Rajput: Tomara, Tuar, Tunwar

Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Bengali Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Khmer Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Marathi Nepali Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil Telugu Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

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 It has been archived for its historical value as well as for the insights it gives into British colonial writing about the various communities of India.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: Tomara, Tuar, Tunwar

This clan is an ancient one, supposed by Colonel Tod to be derived from the Yadavas or lunar race. The name is said to come from tomar, a club/ The Tomara clan was considered to be a very ancient one, and the great king Vikramaditya, whose reign was the Hindu Golden Age, was held to have been sprung from it.

These traditions are, however, now discredited, as well as that of Delhi having been built by a Tomara king, Anang Pal I,, in A.D. 733. Mr. V. A. Smith states that Delhi was founded in 993—994, and Anangapala, a Tomara king, built the Red Fort about 1050. In 1052 he removed the celebrated iron pillar, on which the eulogy of Chandragupta Vikramaditya is incised, from its original position, probably at Mathura, and set it up in Delhi as an adjunct to a group of temples from which the Muhammadans afterwards constructed the great mosque.^ This act apparently led to the tradition that Vikramaditya had been a Tomara, and also to a much longer historical antiquity being ascribed to the clan than it really possessed.

The Tomara rule at Delhi only lasted about 150 years, and in the middle of the twelfth century the town was taken by Bisal Deo, the Chauhan chieftain of Ajmer, whose successor, Prithwi Raj, reigned at Delhi, but was defeated and killed by the Muhammadans in A.D. 1192. Subsequently, perhaps in the reign of Ala-ud-Dln Khilji, a Tomara dynasty established itself at Gwalior, and one of their kings, Dungara Singh (1425 — 1454), had executed the celebrated rocksculptures of Gwalior.^ In i 5 1 8 Gwalior was taken by the Muhammadans, and the last Tomara king reduced to the status of an ordinary jaglrdar.

The Tomara clan is numerous in the Punjab country near Delhi, where it still possesses high rank, but in the United Provinces it is not so much esteemed.'* No ruling chief now belongs to this clan. In the Central Provinces the Tomaras or Tunwars belong principally to the Hoshangabad District. The zamindars of Bilaspur, who were originally of the Tawar subcaste of the Kawar tribe, now also claim to be Tomara Rajputs on the strength of the similarity of the name. ^ Mr. Crooke's Tribes and Castes, ^ Elliot, Supplemental Glossary, s.v. art, Tomara.

^ Early Hist07y of India, 3rd cdi- ^ Mr. Crooke's T^-ibes and Castes, tion, p. 386. art. Tomara.