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)

Bardic & Mughal-era attestations of the Variah line

Beyond the Ambota Vanshavali, the Variah lineage is documented in three independent bardic and chronicle traditions. The Bhati bards of Jaisalmer preserve the foundation of Bhatinda by Raja Banni Pal and the 9th-century Tanot raid by a Varah-Panwar coalition. The Khyat of Muhnot Nainsi, the 17th-century Marwari court chronicle, names the Varhas as the lords of Uchchha and Derawar in the Cholistan tract south-west of Bahawalpur. The Variah-line bardic memory itself preserves the construction of Bhim Garh on the Sutlej by Raja Vineypal Variah in the mid-7th century CE. Tod's Annals & Antiquities of Rajasthan reproduces fragments of all three traditions, though with the conflations and dating uncertainties characteristic of 19th-century compilations.

The Janjua-Variah split

After the collapse of the Trilocanapala line in 1021 and the death of Bhimapala in 1026, the surviving Hindu Shahi lineages split into two principal branches. The Janjua branch retained the Salt Range west of the Jhelum, where they remained the dominant Rajput chieftaincy through the Sultanate and into the Mughal period. The Variah branch held the trans-Sutlej tract from Bhatinda south-west to Sirsa and Hisar, with outposts at Uchchha and Derawar in Cholistan. The two branches share a common Hindu Shahi descent and are sometimes treated together in Pakistani-side clan memory; the Janjua-Variah pairing is documented most fully on the newpakhistorian portal.

Cross-references to ruler entries

For the foundational rulers see Raja Banni Pal (Bhatinda) and Raja Vineypal Variah (Bhim Garh). For the corroborating bardic and Mughal-era press see Press & References.