Rajput: Surajvansi

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This article was written in 1916 when conditions were different. Even in 1916 its contents related only to Central India and did not claim to be true of all of India. It has been archived for its historical value as well as for the insights it gives into British colonial writing about the various communities of India. Indpaedia neither agrees nor disagrees with the contents of this article. Readers who wish to add fresh information can create a Part II of this article. The general rule is that if we have nothing nice to say about communities other than our own it is best to say nothing at all. Readers will be able to edit existing articles and post new articles directly on their online archival encyclopædia only after its formal launch. See examples and a tutorial.

From The Tribes And Castes Of The Central Provinces Of India

By R. V. Russell

Of The Indian Civil Service

Superintendent Of Ethnography, Central Provinces

Assisted By Rai Bahadur Hira Lal, Extra Assistant Commissioner

Macmillan And Co., Limited, London, 1916.

NOTE 1: The 'Central Provinces' have since been renamed Madhya Pradesh.

NOTE 2: While reading please keep in mind that all articles in this series have been scanned from a book. During scanning some errors are bound to occur. Some letters get garbled. Footnotes get inserted into the main text of the article, interrupting the flow. Readers who spot errors might like to correct them, and shift footnotes gone astray to their rightful place.

Rajput: Surajvansi

The Surajvansi (Descendants of the Sun) is recorded as the first of the thirty-six royal clans, but Colonel Tod gives no account of it, and it does not seem to be known to history as a separate clan. Mr. Crooke mentions an early tradition that the Surajvansis migrated from Ajodhia to Gujarat in A.D. 224, but this is scarcely likely to be authentic in view of the late dates now assigned for the origin of the important Rajput clans.

Surajvansi should properly be a generic term denoting any Rajput belonging to a clan of the solar race, and it seems likely that it may at different times have been adopted by Rajputs who were no longer recognised in their own clan, or by families of the cultivating castes or indigenous tribes who aspired to become Rajputs. Thus Mr. Crooke notes that a large section of the Soiris (Savaras or Saonrs) have entirely abandoned their own tribal name and call themselves Surajvansi Rajputs ; " and the same thing has probably happened in other cases. In the Central Provinces the Surajvansis belong mainly to Hoshangabad, and here they form a separate caste, marrying among themselves and not with other RajpQt clans. Hence they would not be recognised as proper Rajputs, and are probably a promoted group of some cultivating caste.

1 Tribes and Castes, s.v. ^ Ibidem, art. Soiri.