Dhundhar & Shekhawati · Arid Northwest
This region's periodisation is set by two acts of deliberate building rather than by conquest. Its medieval period begins around 1028, when Kachhwaha chiefs took Dausa and then Amber, and it ends not in 1757 or 1818 but in 1727, when Sawai Jai Singh II moved off the Amber hillside and laid out Jaipur on a surveyed grid — the point at which the region stops being a fort-and-hinterland polity and becomes an urban one. Shekhawati's modern period begins slightly later and for an unrelated reason: from the 1830s its merchant families followed the trade east to Calcutta and Bombay, and the money they sent home built the painted towns. Both halves of the region were therefore remade by decisions about where to put money, not by who won a battle.
Periodisation is regional, not national — the medieval period does not begin in the same century here as it does elsewhere in India.
The oldest thing here is metal. Ganeshwar, near Neem Ka Thana on the Khetri copper belt at the Aravalli tail, was excavated from 1977 and yielded close to a thousand copper objects — arrowheads, fish hooks, bangles, chisels — from a settlement working the Aravalli ores from roughly the third millennium BCE and supplying finished copper to Harappan sites. The pattern that follows is the same one: this country was valuable for what could be taken out of it and moved. In the historic period the Bairat basin was the seat of Matsya, one of the sixteen mahajanapadas, and Ashoka left two inscriptions there around 250 BCE along with a circular brick and timber chaitya on Bijak-ki-Pahadi that is among the oldest free-standing Buddhist structures known in India. The salt lake at Sambhar gave its name to the Chahamanas of Shakambhari, who begin as Pratihara vassals in the sixth century and are independent by the tenth.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 2800–2000 BCE | Ganeshwar, on the Khetri copper belt near Neem Ka Thana, works Aravalli copper and supplies finished objects to Harappan sites; nearly a thousand copper artefacts were recovered from the 1977 excavations. |
| c. 6th century BCE | Matsya, with its capital at Viratnagar (Bairat), is counted among the sixteen mahajanapadas. |
| c. 250 BCE | Two Ashokan inscriptions are cut at Bairat — the Bairat minor rock edict and the Bhabru edict — and a circular chaitya is built on Bijak-ki-Pahadi above the town. |
| 6th century CE | The Chahamana line of Shakambhari, the salt-lake town now called Sambhar, appears as vassals of the Gurjara-Pratiharas; the family is independent by the tenth century. |
| early 12th century | Ajayaraja II moves the Chahamana capital from Shakambhari to Ajayameru, the modern Ajmer, west of this region. |
Two lineages divide the country. The Kachhwahas established themselves at Dausa around 1028 and then at Amber, in a ring of hills with enough drainage to support a capital; the Shekhawats, a branch descended from Rao Shekha of Amarsar, spread north into the dune plain in the later fifteenth century and gave it their name. What separates Dhundhar from its neighbours is the decision Raja Bharmal took in 1562, when he met Akbar at Sanganer and concluded a marriage alliance with the imperial house. The house stayed inside the Mughal system for the next century and a half, and its men commanded imperial armies — Man Singh I in Bengal, Odisha, Kabul and the Deccan, Mirza Raja Jai Singh I in the Deccan under Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb. That service, not local revenue, is where the capital came from that later paid for Amber's palaces and then for Jaipur.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 1028 | Dulha Rai receives the fort of Dausa; his successor takes Amber from the Meenas, and Amber becomes the Kachhwaha seat. |
| 1192 | Chahamana power ends with the defeat of Prithviraja III at the second battle of Tarain; the Shakambhari–Ajmer territory passes to the Ghurids. |
| c. 1450–1488 | Rao Shekha holds Amarsar and Nan; his descendants, the Shekhawats, spread across the northern dune plain, which takes its name from him. |
| 1562 | Raja Bharmal meets Akbar at Sanganer and a marriage alliance with the imperial house follows. Amber enters Mughal service, and remains in it longer than any other Rajput house. |
| 1589–1614 | Man Singh I commands Mughal armies in Bengal, Odisha, Kabul and the Deccan while ruling Amber; he dies at Elichpur in 1614. |
| 1621–1667 | Mirza Raja Jai Singh I holds Amber and commands in the Deccan; he receives the title Mirza Raja in 1639 and dies at Burhanpur in 1667. |
Jaipur is the hinge and the reason the region looks the way it does. Sawai Jai Singh II began building in 1725, the foundation was laid in 1727, and by 1733 the capital had moved off the Amber hillside. The plan, drawn by Vidyadhar Bhattacharya from Sanskrit manuals of city planning, allocated streets to trades, and the lac-bangle, enamel, block-print, marble and blue-pottery workshops are still broadly where the plan put them. Jai Singh's other project was astronomical: five masonry observatories and a set of tables, the Zij-i Muhammad Shahi. The state signed with the East India Company in 1818 on terms that included an annual tribute. Shekhawati's modern history runs on a different clock — from the 1830s its trading families moved their business to Calcutta and Bombay and remitted the profits home, which is where the painted havelis, wells and cenotaphs came from and why building continued long after the families had stopped living in the towns. Politics, when it arrived in the 1920s and 1930s, came from the countryside first: a Jat cultivators' movement in the Sikar and Jhunjhunu thikanas against enhanced dues, and only later a Praja Mandal in the capital.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1725–1733 | Jaipur is built and occupied: construction begins in 1725, the foundation is laid in 1727, and by 1733 the city has replaced Amber as the capital. Vidyadhar Bhattacharya lays out the grid and assigns streets to trades. |
| 1728 onward | Jai Singh II builds masonry observatories at Jaipur, Delhi, Mathura, Ujjain and Varanasi, and compiles the astronomical tables known as the Zij-i Muhammad Shahi. |
| 1818 | Jaipur signs a treaty with the East India Company after the third Anglo-Maratha war, undertaking an annual tribute of eight lakh rupees. |
| 1830s onward | Shekhawati merchant families relocate their businesses to Calcutta and Bombay; remittances fund the painted havelis, chhatris, wells and temples of Nawalgarh, Mandawa, Fatehpur, Ramgarh and Lakshmangarh. |
| 1922 | Cultivators in the Sikar thikana organise against an increase in the revenue share; the Shekhawati kisan movement dates from here. |
| 1934 | A year of mass mobilisation in Shekhawati: the Jat Prajapati Mahayagya at Sikar on 20 January, the women's assembly at Katrathal on 25 April, and the Jaisinghpura firing case of 21 June, the first in which those who shot at cultivators were tried and punished. |
| 25 April 1935 | Police under Captain Webb fire on a peasant gathering at Kudan, near Sikar; Chetram, Tulcharam, Tikuram and Asharam are killed. The episode was raised in the House of Commons. |
| 6 October 1935 | Banasthali Vidyapith is founded near Tonk by Hiralal Shastri and Ratan Shastri as a residential institution for women's education. |
| 1938–1939 | Jamnalal Bajaj is elected head of the Jaipur Rajya Praja Mandal in 1938; the Praja Mandal's satyagraha for civil liberties follows in 1939. |
| 1948–1949 | Jaipur accedes to India and is merged into the united state of Rajasthan, with Jaipur as its capital. |
Rulers and commanders
Established Kachhwaha authority in the Dhundhar basin, receiving the fort of Dausa; Amber was taken from the Meenas under his successor and became the dynastic seat for the next seven centuries.
Dynasty: Kachhwaha. Seat: Dausa, then Amber
The last effective ruler of the Chahamana line that began at the salt lake of Shakambhari inside this region. Defeated Muhammad of Ghor at Tarain in 1191 and was defeated there in 1192, after which the dynasty's territory passed out of its hands.
Dynasty: Chahamana of Shakambhari. Seat: Ajmer, from a line founded at Shakambhari (Sambhar)
Built an independent principality out of the estates of Nan and Barwada in the mid-fifteenth century. His descendants, the Shekhawats, spread across the northern dune plain and gave Shekhawati its name.
Dynasty: Shekhawat, a branch of the Kachhwahas. Seat: Amarsar
Met Akbar at Sanganer in 1562 and concluded a marriage alliance with the imperial house. The arrangement placed Amber inside the Mughal system earlier than any other Rajput state and kept it there for a century and a half.
Dynasty: Kachhwaha. Seat: Amber
One of the most widely deployed Mughal commanders of his generation, campaigning in Bengal, Odisha, Kabul and the Deccan. He died at Elichpur in 1614; the earlier palace works at Amber are from his period.
Dynasty: Kachhwaha. Seat: Amber
Served Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, receiving the title Mirza Raja in 1639 and commanding in the Deccan. He lost standing at court after Shivaji's escape from Agra in 1666 and died at Burhanpur in 1667.
Dynasty: Kachhwaha. Seat: Amber
Founded Jaipur from 1725, moved the capital there by 1733, and built masonry observatories at five cities. His astronomical tables, the Zij-i Muhammad Shahi, were compiled from observations made with those instruments; the interest in measurement is visible in the city plan as much as in the observatory.
Dynasty: Kachhwaha. Seat: Amber, then Jaipur
Drew the plan of Jaipur, working from Sanskrit manuals of city planning, and set out the grid of chaupars and named bazaars with trades allocated by street. That allocation still largely determines where a particular craft is bought in the old city.
Dynasty: Jaipur state under Sawai Jai Singh II. Seat: Jaipur
The history of Dhundhar & Shekhawati from ancient through medieval to modern times, and the rulers, commanders and administrators who shaped it. (8)