Rao Deva Rao Founder from 1241
Took Bundi in 1241 and gave the surrounding country the name Haravati, from which both the region and its language are named. Kota was taken by the same line in 1264.
Dynasty: Hada Chauhan. Seat: Bundi
Hadoti · Arid Northwest
History
Hadoti is one of the few Indian regions whose name and whose historical period begin on the same date. The tract was called Haravati after the Hada Chauhans, and their occupation of Bundi in 1241 is the point from which the region exists as a unit at all; before that it is a frontier between Malwa and the Aravalli country with no single name. Its modern period does not begin with a British treaty either. It begins in 1771, when Zalim Singh Jhala became regent of Kota for a minor heir and spent forty-five years building a revenue and irrigation administration on the back of the Chambal's reliable water — the system that made Kota a grain-surplus state, and the reason the Company dealt with Kota in 1817 on terms negotiated by an official rather than dictated to a ruler.
Periodisation is regional, not national — the medieval period does not begin in the same century here as it does elsewhere in India.
Ancientc. 8000 BCE – 1240 CE
Perennial water on a sandstone shelf made this a place people stayed, and the earliest evidence is painted rather than built: rock shelters along the Alaniya and in the Darrah hills near Kota carry figures assigned to the mesolithic, part of a Chambal-valley concentration of rock art that is among the largest in India. In the historic period the plateau sat between Malwa to the east and the Aravalli country to the west and belonged politically to neither for long. Buddhist rock-cut cells were cut at Kolvi and the neighbouring sites in the Jhalawar uplands — usually assigned to about the fifth century CE, though the dating rests on style rather than on inscription — and temple building on the Baran side, including the group at Ramgarh on the rim of an ancient impact crater, belongs to the tenth to eleventh centuries.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 8000 BCE onward | Rock shelters along the Alaniya river and in the Darrah hills near Kota are painted; the Chambal valley holds one of the densest concentrations of rock art in India. |
| c. 5th century CE | Buddhist cells and stupas are cut into the soft rock at Kolvi and nearby sites in the Jhalawar uplands. The date is assigned on stylistic grounds; no dated inscription fixes it. |
| 10th–11th century | Temple building on the Baran side, including the group at Ramgarh, standing on the rim of a much older meteorite impact crater. |
| 12th–14th century | Gagron, at the confluence of the Ahu and Kali Sindh, is held by the Khinchi branch of the Chauhans; parts of the fort are older, and its construction is spread across several centuries. |
Medieval1241 – 1771
Rao Deva of the Hada branch of the Chauhans took Bundi in 1241 and Kota followed in 1264; the tract took the name Haravati from the clan, and it has been a single cultural region ever since. Because the Chambal did not fail, the Hada courts were never poor in the way the desert courts periodically were, and their surplus went into building that had no defensive purpose — stepwells by the dozen, painted halls, garden palaces stepped down a hillside. The political history is largely one of partition rather than conquest: Bundi's ruling house served the Mughals from the later sixteenth century, and in 1631 the province of Kota was detached from Bundi and given to a younger son, after which the two states competed as neighbours for three centuries. Gagron, on the eastern edge, was the contested point with Malwa and was attacked by Sultan Hoshang Shah in 1423.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1241 | Rao Deva of the Hada Chauhans takes Bundi; the surrounding tract comes to be called Haravati, from which Hadoti and the Harauti language take their names. |
| 1264 | Kota is taken by the same line and held as a dependency of Bundi. |
| 1423 | Sultan Hoshang Shah of Malwa attacks Gagron; the fort at the confluence is the region's contested eastern gate for the next century. |
| 1554–1585 | Rao Surjan Singh of Bundi enters Mughal service and is the first of the line to hold the title Rao Raja. |
| 1631 | Rao Raja Ratan Singh of Bundi partitions the province of Kota and it is granted to his son Madho Singh, who rules it as a separate state. |
| 1632–1658 | Rao Chattar Sal rules Bundi and builds the Keshavrai temple at Keshoraipatan and the Chhattra Mahal in Bundi's palace; he dies in 1658. |
| 17th–18th century | The stepwell building programme of the two courts, of which Raniji ki Baori at Bundi is the largest, and the beginning of the Bundi and Kota painting workshops. |
Modern1771 – 1947
Zalim Singh Jhala took the regency of Kota in 1771 for the infant heir of Maharao Guman Singh and held effective control for over forty-five years. His administration was the region's real eighteenth-century achievement: a surveyed revenue settlement, canal and tank work on the Chambal feeders, and a policy of keeping Kota out of the Maratha and Pindari wars, which is why the state entered the Company system in 1817 intact. The reward, after his death, was a partition in the other direction — Jhalawar was carved out of Kota in 1838 for his grandson, taking a third of the state's income. Hadoti's 1857 was the most sustained in Rajasthan: Kota's own troops turned on the Political Agent and held the capital for months. The twentieth century here belongs to the countryside again, with a peasant movement in the Bundi jagirs from 1922 and praja mandals in Kota from 1934.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1771 | Zalim Singh Jhala becomes regent of Kota for the minor heir of Maharao Guman Singh; he retains effective control of the state for more than forty-five years. |
| 1817 | Kota concludes a treaty with the East India Company, negotiated by Zalim Singh, which secures his office as well as the state. |
| 10 February 1818 | Bundi signs a subsidiary alliance with the East India Company under Rao Raja Bishan Singh. |
| 15 October 1857 | Troops of the Kota state force under Lala Jaidayal and Mehrab Khan kill the Political Agent Major Burton, two of his sons and a doctor, and take control of the city. |
| March 1858 | Kota is retaken by a force under General Roberts with assistance from Karauli. Jaidayal and Mehrab Khan were later captured and hanged. |
| 1838 | Jhalawar is separated from Kota for Madan Singh, Zalim Singh's grandson, with a third of Kota's revenue; the state is restructured and reduced in 1899 after the deposition of Zalim Singh II in 1896. |
| 2 April 1923 | Police fire on a peasant gathering at Dabi, in the Bundi state, killing Nanak Ji Bhil and Devi Lal Gurjar; the Barad movement continues in the Bundi jagirs until 1943. |
| 1934–1939 | The Hadoti Praja Mandal is founded in 1934 by Pandit Nayanuram Sharma with Haji Faiz Mohammed as its first president; the Kota Rajya Praja Mandal follows in 1939. |
| 1948–1949 | Kota merges with the Indian union in April 1948; Bundi's accession is signed in April 1949 and the four states are absorbed into Rajasthan. |
Rulers and commanders
Rao Surjan Singh Rao Raja Ruler 1554–1585
Brought Bundi into Mughal service and was the first of the house to hold the title Rao Raja, granted by Akbar. The arrangement kept the Hada states intact through the following century.
Dynasty: Hada Chauhan. Seat: Bundi
Rao Madho Singh Rao Founder from 1631
Received the province of Kota when it was partitioned from Bundi in 1631 and ruled it as a separate state. The split produced the two-court structure that shaped the region's painting, weaving and building for the next three hundred years.
Dynasty: Hada Chauhan. Seat: Kota
Rao Chattar Sal Rao Commander 1632–1658
Served in Mughal campaigns and died in 1658. He built the Keshavrai temple at Keshoraipatan on the Chambal and the Chhattra Mahal in the Bundi palace, the earliest of the painted halls the town is known for.
Dynasty: Hada Chauhan. Seat: Bundi
Zalim Singh Jhala Faujdar and regent Regent 1771–1824
Regent of Kota from 1771 for a minor heir and its effective ruler for over forty-five years. He settled the revenue by survey, extended canal and tank irrigation on the Chambal feeders, and kept the state out of the Maratha and Pindari wars, negotiating the Company treaty of 1817 himself.
Dynasty: Jhala, in the service of Kota. Seat: Kota
Maharaj Rana Madan Singh Maharaj Rana Founder 1838–1845
Grandson of Zalim Singh and first ruler of Jhalawar, which was separated from Kota in 1838 with a third of its revenue. The new state took in the wettest, highest and most fertile part of the region.
Dynasty: Jhala. Seat: Jhalawar
Maharao Ram Singh II Maharao Ruler 1828–1866
Ruler of Kota through the events of 1857, when his own state troops took the city and held it into the following year. His long reign spans the transition of the Kota painting workshop into its final and most prolific phase.
Dynasty: Hada Chauhan. Seat: Kota
Rao Raja Ram Singh Rao Raja Administrator 1821–1889
Held Bundi for sixty-eight years, one of the longest reigns in the region, and reorganised its administration. The painted halls and stepwells of Bundi were largely maintained rather than added to after his time.
Dynasty: Hada Chauhan. Seat: Bundi
The history of Hadoti from ancient through medieval to modern times, and the rulers, commanders and administrators who shaped it. (8)