Genealogy & Allied Clans

Allied, descendant, and rival clans whose histories interlock with the Varaha line

The Varaha clan does not run as a single thread through Indian history. It branches and rebranches — into kingdoms, into Jat agricultural lineages, into Sayyid Muslim families, into Saurashtra Rajput houses — under a dozen different names. This page sketches the principal allied, descendant, and rival lineages, with links to the dedicated post on each.

Name variants

The Varaha name itself is multilingual. The Sanskrit varāha (“boar”) shares a root with the Pahlavi warāz and the Old Persian varaz — the boar-totem of the House of Waraz. The Indian record preserves the variants:

• Varaha / Varāha / Varihaha — the Sanskrit forms
• Varaz / Waraz / Warz / Varz — Sassanian and post-Sassanian Iranian forms
• Barah / Barāhā / Birah / Biraha — north-Indian medieval inscriptional forms
• Birāhān — the Persian/Persianate form, identified by Dashrath Sharma (1943)
• Vrah / Vraha / Vraha-Vamsha — used by Devra (2003)
• Bryah — the form preserved in the Ambota state-revenue Vanshavali
• Varvara — the Markandeya Purana form, c. 250 CE

The seven principal connected clans

• Bhatti — the Yadava-Bhatti dynasty of Jaisalmer; the Varahas’ most enduring rival in the Bhatinda–Bhatner desert.
• Chauhan — the Sapadalaksha dynasty of Sambhar and Ajmer; absorbed Varaha territory after 1192 CE.
• Gurjara-Pratihara — the imperial dynasty of Kannauj; Sthavi Rajput tradition that overlaps with Hephthalite-era settlement (Smith 1907 on the Vyaghramukha drachm).
• Jhala — the Saurashtra Rajput dynasty; descended, in Devra’s reading, from the southerly Varaha cadet branch displaced from Sindh.
• Makwana — the parent line of the Jhalas; identified by Devra as a Varaha-derivative settled at Macchu-kantha.
• Tak / Takshak — the Nagavanshi dynasty of north-west India; the Wajihu-l Mulk Tak of the eleventh century is mentioned alongside the Varahas in the Persian sources.
• Janjua — the Salt Range Rajput line; descended from the Hindu Shahi cadet branch.
• Gil Jat — the Sirsa-Hisar Jat line; H. A. Rose (1914) records the tradition of descent from Raja Bhainipal / Vinay Pal Birah.

European echoes — the Pechenegs and the Magyars

One of the more remarkable strands of the genealogy runs west into Europe. The Pecheneg ruling clan Thonuzoba (Old Turkic tonuz, “boar”; oba, “house” — boar’s family) is named in Anonymus‘s Gesta Hungarorum (c. 1200 CE) as one of the seven foundational clans of the Hungarian state. Ferenc Zajti, in Hungarian Millennia (1939), cites Rabindranath Tagore on the kinship between the Indian and Hungarian peoples; the Oghuz expansion of c. 770 CE displaced the Pechenegs westward, and they in turn displaced the proto-Magyars from Bashkiria into the Carpathian basin. The boar travels with them.

The Vanshavali

The fullest Indian genealogical record is the Ambota Vanshavali, recorded in state revenue documents on 26 May 1967 — gotra Shandilya, caste Bryah (Varaha), village Ambota, district Una. The line opens with Raja Manr and runs through Raja Mohar, Rayi Dala, Rayi Kalo Chand, Rayi Jaikar, Rayi Ghapat, Rayi Sanpat, Rayi Bahopat, Rayi Gamoon, and Rayi Hameer (the settler of the Bhatinda area), and after Rai Jagat Singh switches the title from Rai to Rana. The full transcription is preserved on the dedicated Vanshavali page.

In this era

• Allied / descendant / rival clan posts: Bhatti · Chauhan · Gurjara-Pratihara · Jhala · Makwana · Tak · Janjua · Gil Jat
• Ambota Vanshavali — state revenue records
• Primary sources — Devra (2003), Rose (1914), Sharma (1943), Hodivala (1939), Tod (2014), Bhatti (1989), Zajti (1939)