Bundelkhand

A region of central India whose Rajput rulers spent two centuries alternating between Mughal service and Mughal rebellion. The Bundela clan established themselves at Orchha in the sixteenth century, on broken hill country between the Yamuna and the Narmada that was easy to raid from and hard to hold. Their relationship with Delhi set the pattern. Bir Singh Deo murdered Akbar's historian Abul Fazl in 1602 at the request of the prince who became Jahangir, and was rewarded with the throne; his son rebelled against Shah Jahan and was destroyed. The temples and palaces at Orchha and Datia were built with the proceeds of that service and are among the best-preserved Bundela architecture. Champat Rai and then his son Chhatrasal fought Aurangzeb for fifty years. Chhatrasal began as a soldier in Mughal service, changed sides after meeting Shivaji, and carved out an independent state around Panna with the diamond mines that made it rich - the Panna field is the only significant diamond source in India after Golconda. At about eighty he was attacked by a Mughal governor and appealed to the Peshwa, and Bajirao I came north and relieved him. Chhatrasal left a third of his territory to Bajirao in gratitude, which is how the Marathas acquired their base in central India and how Bundelkhand passed out of its own rulers' hands. The rest was divided among his sons into states too small to matter. What the region kept was cultural rather than political. The Bundeli dialect carries an oral epic tradition centred on the twelfth-century warriors Alha and Udal that is still sung at fairs, and Chhatrasal is a figure in it. The Panna diamond field is still worked by hand under state licence, and the temple complex at Khajuraho, built by the Chandelas who ruled the same country before the Bundelas, is the region's other inheritance.

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