Madhya Pradesh Quiz: Marathas and Princely States (Holkars, Scindias)

Malhar Rao was a cavalry commander in the service of Peshwa Baji Rao I during the Maratha conquest of Malwa, and in 1733 he was granted territory there, which became the Holkar state.

Ahilyabai, the widow of Khande Rao Holkar, governed the state from 1767 to 1795 and made Maheshwar on the north bank of the Narmada her capital, building the fort palace, the ghats and the temples that still stand there.

The temple building and repair that Ahilyabai carried out from Maheshwar reached far beyond her own state, and the rebuilding of the Kashi Vishwanath temple at Varanasi in 1780 is the work most often asked.

After the Maratha defeat at Panipat in 1761, Mahadji Scindia of Gwalior rebuilt Maratha strength in the north, occupied Delhi, took the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II under his protection and held the real authority at the imperial court.

The Scindia family's early centre in Malwa was Ujjain on the Shipra, and under Daulat Rao Scindia the seat of the state was moved to Gwalior, where the camp settlement of Lashkar below the hill fort grew into the modern city.

At the close of the third Anglo-Maratha war the Holkar state signed the Treaty of Mandsaur in 1818, accepting British protection and a subsidiary relationship, after which Indore settled into its position as a princely state of central India under the Central India Agency.

The second Anglo-Maratha war went against the Maratha chiefs, and in 1803 Daulat Rao Scindia signed the Treaty of Surji-Anjangaon, giving up territory and accepting the Company's terms.

He was an Afghan soldier in the service of the later Mughals who built up a holding around Bhopal in the early eighteenth century, and his descendants ruled it as Nawabs until the state acceded to India.

Rewa was the chief state of Baghelkhand, the region that takes its name from its Baghel Rajput rulers, and after independence it became the seat of Vindhya Pradesh before that unit was merged into Madhya Pradesh in 1956.

When the princely states were grouped after independence, the two large Maratha states and the small states of Malwa such as Dhar, Dewas, Ratlam and Jhabua were brought together in 1948 as Madhya Bharat, which lasted until the reorganisation of 1956.

Baji Rao I, Peshwa from 1720 to 1740, carried Maratha arms north of the Narmada and into Gujarat, Malwa and Bundelkhand, defeated the Nizam at Palkhed and reached the outskirts of Delhi, so that the initiative in Indian politics passed from the Mughal capital to Poona.