Rajput: Somvansi, Chandravansi

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This article was written in 1916 when conditions were different. Even in 1916 its contents related only to Central India and did not claim to be true of all of India. It has been archived for its historical value as well as for the insights it gives into British colonial writing about the various communities of India. Indpaedia neither agrees nor disagrees with the contents of this article. Readers who wish to add fresh information can create a Part II of this article. The general rule is that if we have nothing nice to say about communities other than our own it is best to say nothing at all. Readers will be able to edit existing articles and post new articles directly on their online archival encyclopædia only after its formal launch. See examples and a tutorial.

From The Tribes And Castes Of The Central Provinces Of India

By R. V. Russell

Of The Indian Civil Service

Superintendent Of Ethnography, Central Provinces

Assisted By Rai Bahadur Hira Lal, Extra Assistant Commissioner

Macmillan And Co., Limited, London, 1916.

NOTE 1: The 'Central Provinces' have since been renamed Madhya Pradesh.

NOTE 2: While reading please keep in mind that all articles in this series have been scanned from a book. During scanning some errors are bound to occur. Some letters get garbled. Footnotes get inserted into the main text of the article, interrupting the flow. Readers who spot errors might like to correct them, and shift footnotes gone astray to their rightful place.

Rajput: Somvansi, Chandravansi

These two are returned as separate septs, though both names mean ' Descendants of the moon.' Colonel Tod considers Surajvansi and Somvansi, or the descendants of the sun and moon as the first two of the thirty-six royal clans, from which all the others were evolved. But he gives no account of them, nor does it appear that they were regularly recognised clans in Rajputana.

It is probable that both Somvansi and Chandravansi, as well as Surajvansi and perhaps Nagvansi (Descendants of the snake) have served as convenient designations for Rajputs of illegitimate birth, or for ^ If ihe Chalukyas were in the belonged to an earlier horde. Deccan in the fourth century they could not have originated from the " Sonic Prohloiis of Ancient Indian Ilun and Gujar invaders of the fifth IIis/o)y, by Dr. Rudolf lloernle, and sixth centuries, but must have J.R.A.S. (1905), pp. I -14.

landholding sections of the cultivating castes and indigenous tribes when they aspired to become Rajputs. Thus the Surajvansis, and Somvansis of different parts of the country might be quite different sets of people.

There seems some reason for supposing tliat the Somvansis of the United Provinces as described by Mr. Crooke are derived from the Bhar tribe ;' in the Central Provinces a number of Somvansis and Chandravansis are returned from the I'eudatory States, and are probably landholders who originally belonged to one of the forest tribes residing in them.

I have heard the name Somvansi applied to a boy who belonged to the Baghel clan of Rajputs, but he was of inferior status on account of his mother being a remarried widow, or something of the kind.