Bastar · Central Highlands & Forest Belt
Bastar's history is dynastic on the surface and clan-based underneath, and both have to be stated or the region is misdescribed. There was a ruling house here continuously from the eleventh century, but it was always a thin layer: below the raja the plateau was run by its own offices — the pargana majhi over a group of villages, the manjhi and chalki within them, the village patel, and the ritual functionaries of the Danteshwari cycle — and the ruler's own standing rested on the goddess and on the annual assembly at which those office-holders appeared. So the region's medieval period begins in 1023 with the Chhindaka Nagas at Chakrakota and Barsur, and takes its second form about 1324 with the line that came from the Kakatiya country and ruled from Bastar and later Jagdalpur. Its modern period begins in 1774, with the Halba rising and the arrival of Maratha tribute, because from that point the plateau is dealing with outside revenue, outside forest rules and outside contractors — and the century and a half that follows is a near-continuous sequence of risings against exactly those things.
Periodisation is regional, not national — the medieval period does not begin in the same century here as it does elsewhere in India.
The plateau has a long occupation and a very short written record. No Mauryan edict, no Gupta grant and no imperial capital is recorded here; the tract appears in the writing of others as forest country to be crossed. The one dynasty securely attested is the Nalas, in the fifth and sixth centuries, whose capital Pushkari has been identified with Garhdhanora on this plateau, and who are known chiefly from coins, a ruined temple site and the claims of the neighbours who destroyed them. Everything else about the period has to be inferred from what the region was still doing much later — shifting cultivation on the hill slopes, iron smelting, and a market week.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| mid-4th century CE | A king named Vyaghraraja of Mahakantara, the great forest, appears in the Allahabad pillar inscription of Samudragupta. Mahakantara is generally placed in this upland but not to a seat. |
| 5th–6th century | The Nala dynasty rules from Pushkari, identified with Garhdhanora in the present Bastar district, with Arthapati, Bhavadatta-varman and Skandavarman named in its inscriptions. |
| 6th century | The Nalas are broken; an Aihole inscription credits the Chalukya king Kirtivarman I with their destruction, and the record on the plateau goes quiet for four centuries. |
| c. 1022–1023 | A Chola expedition northward is recorded as reaching Chakrakotta. Some historians connect the arrival of the Chhindaka Nagas on the plateau with that campaign; others hold that they were already here. The point is disputed. |
The Chhindaka Nagas held Chakrakota mandala for three centuries from Barsur and Chakrakota, and built the stone temples at Barsur that are the plateau's oldest standing architecture. They were squeezed between the Kalachuris of Ratanpur to the north and the powers of the Godavari to the south, and the last of them appears in an inscription of 1324. The same year is given by tradition for the arrival of Annam Deo, said to have come from the Kakatiya country of Warangal after its fall and to have brought the goddess Danteshwari with him; the house he founded is called Kakatiya in some records and Chalukya of Bastar in others. What that dynasty built over the next four centuries was not an administration so much as a ritual centre with a treasury: the capital moved from Bastar to Jagdalpur under Dalpat Deo about 1770, and a separate branch had already established itself at Kanker.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1023–1324 | The Chhindaka Nagas rule Chakrakota mandala from Barsur and Chakrakota, over a territory taking in the plateau and the western Koraput and Kalahandi uplands. |
| 11th century | The Battisa and Mama-Bhanja temples and the large Ganesha monoliths are made at Barsur under Naga patronage — the region's earliest surviving stonework. |
| 1114 | The Kalachuri ruler Jajalladeva I of Ratanpur defeats Somesvara; the Nagas lose the northern approaches over the Keskal ghat. |
| 1324 | Harishchandra Deva, the last known Chhindaka Naga ruler, appears in an inscription of this year. Tradition places the arrival of Annam Deo from the Kakatiya country in the same year. |
| c. 1408–1439 | The reign of Purushottam Deo, to whom tradition attributes the pilgrimage to Puri from which the Bastar rulers' chariot right is said to derive — the origin story of the Dussehra chariot, and tradition rather than record. |
| 15th century | A branch of the ruling house establishes itself at Kanker, on the plateau's northern edge, which remains a separate state until the twentieth century. |
| c. 1770 | Dalpat Deo moves the capital from Bastar to Jagdalpur, where the state's administration and the Dussehra cycle have been centred ever since. |
From the 1770s the plateau was dealing with powers that wanted revenue from it and did not live on it: first the Marathas of Nagpur, to whom the state became tributary, and then the British, who brought Bastar into the Central Provinces in 1861. Every serious disturbance of the next hundred and forty years has the same shape. An outside demand arrives — tribute, a diwan appointed from outside, a timber contract, a forest reservation, unpaid labour, a trader following a new road — and the villages answer through their own offices, because those are the only institutions the plateau has. The 1876 rising ended with a settlement that gave village representatives a hearing at the Dussehra assembly. The Bhumkal of 1910, which followed the extension of reserved forest and the labour and schooling demands that came with it, was the largest of them and was put down inside a month.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1774–1779 | The Halba rebellion. A protracted disturbance, raised in the name of Ajmer Singh and drawing in Maratha and neighbouring forces, which ended with the ruling house weakened, the Halba community heavily affected, and the state tributary to the Bhonsles of Nagpur. |
| 1795 and 1825 | The Bhopalpatnam struggle of 1795 and the Paralkot rebellion of 1825, the latter led by Gend Singh of the Abujhmaria, both against Maratha and British revenue demands in the western tracts. |
| 1842–1863 | A long sequence of disturbances — the Tarapur rising against imposed taxation from 1842, the Maria risings through the same decades, the Lingagiri rising of 1856 under Dhruva Rao in the south, and the Koi revolt of 1859 against timber contracts given to outside contractors. |
| 1861 | Bastar is brought within the newly constituted Central Provinces as a feudatory state. |
| 1876 | The Muria rising. Muria villagers assembled in very large numbers at Jagdalpur against the administration of an unpopular diwan; the British political officer intervened and the diwan was removed. The Muria Darbar, the assembly at which village representatives put grievances to the ruler during the Dussehra cycle, is generally traced to the settlement made after it. |
| 1910 | The Bhumkal. Following the extension of reserved forest, demands for unpaid labour and the pressure of traders and moneylenders, symbolic tokens — mango boughs, red chillies, earth and arrows — were circulated through the villages in January, and the rising broke out on 6 February. Rebels took Geedam and Barsur and besieged Kutru; troops brought in from Jeypore and Bengal put it down before the end of the month. |
| 1948 | Bastar State acceded to the Indian Union. |
Rulers and commanders
The strongest of the Chakrakota rulers, whose inscriptions claim campaigns on every side. Defeated by the Kalachuri Jajalladeva I in 1114, after which the line held the plateau but little beyond it.
Dynasty: Chhindaka Naga. Seat: Chakrakota and Barsur
Founder of the house that ruled the plateau for the next six centuries. Tradition says he came from the Kakatiya country of Warangal after its fall, bringing the goddess Danteshwari with him; the dynastic origin is traditional, but the line's rule from 1324 is documented.
Dynasty: The Kakatiya line of Bastar, also recorded as Chalukya of Bastar. Seat: Bastar
The ruler to whom tradition attributes a pilgrimage to Puri and the grant of a chariot right, from which the state's Dussehra chariot is said to descend. This is the region's founding legend for its largest festival and is recorded as tradition, not as document.
Dynasty: The Kakatiya line of Bastar. Seat: Bastar
Moved the capital from Bastar to Jagdalpur about 1770. Every later institution of the state — the Dussehra cycle, the market network, the craft villages that served the court — is organised around that move.
Dynasty: The Kakatiya line of Bastar. Seat: Bastar, then Jagdalpur
Ruled through the state's absorption into the Central Provinces in 1861 and through the Muria rising of 1876, after which the assembly at which village representatives are heard during Dussehra took its recorded form.
Dynasty: The Kakatiya line of Bastar. Seat: Jagdalpur
Ruled during the forest reservations of the 1900s and the Bhumkal of 1910, when the state's administration was in practice being conducted by British officers and the ruling house was divided over it.
Dynasty: The Kakatiya line of Bastar. Seat: Jagdalpur
Succeeded as a child in 1921, with the state administered on her behalf for most of her reign. Hers is the only period in six centuries in which the Bastar seat was held by a woman.
Dynasty: The Kakatiya line of Bastar. Seat: Jagdalpur
The authority that actually reached the villages. A pargana majhi spoke for a group of villages, the manjhi and chalki held office within them, and the ritual functionaries of the Danteshwari cycle carried the year. Rajas dealt with these offices; they did not replace them. Every rising recorded on the plateau was organised through them, which is why the disturbances could spread across a forest with no roads and no writing.
The history of Bastar from ancient through medieval to modern times, and the rulers, commanders and administrators who shaped it. (8)