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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: Chandel=

An important clan of Rajputs, of
which a small number reside in the northern Districts of
Saugor, Damoh and Jubbulpore, and also in Chhattisgarh.
The name is derived by Mr. Crooke from the Sanskrit
cJiandra, the moon. The Chandel are not included in the
thirty-six royal races, and are supposed to have been a
section of one of the indigenous tribes which rose to power.

Mr. V. A. Smith states that the Chandels, like several other
dynasties, first came into history early in the ninth century,
when Nannuka Chandel about A.D. 831 overthrew a Parihar
chieftain and became lord of the southern parts of Jejakabhukti
or Bundelkhand. Their chief towns were Mahoba and
Kalanjar in Bundelkhand, and they gradually advanced
northwards till the Jumna became the frontier between their
dominions and those of Kanauj. They fought with the Gujar-
Parihar kings of Kanauj and the Kalachuris of Chedi, who
had their capital at Tewar in Jubbulpore, and joined in resisting
the incursions of the Muhammadans. In A.D. 11 82
Parmal, the Chandel king, was defeated by Prithwi Raja, the
 
Chauhan king of Delhi, after the latter had abducted the
Chandel's daughter. This was the war in which Alha and
Udal, the famous Banaphar heroes, fought for the Chandels,
and it is commemorated in the Chand-Raisa, a poem still
well known to the people of Bundelkhand. In A.D. 1203
Kalanjar was taken by the Muhammadan Kutb-ud-Din
Ibak, and the importance of the Chandel rulers came to an
end, though they lingered on as purely local chiefs until the
sixteenth century. 

The Chandel princes were great builders,
and beautified their chief towns, Mahoba, Kalanjar and
Khajuraho with many magnificent temples and lovely lakes,
formed by throwing massive dams across the openings
between the hills/ Among these were great irrigation works
in the Hamirpur District, the forts of Kalanjar and Ajaighar,
and the noble temples at Khajuraho and Mahoba.^ Even
now the ruins of old forts and temples in the Saugor and
Damoh Districts are attributed by the people to the Chandels,
though many were in fact probably constructed by the
Kalachuris of Chedi.


Mr. Smith derives the Chandels either from the Gonds
or Bhars, but inclines to the view that they were Gonds.
The following considerations tend, I venture to think, to
favour the hypothesis of their origin from the lihars. According
to the best traditions, the Gonds came from the south,
and practically did not penetrate to Bundelkhand. Though
Saugor and Damoh contain a fair number of Gonds they
have never been of importance there, and this is almost their
farthest limit to the north-west. 

The Gond States in the
Central Provinces did not come into existence for several
centuries after the commencement of the Chandel dynasty,
and while there are authentic records of all these states, the
Gonds have no tradition of their dominance in Bundelkhand.
The Gonds have nowhere else built such temples as are attributed
to the Chandels at Khajuraho, whilst the Bhars were
famous builders. " In Mirzapur traces of the Bhars abound
on all sides in the shape of old tanks and village forts. The
bricks found in the Bhar-dlhs or forts are of enormous
dimensions, and frequently measure 1 9 by 11 inches, and
' Early History of hidia, 3rcl cdi- - Mr. Crooke's Tribes ami Castes,
tion, pp. 390-394. ait. Chandel.
 
are 2^ inches thick. In quality and size they are similar to
bricks often seen in ancient Buddhist buildings. The old
capital of the Bhars, five miles from Mirzapur, is said to have
had 150 temples."^ Elliot remarks ^ that " common tradition
assigns to the Bhars the possession of the whole tract
from Gorakhpur to Bundelkhand and Saugor, and many old
stone forts, embankments and subterranean caverns in
Gorakhpur, Azamgarh, Jaunpur, Mirzapur and x^llahabad,
which are ascribed to them, would seem to indicate no inconsiderable
advance in civilisation." Though there are few
or no Bhars now in Bundelkhand, there are a large number
of Basis in Allahabad which partly belongs to it, and small
numbers in Bundelkhand ; and the Pasi caste is mainly
derived from the Bhars ;


^ while a Gaharwar dynasty, which
is held to be derived from the Bhars, was dominant in
Bundelkhand and Central India before the rise of the
Chandels. According to one legend, the ancestor of the
Chandels was born with the moon as a father from the
daughter of the high priest of the Gaharwar Raja Indrajit of
Benares or of Indrajit himself.* As will be seen, the Gaharwars
were an aristocratic section of the Bhars. 

Another
legend states that the first Chandel was the offspring of the
moon by the daughter of a Brahman Pandit of Kalanjar.^
In his Notes on the Bhars of Bundelkhand^ Mr. Smith
argues that the Bhars adopted the Jain religion, and
also states that several of the temples at Khajuraho and
Mahoba, erected in the eleventh century, are Jain. These
were presumably erected by the Chandels, but I have
never seen it suggested that the Gonds were Jains or were
capable of building Jain temples in the eleventh century.
Mr. Smith also states that Maniya Deo, to whom a temple
exists at Mahoba, was the tutelary deity of the Chandels ;
and that the only other shrine of Maniya Deo discovered
by him in the Hamlrpur District was in a village reputed
formerly to have been held by the Bhars.'^ Two instances of
intercourse between the Chandels and Gonds are given, but
' Shcrring's Castes and Tribes, i. * Crooke's Tribes and Castes, art.
PP- 359> 360. Chandel.


2 Supplemental Glossary, art. lihar. r r < o *r> 1 1
" -^' • i,q^^\ " J.A.S.B. vol. xlvi. (1577), p. 232.
2 See art. ITisi. 7 Jhjdcm, p. 233.
 
the second of them, that the Rani Durgavati of Mandla was
a Chandel princess, belongs to the sixteenth century, and
has no bearing on the origin of the Chandels. The first
instance, that of the Chandel Raja Kirat Singh hunting at
Maniagarh with the Gond Raja of Garha-Mandla, cannot
either be said to furnish any real evidence in favour of a
Gond origin for the Chandels ; it may be doubted whether
there was any Gond Raja of Garha-Mandla till after the fall
of the Kalachuri dynasty of Tewar, which is quite close to
Garha-Mandla, in the twelfth century ; and a reference so late
as this would not affect the question/ Finally, the Chandels
are numerous in Mirzapur, which was formerly the chief seat
of the Bhars, while the Gonds have never been either
numerous or important in Mirzapur. 

These considerations
seem to point to the possibility of the derivation of the
Chandels from the Bhars rather than from the Gonds ; and
the point is perhaps of some interest in view of the suggestion
in the article on Kol that the Gonds did not arrive in
the Central Provinces for some centuries after the rise of the
Chandel dynasty ot Khajuraho and Mahoba. The Chandels
may have simply been a local branch of the Gaharwars, who
obtained a territorial designation from Chanderi, or in some
other manner, as has continually happened in the case of
other clans. The Gaharwars were probably derived from
the Bhars. The Chandels now rank as a good Rajput clan,
and intermarry with the other leading clans.