Chenab Valley & Chamba · Western Himalaya & Trans-Himalaya

People

Name	Years	Field	Known for
Raja Meru Varman	r. c. 680–700	Ruler and patron	Commissioned the temples and brass images at Bharmour and Chhatrari that are the oldest surviving works of their kind in the western Himalaya, and under whom the Chamba state's recorded history effectively begins.
Gugga	Seventh century	Metal caster	Named in the inscriptions on the brass images at Bharmour and Chhatrari as their maker — one of very few Indian sculptors of that period whose name is recorded on his own work rather than inferred.
Raja Sahil Varman	r. c. 920	Ruler	Moved the capital from Bharmour down to the Ravi terrace in 920 CE, named the new town for his daughter Champavati, and built the first of the Lakshmi Narayan temples.
Suhi Mata	—	Legendary figure	The queen of Chamba tradition who is said to have accepted burial so that a water channel would reach the town. The fair held for her each spring is conducted by women and children alone, which makes it one of very few large Indian festivals from which men are formally absent.
Raja Umed Singh	r. 1748–1764	Ruler and patron	Built the Rang Mahal at Chamba and presided over the period in which the Chamba rumal and the Chamba school of painting took their mature form.
Nikka	Eighteenth century	Painter	A son of Nainsukh of Guler who settled at Chamba and brought the family's naturalistic manner into the Chamba workshop, from which it passed into the drawn designs of the rumal.
Raja Bhuri Singh	r. 1904–1919	Ruler and patron	Gave his collection and his name to the museum founded at Chamba in 1908, which is why the state's charters, fountain slabs, rumals and paintings stayed in the valley instead of dispersing.
Jean Philippe Vogel	1871–1958	Epigraphist	Catalogued and published the Chamba copper-plate and stone inscriptions in the first decade of the twentieth century and pressed for a museum to hold them. His Antiquities of Chamba State remains the foundation document for the region's history.
Usha Bhagat	—	Craft revivalist	Led the effort from the 1970s that brought the Chamba rumal back from near-extinction, working from surviving museum pieces rather than from a living workshop, because by then there was not one.
Lalita Vakil	—	Embroiderer	Chamba rumal master who ran the training that reconstructed sixteen original designs and taught the double satin stitch to a new generation of embroiderers; recognised with the Nari Shakti Puraskar.
Shah Farid-ud-Din	—	Sufi	The saint whose shrine stands beside the Kishtwar chowgan and around whom the town's Muslim devotional life is organised; his urs is the largest annual gathering in Kishtwar town itself.
Vijay Sharma	—	Painter and conservator	A Chamba-based painter who reconstructed the Pahari miniature technique from the ground up — grinding mineral pigment, preparing wasli paper — and who has trained the drawing side of the rumal revival.

People from Chenab Valley & Chamba who shaped its history, arts, science, sport and public life. (12)