Rajasthan Quiz: Origin of the Rajputs and Early Dynasties

Chand Bardai's Prithviraj Raso tells that four clans, the Pratihara, the Chauhan, the Solanki and the Parmar, rose from a fire pit at Mount Abu where the sage Vashishtha performed a sacrifice, and from this account the Agnikula or fire born theory takes its name.

Tod, who served as the Political Agent of the East India Company in western Rajputana, wrote the Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan and argued that the Rajputs were descended from the Scythians of Central Asia, pointing to shared habits of warfare, the place of the horse and certain funeral rites.

The four clans named in the Agnikula account are the Pratihara or Parihar, the Chauhan or Chahamana, the Solanki or Chaulukya and the Parmar or Paramara.

He ruled in about the middle of the eighth century from Bhinmal in the Jalore region and is credited with stopping the Arab armies that had taken Sindh, a service which even the Rashtrakuta records acknowledge when they describe the Pratihara as the defender of the west.

Mihir Bhoja, also called Bhoja I, was the greatest of the Gurjara Pratiharas; he ruled from Kannauj in the ninth century, was a devotee of Vishnu and issued silver coins carrying the title Adivaraha, the primeval boar, one of Vishnu's forms.

The Bijoliya rock inscription of Bhilwara district, dated 1170, sets out the Chauhan line from Vasudeva, the founder at Shakambhari or Sambhar, and describes the family as Brahmins of the Vatsa gotra, which is one of the strongest arguments against the Agnikula story of their birth from fire.

The Atpur inscription, also called the Ahar inscription, is dated 977 and belongs to the reign of Shaktikumar; it lists the Guhil rulers from Guhadatta onwards and is the main inscriptional source for the early line of Mewar, with the Samoli inscription of 646 standing earlier and the Chirwa inscription…

Prithviraj Chauhan III beat Muhammad Ghori at Tarain, near Thanesar in present day Haryana, in 1191, and the wounded invader escaped from the field.

Ajayaraja founded Ajayameru early in the twelfth century and shifted the Chauhan centre there from Shakambhari, that is Sambhar; the name wore down into Ajmer, and the hill fort above the town is still called Taragarh.

Ranthambore fell to Alauddin Khalji in 1301 after a long siege, and Hammir Dev Chauhan died defending it; the Hammir Mahakavya of Nayachandra Suri is written about him.