Medieval MP: Paramaras, Chandelas and Gond Kingdoms

Between the fall of the Gurjara-Pratiharas and the coming of the Mughals, the land that is now Madhya Pradesh was divided among three remarkable powers. Malwa in the west belonged to the Paramaras of Dhar, Bundelkhand in the north-east to the Chandelas of Khajuraho, and the forests of the Satpura and the upper Narmada to the Gond kings. Each left something that still stands, a temple, a fort or a lake, and the state papers ask about all three by name.

The Paramaras of Malwa

The Paramaras ruled Malwa from Dhar from about the ninth century. Vakpati Munja made the kingdom a power and was killed in a campaign against the Chalukya ruler Tailapa the Second of the Deccan, a reminder that Malwa's wars were fought on two fronts, against Gujarat to the west and the Chalukyas to the south. The great name of the line is Raja Bhoja, who ruled in the first half of the eleventh century and is remembered more as a scholar than as a conqueror. Works on architecture, poetics and many other subjects are ascribed to him, among them the Samarangana Sutradhara on building and the Saraswatikanthabharana on poetics, and the saying that learning left the world when Bhoja died grew up around his court. The Bhojshala at Dhar, the unfinished Shiva temple at Bhojpur with its colossal lingam, and the great lake at Bhopal that still carries his name are all attributed to him. Udayaditya, a later king, built the Udayeshwar temple at Udaipur in Vidisha district. Paramara rule over Malwa ended in the early fourteenth century, when Alauddin Khalji's army took the country in 1305.

The Chandelas and Khajuraho

The Chandelas ruled Jejakabhukti, the Bundelkhand of today, from Khajuraho, Mahoba and the hill forts of Kalinjar and Ajaigarh. Nannuka founded the line in the ninth century. Yashovarman built the Lakshmana temple, Dhanga the Vishvanatha temple, and Vidyadhara, the strongest of them, is credited with the Kandariya Mahadeva, the largest temple of the group; he also faced the invasions of Mahmud of Ghazni without losing his kingdom. The decline came with Paramardideva, whom Prithviraj Chauhan defeated in 1182, a campaign that lives on in the ballads of Alha and Udal. The fort of Kalinjar, long a Chandela stronghold, is where Sher Shah Suri died of a gunpowder explosion in 1545.

The temples were built roughly between the middle of the tenth and the middle of the eleventh century in the Nagara style, with the sikhara rising in clustered miniature spires and the plan arranged as a central shrine with subsidiary shrines. The site was overgrown and was reported to the outside world by a British engineer, T. S. Burt, in 1838. Khajuraho was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1986.

The Gond kingdoms

The Gonds built four kingdoms in the hills and forests: Garha-Katanga around Jabalpur and Mandla, Deogarh in the Chhindwara region, Chanda in the south-east and Kherla in Betul. Garha-Katanga is the one the papers ask about. Sangram Shah, also called Aman Das, is said to have held fifty-two garhs or forts, and it was his son Dalpat Shah who married Durgavati, a Chandela princess of Mahoba. When Dalpat Shah died early, Durgavati ruled as regent for their young son Bir Narayan and governed with a reputation for good administration, tanks and roads. In 1564 the kingdom was invaded by Asaf Khan, a general of Akbar, and Rani Durgavati, wounded in battle, took her own life rather than be captured. The fort of Chauragarh fell soon after. Madan Mahal at Jabalpur, perched on a boulder, is a Gond fort of an earlier reign.

The other medieval powers

Three more names belong beside these. The Kalachuris of Tripuri, near Jabalpur, ruled the Chedi country and left the Chausath Yogini temple at Bheraghat. The Malwa Sultanate rose at the beginning of the fifteenth century and moved its capital to Mandu, where Hoshang Shah's tomb is the earliest marble tomb in India, and where Jahaz Mahal, Hindola Mahal and the story of Baz Bahadur and Rani Roopmati belong. The Bundelas built Orchha on the Betwa in the sixteenth century, and Bir Singh Deo raised the Jahangir Mahal there, while Chhatrasal of Panna fought Aurangzeb in the same region a century later.