Note 29 — A

Ahban.—(Probably Sans. ahi, “the dragon,” which may have been the tribal totem.) A sept of Râjputs chiefly found in Oudh. Their first ancestors in Oudh are said to have been Gopi and Sopi, two brothers of the Châwara race, which ruled in Anhalwâra Pâtan of Gujarât. Of the Châwaras or Chauras, Colonel Tod writes29:—“This tribe was once renowned in the history of India, though its name is now scarcely known, or only in the chronicles of the bard. Of its origin we are in ignorance. It belongs neither to the Solar nor to the Lunar race; and consequently we may presume it to be of Scythic origin. The name is unknown in Hindustân, and is confined with many others originating beyond the Indus to the peninsula of Saurâshtra. If foreign to India proper, its establishment must have been at a remote period, as we find individuals of it intermarrying with the Sûryavansa ancestry of the present princes of Mewâr when this family were the Lords of Ballabhi. The capital of the Châwaras was the insular Deobandar on the coast of Saurâshtra; and the celebrated temple of Somnâth, with many others on this coast, dedicated to Balnâth, or the Sun, is attributed to this tribe of the Sauras, or worshippers of the Sun; most probably the generic name of the tribe as well as of the peninsula. By a natural catastrophe, or, as the Hindu superstitious chroniclers will have it, as a punishment for the piracies of the prince of Deo, the element whose privileges he abused rose and overwhelmed his capital. As this coast is very low, such an occurrence is not improbable; though the abandonment of Deo might have been compelled by the irruptions of the Arabians, who at this period carried on a trade with these parts, and the plunder of some of their vessels may have brought this punishment on the Châwaras. That it was owing to some such political catastrophe, we have additional grounds for belief from the Annals of Mewâr, which state that its princes inducted the Châwaras into the seats of the power they abandoned on the continent and peninsula of Saurâshtra.” After describing their subsequent history Colonel Tod goes on to say:—“This ancient connection between the Sûryavansi chiefs and the Châwaras or Chauras of Saurâshtra is still maintained after a lapse of more than one thousand years, for, though an alliance with the Râna’s family is the highest honour that a Hindu prince can obtain, as being the first in rank in Hindustân, yet is the humble Châwara sought out even at the foot of fortune’s ladder, whence to carry on the blood of Râma. The present heir-apparent of a line of one hundred kings, prince Jovana Sinh, is the offspring of a Châwara woman, the daughter of a petty chieftain of Gujarât.”