His Highness Maharana Sir Vijaysinhji (1890-1951)
Maharaja of Rajpipla from 1915 till merger in 1948
THE MIGHTY GOHILS
Bardic tales and genealogical records suggest
that the Gohil Rajput clan ruled over Saurashtra (Kathiawar) in present day
Gujarat, India, in ancient times. Alexander Kinloch Forbes wrote in his
Ras-Mala, “The Gohil Rajputs of the solar race to which belonged Ramchandra and
the Vallabhi dynasty, migrated to Mewar after the destruction of Vallabhi (in
Kathiawar)”. They were also known as Guhilputra, the name being derived
from ‘guhu’, which means cave. The founder of the Gohil clan, Muhideosur
Gohadit (Guhil) was born in a cave in 542 A.D. after the fall of Vallabhi, and
so the dynasty came to be known as Gohil. He became chief of a hilly tract
of forests near modern Idar in north Gujarat in 556 A.D., and held sway till he
died around 603 A.D., leaving behind a dynasty that, in the centuries to
come, gave rise to kingdoms in Rajputana, Saurashtra and Gujarat, Central
India and the Deccan, and from which also emanated the Ranas of Nepal.
Guhil’s descendant Bappa Rawal or Kalbhoj captured
Chittor Fort and established the Gohil kingdom of Mewar in 734 A.D.
Salivahan, son of Narvahan,
King of Mewar, and 11th in descent to Bappa Rawal, migrated with part of
the Gohil clan from Mewar in 973 A.D., leaving behind his son Shaktikumar with
the rest of the clan in Chittor. The Gohils under Salivahan settled at Juna Khergarh, which they made their
capital on the Luni River (present-day Bhalotra near Jodhpur), in Marwar. There
is still a village there called ‘Gohilon ki Dhani’. For two-and-a-quarter
centuries, thus, the Gohil Rajputs ruled Mewar as well as Marwar.
The Gohils of Mewar were attacked
by Ala-ud-din Khilji’s army in 1303 in which all the women committed jauhar and
the men were killed in battle. Thereafter Hamir Singh Gohil, a descendant 13
generations apart, was brought from Mount Sisoda where he lived, and
installed in Chittor. The Gohils of Mewar then assumed the name Sisodia. They
shifted their capital to Udaipur in 1559.
Meanwhile, the Gohils ruled Marwar for 20
generations till the early years of the 13th century. They were displaced
by the Rathores, who were driven out of Kannauj (in modern Uttar Pradesh)
following the invasion of Muhammad Ghori and the establishment of the Slave
dynasty. In 1211, the Rathores founded the kingdom of Marwar, which later came
to be known as Jodhpur.
The Gohils under their chief
Mohodas then marched back to Saurashtra after nearly five hundred years,
to the court of the great Chalukya ruler Sidhraj Singh. They were granted a jagir in
modern Gohilwar, thus becoming governors of the Chalukyas.
The ‘Ruling Princes and Chiefs of
India’ published by The Times of India in 1930 states that: “No single portion
of the vast and vulnerable land of Ind is wrapt deeper in the fascinating
glamour of immemorial legend, tradition and romance than is Kathiawar, the
ancient territory of the Vallabhi kings. To Kathiawar journeyed the mighty
Gohils, that historic Rajput tribe whose very name signifies ‘the strength of
the earth’, centuries before Norman William fought Saxon Harold at Senlac.
Originally, as it would seem, vassals of the Vallabhi kings, the Gohils, by
degrees conquered the greater portion of Kathiawar, until they permanently
rooted themselves in the soil of Saurashtra. They were fighters ever, these men
– warriors to the bone and marrow. Sejakji – Ranoji – Mokhdaji – what memories
of raid and foray, of pitched battle, of fierce siege do these names not
recall! It was Mokhdaji, it may be remembered, who took Gogha from its
Mohamedan defenders and made of Perim a royal capital. Mighty in physical stature
as he was in deeds of derring do, he died fighting against Muhammad Tughlaq on
Gogha soil, leaving behind him a name never to be forgotten in the annals of
Saurashtra.”
To the Gohils were born valiant
warriors like Maharana Sanga and Maharana Pratap, the rulers of Mewar who by
then had assumed the name Sisodia, and the legendary Maratha King Chatrapati
Shivaji Maharaj, all of whom refused to bow to the might of the Mughals. The
kingdoms that stemmed from the Sisodias of Mewar were Dungarpur, Banswara, Pratapgarh
and Shahpura in Rajasthan, and Barwani in Madhya Pradesh. A branch of the
Sisodias also migrated north and became the powerful Rana prime
ministers of Nepal. In Maharashtra the Gohils assumed the name Bhonsle and
founded kingdoms like Kolhapur, Satara, Nagpur, and Sawantwadi. In the
south they founded the kingdom of Thanjavur.
Back in Saurashtra, Sejakji
(Sahajigji) was twenty-third in descent to Salivahan. He was chief of the Gohil
clan from 1240, governor, commanding officer of King Kumarpal’s army and
right-hand man of the Solankis, a branch of the Chalukyas. Sejakji befriended
Rah (Rao) Mahipal, King of Saurashtra, whose capital was Junagarh, and married
his daughter Valumkunverba (Amarkunvari) to Khengar (Kawat), the heir apparent
(Jayamal) of Saurashtra. Sejakji received Shahpur along with 24 villages in jagir,
in the midst of which he founded a capital in 1250, naming it Sejakpur after
himself. He added 40 villages by force of arms, and died in 1254.
Somraj succeded as chief
after the death of Sejakji, whose other two sons Shahji and Sarangji received
jagirs in Mandvi and Arthilla, which later became the kingdoms of Palitana and
Lathi. Part of folklore is the stirring tale of Hamirji Gohil, a 16-year-old
and newly-married chieftain of Lathi, who sacrificed his life in 1401 defending
the Somnath temple from the attack of Muzaffar Shah. Hamirji Gohil’s cenotaph
still stands at the entrance to the temple.
Mulraj, brother of Somraj, was
governor of Sorath. He died in 1290, by when had also carved out an independent
principality Ghoga, with capital at Piram (or Pirambet), an island in the Gulf
of Cambay, near present day Bhavnagar.
Ranoji became Gohil chief in
1290. He established a new Gohil capital at Ranpur but was expelled from there
and slain by Muslim invaders in 1309.
Mokhdaji succeeded his father
Ranoji and conquered Umrala from the Kolis, and wrested back Piram (Ghoga) from
the Muslims. He succumbed to sword wounds inflicted in
battle by the army Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq in 1347. Mokhdaji married (i) Sarviya
princess of Hathasani in Kathiawar. Their son Dungarsinhji succeeded as chief,
and later his descendant Bhavsinhji founded the capital city of Bhavnagar in
1723, (ii) Parmar princess of Rajpipla, daughter of Chokrana, ruler of Junaraj (Old
Rajpipla) in the western Satpuras, which was earlier part of the Imperial
kingdom of Ujjain. The son of Mokhdaji Gohil and the Parmar princess,
Samarsinhji, succeeded to the gadi of Rajpipla on the death of his maternal
grandfather Chokrana, who had no male issue. Samarsinhji assumed the name Arjunsinhji.
Arjunsinhji became the first
Gohil Rajput ruler of Rajpipla State around the middle of the 14th century.
The Gohils of Rajpipla continued to worship the deity of the Parmars, Shri
Harsiddhi Mataji.
The Gohil dynasty retained a tenuous hold on
the hill tracts of the Satpuras with the help of the Bhils, the local tribals,
through diplomacy, grit, courage and, at times, submission. Whenever the
opportunity arose, the rulers allied themselves with other Hindu chiefs to
expand their territory. Through all the turbulent years the Gohil kingdom of
Rajpipla survived despite being hemmed in by such powerful Muslim kingdoms as
Gujarat, Malwa and Khandesh, and the Bahamani Kingdom, and later the Gaekwars of Baroda.
The Gohil Rajput clan ruled over Rajpipla for six centuries until merger with
the Indian Union in 1948.
(Indra Vikram Singh, Prince of Rajpipla and
descendant of the Gohil Rajput dynasty, can be contacted on email
teddy.rajpipla@gmail.com).
