View source for Rajput: Somvansi, Chandravansi

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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: 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.