Varaha king whose territory included Bhatinda. The same line — by the early twelfth century, under Raja Vinaypal — held Bhatinda Fort against Muhammad Ghori in the campaign of 1130 CE.

The Bhatinda chapter of the migration is also the chapter of the Bhatti–Varaha rivalry. Hari Singh Bhatti‘s Pugal ka Itihaads (1989) records the long feud — including the wedding-massacre tradition and the death of Vijay Rai Bhatti c. 800 CE — that fixed the two clans on opposite sides of the desert. The Pugal ki Khyat describes the Varahas as the senior power on the Bhatinda–Bhatner axis until the late twelfth century. See the dedicated Bhatti post.

Sirhind — the Sutlej crossing

Sirhind was the natural way-station for any clan moving from the Bhatinda desert toward the Punjab hills. The Varaha presence at Sirhind is preserved in revenue records and in the genealogical tradition that runs through the Vanshavali recovered from state revenue records and reproduced in the book’s appendix. The Vanshavali names Rai Hameer (settler of the Bhatinda area) and Rai Jagat Singh (after whom the title Rana begins to be used) as the early hinges of the line; later, Chaudhary Jahjar Chand moves from Arniala into Ambota in the Mughal period. The full Vanshavali is reproduced on the dedicated Vanshavali page.

Ambota — the Shivalik settlement

Ambota (district Una, Himachal Pradesh) is the modern home of the Varaha Rajput community. The Settlement Records of the U’nah parganah of Hoshiarpur district (Esquire, R. C. A., 1876) and the British Punjab State Gazetteers preserve the foundation tradition: a maternal grandfather granted the founding family five villages in the Shivalik foothills, and the lineage settled there permanently. The Ambota Vanshavali — DARAD AMBOTA, gotra SHANDILYA, BRYAH (Varaha) caste — was formally recorded in revenue documents on 26 May 1967. Three Vanshavali notes preserved in the same dossier explain the displacement and resettlement: “Kingdom of Raja Andarpal was located on some distance of Badri Narain’s Teerarth. Luka, Shamla and complete area of Daira Doon was in his occupation. His capital was in Bhatinda. But due to cruelty and brutality of Muslim rulers, Rai Kalo Ram inhabited in Jhal Kakra. Generation of other sire Goya Rai Devi Chand took shelter in the north east 16 to 17 miles away from Bhatinda.”

The conversions and the diaspora

Two waves of forced conversion under Aurangzeb in the seventeenth century split the surviving Varahas. The branch that resisted retreated up into the Shivaliks and consolidated at Ambota and the surrounding villages. The branch that accepted Islam — under names such as Birāhān, Birah, Barāhā, and Sayyed Barha — disappears from north-Indian Hindu records and reappears in the Sayyid genealogies of Awadh and Rohilkhand. Dashrath Sharma, in his Poona Orientalist paper “Identification of the Birāhān” (1943), and S. H. Hodivala‘s Studies in Indo-Muslim History (1939) reconstruct the conversion. Other Varaha cadet lines join the Wadan Gils, the Man, and the Bhuller Jat clans — H. A. Rose, A Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab (1914) — and the Gil Jat of Sirsa, who trace descent to Raja Bhainipal / Vinay Pal Birah. The southerly branch, displaced westward toward Saurashtra and Sindh, becomes ancestral to the Jhalas and the Makwanas.

The Masrur question

The last great architectural monument associated with the Hindu Shahi-Varaha line is the rock-cut Masrur temple complex in the Kangra hills. Prof. Narinder Kumar Singh, in Coronation of Shiva — Rediscovering Masrur Temple (Har-Anand, 2009), argues that the complex was patronised by the Hindu Shahi court and looted by Mahmud of Ghazna in the same campaign that brought him to Kangra Fort in 1009 CE. The book builds on this argument — Masrur is the missing visual record of the line’s last patronage in north India.

In this era

• The Ambota Vanshavali — state revenue records, 26 May 1967
• Bhatti rivalry · Jhala · Makwana · Gil Jat
• Jhalrapatan Inscription of Raja Doorgangul, S. 748 / 692 CE
• Primary sources — Tod’s Annals, Bhatti’s Pugal ka Itihaads, Sharma (1943), Hodivala (1939), Rose (1914), Singh (2009)

Cholistan: Uchchha & Derawar — the western survival

The post-1026 collapse of the Hindu Shahi political line was not the end of the Varaha lineage in the west. Two parallel survivals are documented: an eastern retreat through Bhatinda — Sirhind — the Shivalik hills, ending in the family settlement at Ambota in district Una, Himachal Pradesh, and a western survival in the Cholistan tract of southern Punjab (modern Pakistan), holding the desert forts of Uchchha (near Multan) and Derawar (in the upper Sind / Cholistan).

The Cholistan branch is not a speculation. It is independently attested in five separate categories of evidence:

1. The construction of Derawar — 9th century, by a Bhati Rajput

Derawar Fort was first built in the 9th century CE by Rai Jajja Bhati, a Hindu Rajput ruler of the Bhati clan, as a tribute to Rawal Deoraj Bhati of Jaisalmer.¹ The fort was originally called Dera Rawal, then Dera Rawar, and finally Derawar. The construction date matches the 9th-century chronology of the Banni Pal Bhatinda foundation in the eastern branch — both are products of the same Bhati-Variah Hindu Shahi periphery.²

2. Muhnot Nainsi's Khyat (17th century) — the Varhas as lords of the forts

The Marwari court chronicler Muhnot Nainsi, court historian to Maharaja Jaswant Singh of Marwar, names the Varhas as the lords of the desert forts in his Khyat: “Varha were the lords of the forts — like Uchchha (near Multan) and Derawar (in the upper Sind) — at that time. The territory lying between Hakra and Derawar, along with the forts of Uchchha and Derawar, were parts of their possession.”³ Nainsi is one of the most authoritative Mughal-era genealogical sources for the Rajput clans of the lower Punjab and Sindh.

3. The Bahawalpur succession — Sadiq Mohammad I takes Derawar from Rawal Akhi Singh

The official Bahawalpur government history records that Sadiq Mohammad I, founder-ancestor of the Bahawalpur state (1748), wrested Derawar Fort from a Rajput prince Rawal Akhi Singh only a few years before establishing his rule.⁴ This places the Rajput hold on Derawar firmly into the early 18th century — bracketing the Varaha-Cholistan period as approximately 11th — 18th century CE.

4. UNESCO — the desert forts of Cholistan as a Hindu Rajput network

The UNESCO Tentative List entry “Derawar and the Desert Forts of Cholistan” describes a dense network of forts (Meergarh, Jaangarh, Marotgarh, Maujgarh, Dingarh, Khangarh, Khairgarh, Bijnotgarh, Islamgarh) running parallel to the Indus and Sutlej, all originally Hindu Rajput strongholds in the medieval period before being absorbed by Muslim rulers.⁵ The Cholistan fort network is the architectural and political record of the Varaha-Bhati frontier.

5. Uch Sharif as a regional Rajput-period centre, 12th — 17th c.

Prior to the 18th-century establishment of Bahawalpur, the regional metropolitan centre of the area was Uch Sharif, which functioned as such between the 12th and 17th centuries.⁶ Uch is the same Uchchha that Nainsi names as a Varha fort, and the dating window matches Nainsi's testimony.

6. Independent history portals — the kitabkhana.org synthesis

The independent Indic-history portal kitabkhana.org carries a long-form essay titled “The Hindu Shahi Dynasty, the forgotten clan of Varaha Rajput” which synthesises the textual, archaeological and genealogical evidence for the Varaha-Cholistan branch and reproduces Nainsi's testimony in full.⁷

The eastern retreat: Bhatinda → Sirhind → Ambota

While the Cholistan branch held the desert forts in the west, the surviving Hindu Shahi-Variah clansmen in the Punjab plain retreated east. The route is preserved in the Vanshavali at Ambota: from Bhatinda, where Raja Banni Pal's descendants held the fort through the early Sultanate period; to Sirhind, after the loss of Bhatinda; and finally to the Shivalik foothills, where Chaudhary Jahjar Chand settled the family at Ambota (district Una, Himachal Pradesh) in the late 17th century, against the pressure of Aurangzeb-era forced conversions in the Sirhind tract.⁸

For the original record see The Ambota Vanshavali.

Sources for this page