Mewar as Focus of Guhila State (Part-XIII)

The evidence suggests that the early fifteenth century kings of Mewar, who made no attempts to claim direct kinship relations with the Guhila dynasty, were possibly chiefs of local origin from Chittaurgarh.— Prof. Nandini Kapur Sinha

My discussion of the aspirations of royal kinsmen for upward social mobility and the political manifestations thereof in the latter half of the thirteenth century, shows that royal attempts at projecting the succession of Guhila kings in a single line of fathers and sons conceal political tensions and the presence of rival chiefs. In this context, note David P. Henige’s reservations about the veracity of Guhila genealogy: We are asked, for instance, to believe that in the Guhila dynasty of Medapata 32 of 33 successions were of the father-to-son variety, including five ruling generations between 942 and 977 and 18 ruling generations between 942 and before 1168. This extremely narrow royal genealogy is inferred from retrospective epigraphic evidence and from the traditions recorded by Tod. And, given the propensity of the Vamœävalis, Khyäts, and other chronicles that portray succession as unremittingly from father to son one need not rely too heavily on Tod’s account in this instance.

Though the royal inscriptions and other sources suggest unilinear succession on the basis of descent, the actual political situation in the thirteenth century was fraught with centrifugal forces. However, I focus here on the problems that the Guhila monarchy faced in this period. At the point when the dynasty reached the zenith of its power, its chief political supporters, the royal kinsmen, were possibly its worst problems. 

The long absence of Guhila rule in fourteenth-century Mewar is indicated by the absence of Guhila records (with the exception of a solitary private record referring to the reign of RâGâ Kheta in AD 1366.) Epigraphic records of the Khaljis, Tughlaqs and Songirãs in Chittaur- garh indicate a change in political sovereignty in the first half of the fourteenth century. At Chittaurgarh there is an intriguing absence of records between 1350 and 1400. To understand the continuities and changes during this period and later, a study of the fifteenth-century local records is indispensable for my analysis of the process of state formation in Mewar as reflected in Guhila dynastic continuity.

The Fifteenth Century

Significantly, the disruption of Guhila rule in the fourteenth century is followed by the re-emergence of Guhila kingship in the fifteenth century. This shall greatly help analyse the establishment of the institution of regional kingship and dynastic traditions in Mewar. I feel that this continuity of Guhila dynastic rule despite a break was the result of a long process of regional state formation in which the state of Mewar came to be identified with the Guhila dynasty. 

The fact that the kings of the late fourteenth and the early fifteenth century were sovereigns of Mewar is significant. These kings did not acknowledge the sovereignty of any king from outside Mewar. Evidence of their sovereignty is amply borne out by royal records. Thakkura Dâlâ refers to the reign of RâGâ Kheta in AD 1366. King Mokal’s Chittaurgarh Inscription and his Œrngirsi Inscription, the earliest fifteenth-century royal records from Mewar, refer to an early ruler, Arisimha, as kcitipati and Hammira (Arisimha’s successor in royal genealogy) as bhupati. With the consolidation of Guhila political power, titles were magnified; King Mokal was called mahârâjâdhiraja mahârâGâ úrî m[ganka; so too his successor Kumbha who was also called rairâyâ râGerâi mahârâGâ. Not only royal records, but those of the Jains too refer to the reigning King Kumbha in a much more pompous tone (úrî râmayudhiºthiradi nareúvaranukrasya râGâ úri kumbhakarna sarvovirapatisar vabhaumasya vijayamânarâjye). Interestingly, the late fourteenth or early fifteenth-century kings of Mewar did not trace their genealogy to erstwhile Guhila kings except for lineage affiliation. They merely borrowed the legends of bappaja vamsah and anvayo guhila narapati% in the early fifteenth century. In spite of proclaiming that one of their predecessors, Hammira (so far unlisted in Guhila genealogy), was a gem in the family of Bâppã, Hammira’s kinship ties to the said family are not revealed in Mokal’s records.

The evidence suggests that the early fifteenth-century kings of Mewar, who made no attempts to claim direct kinship relations with the Guhila dynasty, were possibly chiefs of local origin from Chittaurgarh. Their rise to power, associated with the fortress of Chittaur, is testified by contemporary royal records. The Kumbhalgarh Prasasti condemns Räval Ratnasimha (the last Guhila king on the throne of Mewar before Alauddin’s invasion of Chittaurgarh) for having failed to protect Chittaurgarh. In the same record MahârâGâ Lakcmasimha is eulogized for having protected it. Besides, that their political origin was different from that of the earlier Guhila dynasty is also suggested by a private record that refers to King Khetâ (Kcetrasimha) as a râGâ while one of Kheta’s grandsons Mokal chooses to drop the title. RâGâ, being a politically subordinate title suggests that initially, the Guhila kings were mere local chiefs. Mokal later dropped the title of râGâ from his records to highlight the royal status of the Guhilas. 

The Guhilas were so strongly identified with the state of Mewar that no politically ascendant family aspiring to kingship, however strong and powerful, could legitimize its exercise of power without claiming direct kinship with them. Later rulers not only continued to appropriate dynastic affiliation to the Guhilas through the motifs of nrpati guhiläbhidhâno (kings by the name of Guhila), bappakhyah purâGapuruºa and baºpanvatah” (in the lineage of Bäppä) but gradually also began to claim direct kinship with them. Vague affiliation to KhummâGa is hinted in a late fifteenth-century record. As I have mentioned earlier, KhummâGa is referred to as a Guhila king in the Atapura Inscription of AD 977 which provided the very first genea-logical list of the Guhilas of Mewar for the first time. Mokal, in the Chittaurgarh inscription dated AD 1429, traces Hammira back to Arisimha, king of Mewar, in the family of the Guhilas. Both of Mokal’s Mewar between the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Centuries records provide us with a genealogy that runs from Arisimha to Hammira to Mokal via Mokal’s grandfather Kºetrasimha and father Laksa-simha. What seems to distinguish Mokal’s genealogy is the lengthy prasasti for Hammira” rather than Bäppä. However, Mokal neither elaborates upon the ties of kinship with previous Guhila kings nor mentions their ranks. Interestingly, a Jain record, the RâGakpur Prasasti of AD 1439, is one of the first fifteenth-century records that refers to the reigning king, Kumbha as râGâso andtraces the genealogy of Kumbha to Bâppävamsiya kings and Hammira to the thirteenth-century Guhila King Samarasimhas starting with Bappa.      (Continued...)

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