इतिहास
This plain's periodisation is set by its position — flat, dry, open, and lying directly across the only comfortable approach to Delhi from the north-west. Its ancient period is unusually deep and unusually well recorded in the ground rather than in texts, and it contains a genuine surprise: for something like five hundred years in the early historic period the plain was not held by a dynasty at all but by the Yaudheyas, a ganasangha whose coins name the assembly rather than a king. There is no king list for that period, and constructing one would misdescribe the polity. The medieval period is better dated from the 1350s, when Firoz Shah Tughlaq founded a town at Hisar and cut a canal from the Yamuna to water the dry bangar, than from 1192 — the battles at Tarain changed who ruled Delhi but the canal changed what the plain could grow. And the modern period begins in 1803, when the tract passed from Maratha to Company control, not in 1857; though 1857 is the year that reorganised it, since the plain's part in the revolt is why it was detached from the North-Western Provinces and attached to the Punjab in 1858, where it stayed for a century.
कालक्रम यहाँ क्षेत्रीय है, राष्ट्रीय नहीं — मध्यकाल हर क्षेत्र में एक ही सदी से शुरू नहीं होता।
प्राचीनc. 7th millennium BCE – c. 1192 CE
This is one of the most continuously occupied stretches of ground in South Asia, and almost all of the evidence is archaeological. Bhirrana in Fatehabad carries some of the earliest levels in the Harappan sequence; Rakhigarhi in Hisar district grew into one of the largest settlements of the mature phase, and Banawali, Kunal and Mitathal belong to the same system. The plain then appears in textual tradition as Kuru country and as the Kurukshetra of the Mahabharata, which is a devotional and literary association rather than a dated one and should be read as such. What follows is documented on coins: the Yaudheyas, a confederacy that ruled without a king from Rohtak and the surrounding tract, held out against the Kushanas and were named as adversaries by Rudradaman and as submitting by Samudragupta. Kingship returns with the Pushyabhutis at Thanesar in the sixth century, and the plain becomes a frontier again after 1192.
मध्यकालीन1192 – 1803
For six centuries the plain was the approach march, and its history is mostly other people's armies crossing it. Three of those crossings were decided at Panipat, in 1526, 1556 and 1761, and the second of them is the only one in which this plain fought as itself: Hemu, a trader's son from Rewari who had risen through the Sur administration to command its armies, took Delhi in October 1556 and was crowned there before being defeated and killed at Panipat weeks later. Underneath the battles is the more consequential story, which is water. Firoz Shah Tughlaq founded Hisar-e-Firoza in 1354 and cut a canal from the Yamuna westward across the dry bangar in the same decade — the ancestor of the Western Yamuna Canal, and the intervention that made large-scale settled cultivation possible away from the river. To the south, in the Aravalli pockets, the Khanzadas of Mewat held a separate country of their own for close to two centuries.
आधुनिक1803 – 1947
The plain passed to the East India Company in 1803 after the Second Anglo-Maratha War and was administered from Delhi as part of the North-Western Provinces. Company engineers re-cut the old Yamuna canal between 1817 and 1825, adding the Delhi branch in 1819 and the Hansi branch in 1825, which is why the bangar's irrigated core sits where it does. Then came 1857, in which this plain rose more completely than almost any comparable tract — the cantonment at Ambala, the districts of Gurgaon, Rohtak and Hisar, the Mewat pockets, the Ahirwal around Rewari, and the small states of Jhajjar, Ballabgarh, Farrukhnagar and Bahadurgarh. The reprisal was correspondingly complete: rulers hanged at Delhi, estates confiscated, and in 1858 the whole territory detached from the North-Western Provinces and attached to the Punjab as an administrative punishment. That is why this plain spent the next century governed from Lahore. Its twentieth-century politics were agrarian rather than nationalist for most of the period, though non-cooperation arrived through a very large conference at Bhiwani in October 1920.
शासक और सेनापति
The Yaudheya gana Ganasangha — a republic without a king प्रशासक c. 2nd century BCE – 4th century CE
For roughly five centuries this plain was governed by an assembly rather than a dynasty, and its own coinage says so: the legend proclaims victory to the Yaudheya gana and names no ruler. It was a confederacy of separate units with a martial recruitment base, it held out against Kushana expansion in the second century, and Rudradaman's Junagadh inscription names it as an adversary. There is no king list to supply here, and that absence is the finding rather than a gap.
राजवंश: Not dynastic. राजधानी: Rohtak, with coin finds concentrated at Khokhrakot and Naurangabad
Harsha Maharajadhiraja शासक 606–647
Came to the throne at Thanesar after the death of his father Prabhakaravardhana and the killing of his brother Rajyavardhana, and moved the capital east to Kannauj. Thanesar's importance as a pilgrimage and political centre dates from this house, and the plain has not been the seat of an imperial power since.
राजवंश: Pushyabhuti. राजधानी: Thanesar, later Kannauj
Firoz Shah Tughlaq Sultan शासक 1351–1388
Founded Hisar-e-Firoza in 1354 and Fatehabad, and cut a canal westward from the Yamuna across the dry bangar in the same decade. It is the single most consequential act in this region's medieval history — it made large-scale settled cultivation possible away from the river, and the Western Yamuna Canal still follows broadly the same idea.
राजवंश: Tughlaq. राजधानी: Delhi, with a new foundation at Hisar-e-Firoza
Hasan Khan Mewati Wali of Mewat सेनापति died March 1527
The last of a line that had held the Mewat hills and pockets for close to two centuries. He commanded the Mewat contingent at Khanwa in March 1527 alongside Rana Sanga and took up the standard when Sanga was wounded; he was killed by a cannon shot in the battle, and Khanzada rule in Mewat ended with him.
राजवंश: Khanzada. राजधानी: Alwar and Tijara
Hemu, styled Hemchandra Vikramaditya Raja सेनापति died 5 November 1556
A trader's son from Rewari who rose through the Sur administration to run its supply and then to command its armies, winning a long series of engagements before taking Delhi in October 1556 and being crowned there. He was defeated at Panipat weeks later and killed. He is the one figure this plain produced who held Delhi in his own name.
राजवंश: Rose through the Sur administration. राजधानी: Rewari, then Delhi
George Thomas Self-styled Raja of Hansi शासक 1798–1801
Took possession of Hansi, Hisar and Rohtak after the death of the Maratha chief he had served, struck his own rupees, and raised eight infantry battalions, fifty guns and a thousand horse from a territory running from the Ghaggar to Beri. He was driven out in 1801 and died the following year. The episode is a precise measure of how little central authority the plain had between the Marathas and the Company.
राजवंश: An Irish soldier from the Maratha service. राजधानी: Hansi
Rao Tula Ram Rao विद्रोही 1825–1863
Ruled Rewari from 1838, occupied the town with his cousin Rao Gopal Dev on 17 May 1857, raised about five thousand men and set up the manufacture of arms and ammunition, and supplied the forces at Delhi with money and materiel through the summer. His force was broken at Nasibpur on 16 November 1857.
राजवंश: Rewari, in the Ahirwal. राजधानी: Rampura, Rewari
Chhotu Ram Revenue Minister, Punjab प्रशासक 1881–1945
Left the Congress in 1920 and built an agrarian politics through the Zamindara League and, from 1923, the Unionist Party, holding office in the Punjab from 1937. He is principally associated with the debt-relief and moneylending legislation passed in the Punjab between 1934 and 1938, which restructured rural credit across this plain. He worked inside the colonial constitution rather than against it, and it is more accurate to record him as an administrator than to enlist him retrospectively into the national movement.
राजवंश: Zamindara League, then the Unionist Party. राजधानी: Lahore; from Garhi Sampla in Rohtak