The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 4

by R. V. Russell

3. The Panwār dynasty of Dhār and Ujjain

The Kings of Mālwa or Ujjain who reigned at Dhār and flourished from the ninth to the twelfth centuries were of the Panwār clan. The seventh and ninth kings of this dynasty rendered it famous.[9] “Rāja Munja, the seventh king (974–995), renowned for his learning and eloquence, was not only a patron of poets, but was himself a poet of no small reputation, the anthologies including various works from his pen. He penetrated in a career of conquest as far as the Godāvari, but was finally defeated and executed there by the Chalukya king. His nephew, the famous Bhoja, ascended the throne of Dhāra about A.D. 1018 and reigned gloriously for more than forty years. Like his uncle he cultivated with equal assiduity the arts of peace and war. Though his fights with neighbouring powers, including one of the Muhammadan armies of Mahmūd of Ghaznī, are now forgotten, his fame as an enlightened patron of learning and a skilled author remains undimmed, and his name has become proverbial as that of the model king according to the Hindu standard. Works on astronomy, architecture, the art of poetry and other subjects are attributed to him. About A.D. 1060 Bhoja was attacked and defeated by the confederate kings of Gujarāt and Chedi, and the Panwār kingdom was reduced to a petty local dynasty until the thirteenth century. It was finally superseded by the chiefs of the Tomara and Chauhān clans, who in their turn succumbed to the Muhammadans in 1401.” The city of Ujjain was at this time a centre of Indian intellectual life. Some celebrated astronomers made it their home, and it was adopted as the basis of the Hindu meridional system like Greenwich in England. The capital of the state was changed from Ujjain to Dhār or Dhāranāgra by the Rāja Bhoja already mentioned;[10] and the name of Dhār is better remembered in connection with the Panwārs than Ujjain.

A saying about it quoted by Colonel Tod was:

Jahān Puār tahān Dhār hai;

Aur Dhār jahān Puār;

Dhār bina Puār nahin;

Aur nahin Puār bina Dhār:

or, “Where the Panwār is there is Dhār, and Dhār is where the Panwār is; without the Panwārs Dhār cannot stand, nor the Panwārs without Dhār.” It is related that in consequence of one of his merchants having been held to ransom by the ruler of Dhār, the Bhatti Rāja of Jaisalmer made a vow to subdue the town. But as he found the undertaking too great for him, in order to fulfil his vow he had a model of the city made in clay and was about to break it up. But there were Panwārs in his army, and they stood out to defend their mock capital, repeating as their reason the above lines; and in resisting the Rāja were cut to pieces to the number of a hundred and twenty.[11] There is little reason to doubt that the incident, if historical, was produced by the belief in sympathetic magic; the Panwārs really thought that by destroying its image the Raja could effect injury to the capital itself,[12] just as many primitive races believe that if they make a doll as a model of an enemy and stick pins into or otherwise injure it, the man himself is similarly affected. A kindred belief prevails concerning certain mythical old kings of the Golden Age of India, of whom it is said that to destroy their opponents all they had to do was to collect a bundle of juāri stalks and cut off the heads, when the heads of their enemies flew off in unison.

The Panwārs were held to have ruled from nine castles over the Marusthali or ‘Region of death,’ the name given to the great desert of Rājputāna, which extends from Sind to the Aravalli mountains and from the great salt lake to the flat skirting the Garah. The principal of these castles were Abu, Nundore, Umarkot, Arore, and Lodorva.[13] And, ‘The world is the Prāmara’s,’ was another saying expressive of the resplendent position of Dhāranāgra or Ujjain at this epoch. The siege and capture of the town by the Muhammadans and consequent expulsion of the Panwārs are still a well-remembered tradition, and certain castes of the Central Provinces, as the Bhoyars and Korkus, say that their ancestors formed part of the garrison and fled to the Satpūra hills after the fall of Dhāranāgra. Mr. Crooke[14] states that the expulsion of the Panwārs from Ujjain under their leader Mitra Sen is ascribed to the attack of the Muhammadans under Shāhab-ud-dīn Ghori about A.D. 1190.