Note 1 — Rājpūt, Hūna

Rājpūt, Rāthor, Rāthaur.—The Rāthor of Jodhpur or Mārwār is one of the most famous clans of Rājpūts, and that which is most widely dominant at the present time, including as it does the Rājas of Jodhpur, Bikaner, Ratlām, Kishengarh and Idar, as well as several smaller states. The origin of the Rāthor clan is uncertain. Colonel Tod states that they claim to be of the solar race, but by the bards of the race are denied this honour; and though descended from Kash, the second son of Rāma, are held to be the offspring of one of his progeny, Kashyap, by the daughter of a Dait (Titan). The view was formerly held that the dynasty which wrested Kanauj from the descendants of Harsha Vārdhana, and held it from A.D. 810 to 1090, until subverted by the Gaharwārs, were Rāthors, but proof has now been obtained that they were really Parihār-Gūjars. Mr. Smith suggests that after the destruction of Kanauj by the Muhammadans under Shihāb-ud-Dīn Ghori in A.D. 1193 the Gaharwār clan, whose kings had conquered it in 1090 and reigned there for a century, migrated to the deserts of Mārwār in Rājputāna, where they settled and became known as Rāthors.1 It has also been generally held that the Rāshtrakūta dynasty of Nāsik and Mālkhed in the Deccan which reigned from A.D. 753 to 973, and built the Kailāsa temples at Ellora were Rāthors, but Mr. Smith states that there is no evidence of any social connection between the Rāshtrakūtas and Rāthors.2 At any rate Siāhji, the grandson or nephew of Jai Chand, the last king of Kanauj, who had been drowned in the Ganges while attempting to escape, accomplished with about 200 followers—the wreck of his vassalage—the pilgrimage to Dwārka in Gujarāt. He then sought in the sands and deserts of Rājputāna a second line of defence against the advancing wave of Muhammadan invasion, and planted the standard of the Rāthors among the sandhills of the Luni in 1212. This, however, was not the first settlement of the Rāthors in Rājputāna, for an inscription, dated A.D. 997, among the ruins of the ancient city of Hathūndi or Hastikūndi, near Bāli in Jodhpur State, tells of five Rāthor Rājas who ruled there early in the tenth century, and this fact shows that the name Rāthor is really much older than the date of the fall of Kanauj.3