The Ambota Vanshavali
From state revenue records · Gotra Shandilya · Caste Bryah (Varaha) · Village Ambota, district Una · Recorded 26 May 1967
The fullest Indian genealogical record of the Varaha Rajput line is the Vanshavali of the Ambota family, held in the revenue record of the village. The transcription below is from the formal record of 26 May 1967, presented to Chaudhary Hukma Singh and prepared by Chaudhary Bakkaram. The English notes preserved with the original document are reproduced verbatim.
What kind of source this is. A vanshavali written down in 1967 is a record of what a family remembered in 1967. On the grading used across this site it is Grade D — a tradition set down after 1850. It is first-rate evidence for the family’s own account of itself, for the sequence of titles it claims, and for the places it names as its earlier homes. It is not evidence for events of the eleventh century, and nothing on this page should be read as though it were. Where the Vanshavali and a dated document disagree, the dated document governs; where the Vanshavali says something no document records, it is reported here as what the family holds, and labelled as such.
The Vanshavali
Vanshavali, Rajput caste — Bryah (Varaha) — Gotra Shandilya — Darad Ambota.
- Raja Manr
- Raja Mohar
- Rayi Dala
- Rayi Kalo Chand
- Rayi Jaikar
- Rayi Ghapat
- Rayi Sanpat
- Rayi Bahopat
- Rayi Gamoon
- Raye Hameer (he settled the district Jahal, area of Bhatinda)
- Raye Jagat Singh (after him Rana was the new title)
- Rana Beep
- Rana Basoo
- Rana Shamshair Jang
- Rana Heelay
- Rana Adheer
- Rana Paharrya
- Rana Otam
- Rana Jaikar
- Rana Laloo
- Rana Karam Chand
- Rana Reekhoo
- Rana Doata
- Rana Bantoo
- Rana Meegh
- Rana Daryan
- Rana Nanoo
- Rana Daweedas
- Rana Sassi Chand
- Rana Karam Chand (here the title of Rana ended)
- Chaudhry Jahjar (he came from Arniala and settled in Anboota)
- Chaudhry Bahadur (Meerak)
- Chaudhry Maan (he had two sons: Gopal and Saaloo)
- Chaudhry Bahopat (Chaudhry Mohin was in children of Chaudhry Bahopat)
- Chadhry Golian (Chaudhry Tajiya was in children of Chaudhry Golian)
- Chadhry Pehlad
- Goohro · Kolapa · Diyanat · Gamandi · Hasan · Zorawar
The list should not be read as a strict father-to-son sequence. Thirty-seven entries cannot span the interval the record implies, and names such as Karam Chand recur. What the document transmits dependably is the order of the titles and the names the family kept, not a generation count.
Notes from the original record
Note 1. The 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. But Kalo Ram has no descendants. That is why Charrat Singh occupied Jahal Kakra.
Note 2. Mahindar Pal has no descendants. Rai Kalo Ram populated Jhal Kakra. After his death, in the filiation of Jugandar Pal, Charat Singh occupied Jahal Kakra.
Note 3. Chaudhary Jahjar Chand came from Arniala and populated in Aamotia.
Reading the Vanshavali
The titles. The progression Raja → Rayi → Rana → Chaudhary tracks a political descent: from claimed kingship, through landholder standing, to revenue chieftaincy under the Mughal and then the British administrations. This is the most useful thing in the document, because it is the kind of thing a family record keeps accurately — a household remembers what it was called.
Jhal and Kakrā are two places, not one. Notes 1 and 2 give “Jhal Kakra” as a single name, and it has been read that way. The Phulkian States Gazetteer of 1904 lists Jhal and Kakrā as separate chhats among the twelve chhats of the Varyāh brotherhood in the Puadh. The Vanshavali has run two chhat names together — which is what an orally transmitted list does. The correction matters: the family is not recalling one village but two seats of the same brotherhood, which strengthens rather than weakens the Puadh connection. The twelve-chhat list is set out on The Documentary Record.
The conversion belongs to Jahangir’s reign, not Aurangzeb’s. Earlier versions of this page placed the displacement of the family under Aurangzeb. The community’s own material dates the conversion of the Varyāh line to the reign of Jahangir (1605–27), and it is Rai Kālu who stands at that point. Aurangzeb is the later and more familiar villain, and the attribution looks like a reflex rather than a reading. The earlier date is given here because that is what the sources say.
Bhatinda, and what Note 1 can and cannot be asked to carry. Note 1 names Bhatinda as the capital of Raja Andarpal — Ānandapāla, in Punjabi “Anderpal.” This is the central claim of the family tradition and it is set down here in full, without alteration. But it must be said plainly what it is: a statement recorded in 1967 about the early eleventh century, with no document behind it. It cannot be used to establish that a Hindu Shāhi king held Bhatinda. The only inscription ever recovered at Bhatinda names a different ruler — Rājā Śatrughnadeva, of a local family — and its editor, D. R. Sahni, wrote in print in Epigraphia Indica XXI that Raverty was wrong to make Bhatinda the capital of Jayapāla of the Hindu Shāhi dynasty. The belief that it was Jayapāla’s capital can be traced through a chain of nineteenth- and twentieth-century repetitions back to a single misreading. That evidence is set out on The Documentary Record, where the question of the Shāhi descent is treated as the open question it is.
Arniala to Ambota. The move recorded in Note 3 fixes the Shivalik settlement, and it is the part of the document closest to living memory and therefore the most dependable. The family’s arrival in the hills of Una is the one migration on this page that the record itself is competent to attest.
For the wider migration narrative see Final Settlement — Bhatinda, Sirhind, Ambota, and for the dated documents see The Documentary Record.
