Nagar Brahmins

Who he is

Name

not named

Title

Heads of the Nagar Brahmin community (the court-families)

Since

not pinned

Born

not pinned

Confidence

low

The campaign board calls Vadnagar a walled Brahmin town of great age and the seat of the Nagara community that supplies the kingdom with clerks and ministers, with land grants running back to the Maitraka kings of Valabhi, and two twelfth century toranas beside the Sharmishtha tank. We have not checked these against a source.

What it holds

• Vadnagar (Anandapura) and its villages by royal grant
• Clerkships and local offices in the Chaulukya record offices
• Temple and tank offices (the Sharmishtha tank, the toranas)

How it was acquired

By grants running back to the Maitraka period, according to the campaign board.

Allies and rivals

Allies of the crown; neighbours of the Jain houses of Patan.

How things stand that morning

Quiet; the Hatkeshwar temple that now dominates Vadnagar is fifteenth century and is not here.

Wealth

Village grants; fees.

Threats

• Another plundering of the Sarasvati towns

Places of note

• Vadnagar: Walled Brahmin town with two sandstone toranas of the twelfth century
• Siddhpur (Sristhala): Rudra Mahalaya, begun by Mularaja, finished by Jayasimha Siddharaja about 1140

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: The campaign board entry notes only; we did not fetch a source for Vadnagar.

"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.

On the map: A small district.

Primary sources for Chaulukya Gujarat

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• The Crown of Glorious Deeds, Hasan Nizami (Sadr al-Din Muhammad ibn Hasan Nizami of Nishapur) (begun about 1205 at Delhi, carried on to about 1217). The earliest history written in Muslim India and the only contemporary account of Qutb al-Din Aibak's campaigns. Read online
• The Nasirean Generations (a general history of the Muslim dynasties), Minhaj-i Siraj Juzjani (completed 1260 at Delhi). The fullest narrative of the Ghurid conquest of northern India. Read online
• The Nasirid Generations: a General History of the Muslim Dynasties, Minhaj-i Siraj Juzjani (1259 to 1260, at Delhi). The Ghurid court's own history, by a man born in 1193 whose family served the sultans of Ghur and Ghazna. Read online
• Epigraphia Indica: inscriptions of the Chandelas, Paramaras, Gahadavalas, Chaulukyas, Senas and Eastern Gangas, Various (edited for the Archaeological Survey of India by J. Burgess, E. Hultzsch, F. Kielhorn, Sten Konow, F. W. Thomas and successors) (inscriptions of the 1180s to 1210s; the series ran from 1892). The main record series for the Hindu kingdoms of northern India around 1200. Read online
• Historical Inscriptions of Gujarat, Various (the Chaulukya and Vaghela chanceries), edited by G. V. Acharya (inscriptions of the 10th to 14th centuries; edited 1933 to 1942). The standard corpus of Gujarat's inscriptions. Read online
• A Description of the Foreign Peoples (Records of Foreign Nations), Zhao Rukuo (Zhao Rugua) (1225 at Quanzhou). The best single text for the island world around 1200, written by the superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou from merchants' reports a generation after the date. Read online
• The Book of Roger (the Pleasure of Him who Longs to Cross the Horizons), Muhammad al-Idrisi (completed 1154 at Palermo). The nearest Arabic geography in time to 1200 for the Indian Ocean. Read online
• The History of India as Told by its Own Historians: the Muhammadan Period, vol. 2, Various (Ibn al-Athir, Hasan Nizami, Awfi, Juzjani and others), edited by H. M. Elliot and John Dowson (the sources date from the 1190s to the 14th century; the collection was published in 1869). A one-volume anthology of the Arabic and Persian accounts of the Ghurid conquest. Read online

1 more in the sources library for Northern India.