Early and Classical Madhya Pradesh: Prehistory, Mahajanapadas, Empires, Gupta Feudatories and Medieval Dynasties

The Buddhist Anguttara Nikaya lists sixteen mahajanapadas, the great kingdoms of the sixth century BCE, and two of them lay in the present state. Avanti covered roughly Malwa, Nimar and adjoining parts of Madhya Pradesh, and it is usually described as split into a northern half around Ujjayini on the Shipra and a southern half around Mahishmati on the Narmada. Its southern capital was Mahishmati, usually identified with Maheshwar on the Narmada, and its northern capital was Ujjayini (Ujjain), which by the time of the Buddha and Mahavira was the capital of a unified Avanti. The Pradyota line ruled it, and the Shishunagas of Magadha later annexed it. Its strategic value lay in its position where routes from the Gangetic plain met those leading to the Deccan and the western coast.

Chedi lay in the Bundelkhand country south of the Yamuna, along the Ken river, and its capital was Suktimati, also called Sotthivatinagara. The Mahabharata links its ruling house with Shishupala. The exact site of Suktimati is uncertain, because scholars have placed it in different parts of Bundelkhand. What is secure is that Chedi was one of the sixteen kingdoms, and that the Kalachuris of Tripuri later ruled the same country, which they called Dahala-mandala.

Mauryan rule extended over the region, and its surviving monument is the Great Stupa at Sanchi in Raisen district. In the time of Ashoka (3rd century BCE) a brick hemisphere was built over the relics, and a polished sandstone Ashokan pillar stood beside its southern gateway. The Sri Lankan chronicles link Ashoka's wife Devi with Vidisha and name their children as Mahendra and Sanghamitra. In the Shunga period the stupa was enlarged and encased in stone, and in the Satavahana period (1st century BCE to 1st century CE) four ornate gateways and a balustrade were added, carved with Jataka tales and scenes of the Buddha's life. UNESCO inscribed the Buddhist monuments of Sanchi in 1989.

The Heliodorus Pillar at Besnagar, near Vidisha, is one of the period's key inscriptions. It was erected around 113–110 BCE by Heliodorus, a Greek envoy from Taxila sent by the Indo-Greek king Antialcidas, and it records devotion to Vasudeva. It is dated to the fourteenth regnal year of Kasiputra Bhagabhadra, whose identity is debated and who may have been a local ruler rather than a Shunga king. Scholars read it as early evidence of Vaishnava devotion, though whether it marks a true conversion or a courtly gesture is still disputed.

Under Chandragupta II the Malwa and Vidisha country came into the Gupta orbit. The Udayagiri caves near Vidisha hold twenty caves, nineteen Hindu and one Jain, and are protected by the Archaeological Survey of India. A Cave 6 inscription, dated Gupta year 82 (about 401 CE), records that Chandragupta II and his minister Virasena visited the cave, and Cave 5 carries a large Varaha panel in which Vishnu as the boar lifts the earth goddess.

Eran in Sagar district was an important Gupta-period town. Its Garuda pillar was dedicated in Gupta year 165 (about 484–485 CE) under the emperor Budhagupta by the local feudatory Maharaja Matrivishnu and his brother Dhanyavishnu. The Eran sati pillar records the death of the chieftain Goparaja, who fell fighting beside the Gupta king Bhanugupta against the Huna invaders, and whose wife burned herself on his pyre. It is the earliest dated sati record in India, and its date falls in the early sixth century CE.

The Parivrajakas ruled central India in the fifth and sixth centuries. Their inscriptions come from two kings, Hastin and Samkshobha, found at Khoh, Majhgawan and Jabalpur. They used the title Maharaja and were probably Gupta vassals, and their line appears to have ended with Samkshobha. The Uchchakalpas ruled from Uchchakalpa, now Unchehara in Satna district. Their early king Oghadeva was followed by Kumaradeva, Jayasvamin and Vyaghra, and then by Jayanatha and his son Sharvanatha, whose copper-plate grants survive. Their dates are read in the Gupta era, so they were in practice Gupta feudatories.

The Aulikaras had two houses. The first ruled from Dashapura, modern Mandsaur, through Jayavarma, Simhavarma, Naravarma, Vishvavarma and Bandhuvarma, and was a Gupta feudatory. A Gangdhar inscription of 423 CE records a Matrika and a Vishnu temple built under Vishvavarma's minister. A Sun temple at Dashapura, built in 436 CE in Bandhuvarma's time, is associated with a guild of silk-weavers that had migrated there. The second house, under Yashodharman, defeated the Huna ruler Mihirakula near Sondani around 528 CE, and the Mandsaur pillar inscription, dated Malava year 589 (about 532 CE), records the victory. The second house was never a Gupta feudatory, and its empire broke up within about a decade.

The Nagas ruled from Padmavati, identified with modern Pawaya near Gwalior, in the third and fourth centuries, between the decline of the Kushans and the rise of the Guptas. Coins of a number of Naga rulers are known, most of them from Padmavati. The Vakataka inscriptions record that the mother of Rudrasena I was a daughter of the Naga king Bhava-naga. Samudragupta's Allahabad pillar names Naga kings among those he overthrew, so the family stood in the way of Gupta expansion. Branches are associated with Vidisha, Kantipuri and Mathura.

Madhya Pradesh holds some of the earliest surviving stone temples in India, from the Gupta period. The Shiva temple at Bhumara in Satna district, dated roughly to the fifth or sixth century, has an enclosed circumambulation path around a square sanctum, and its reliefs include one of the earliest sculptural representations of Ganesha. The temple at Nachna in Panna district is popularly called the Parvati temple, but it is dedicated to Shiva. It is a simple two-storey stone shrine with a hall and a sanctum, and its dating is uncertain though its style is linked to the Gupta period.

The Kalachuris of Tripuri ruled from Tripuri, now Tewar near Jabalpur, in the Chedi country that they called Dahala-mandala. They claimed descent from the Haihayas. Kokalla I (c. 850–890) was the first powerful ruler. Gangeyadeva (c. 1015–1041) took imperial titles, and his son Lakshmikarna (c. 1041–1073) campaigned widely and briefly held parts of Malwa. Decline set in under Yashahkarna, who lost the north, and under later pressure from the Chandelas and Paramaras. The last known ruler, Trailokyamalla, is attested to at least 1212.

At Bhedaghat, on the Narmada, the Chausath Yogini temple has 81 shrines rather than the usual 64. The surplus is taken as a mark of royal patronage. The temple is assigned to the Kalachuri period, probably the tenth or eleventh century, and its patron is disputed. Do not confuse it with the Chausath Yogini temple at Khajuraho, which is a Chandela building with the usual 64 shrines.

The Chandelas ruled Jejakabhukti, the Bundelkhand country, from a line founded by Nannuka (c. 831–845 in the usual list), with Mahoba as their later capital and Kalinjar and Khajuraho as major centres. Their fame rests on Khajuraho, a group of temples built mostly in the tenth and eleventh centuries. About 25 of the 85 temples once recorded survive, in western, eastern and southern groups, and Hindu and Digambara Jain shrines stand side by side. Kandariya Mahadeva, the largest, rises to a spire about 31 metres (roughly 102 feet) high. UNESCO inscribed the group in 1986. Erotic subjects make up less than a tenth of its sculpture, and most panels show daily life and symbolic themes.

Chandela power broke in the twelfth century. Prithviraj Chauhan raided Mahoba around 1182–83, and Qutb al-Din Aibak attacked around 1202–03, when Paramardi (Parmal) was the Chandela ruler. The temples outlasted the dynasty and remained the main monument of the Chandela age.

The Paramaras ruled Malwa from Dhara (Dhar) until 1305; their independent line is usually dated from about 948 under Siyaka, though the family is traced to earlier chiefs. Siyaka sacked the Rashtrakuta capital Manyakheta around 972. Munja was defeated and killed by Tailapa II of the Western Chalukyas between about 994 and 998. The dynasty reached its height under Bhoja (c. 1010–1055), whose reign is recorded from the Modasa copper plates of 1010–11.

Bhoja was a polymath, credited with works on architecture (Samarangana Sutradhara), grammar and poetics (Sarasvati-kanthabharana), poetics and drama (Shringara-Prakasha), and Yoga and medicine (works titled Rajamartanda), though he may have commissioned some of them rather than written them. The Bhoj Shala at Dhar, a centre of Sanskrit learning with a temple of Sarasvati, is linked to him. At Bhojpur in Raisen district, his unfinished Bhojeshwar temple holds one of India's largest single-rock lingas, about 5.5 metres tall. Its outer walls and superstructure were never completed. Two eleventh-century dams made a large reservoir there, and the Malwa Sultan Hoshang Shah breached them in the fifteenth century.

The Gurjara-Pratiharas made Avanti (Ujjain) their capital in Malwa under Nagabhata I in the eighth century, and later centred the dynasty on Kannauj. Mihira Bhoja (c. 836–885) and Mahendrapala I (885–910) took it to its height in the struggle for Kannauj against the Palas of Bengal and the Rashtrakutas. The Teli ka Mandir at Gwalior fort belongs to the Pratihara age and is commonly attributed to Mihira Bhoja, and the Bateshwar temples in Morena district belong to the Pratihara age. Mahmud of Ghazni took Kannauj in 1018, and the Pratihara line declined.

The Kachchhapaghatas ruled from Gwalior, with branches at Dubkund and Narwar. Their first prominent member, Lakshmana, was followed by Vajradaman, who took Gopadri (Gwalior) from the Pratiharas, as a 977 inscription at Sihoniya records. The Sas-Bahu temples inside Gwalior fort were commissioned under Mahipala in the late eleventh century. At Mitaoli in Morena district, Devapala built a Chausath Yogini temple. Qutb al-Din Aibak took Gwalior fort in 1196 according to the usual dating, which ended the Kachchhapaghata rule there.

The Tomaras held Gwalior fort from about 1375 to about 1518. Virasimha was the first known ruler, and a Gangola-tal inscription records his reign in 1394. Under Dungarendra (1425–1459) and Kirtisimha (1459–1479) the Jain rock sculptures of Gwalior fort were carved, most of them between about 1440 and 1473. Man Singh Tomar (1486–1516) built the Man Mandir palace inside the fort and the Gujari Mahal for his queen, Mrignayani. He patronised dhrupad music. Vikramaditya, the last Tomara, surrendered the fort under Ibrahim Lodi's siege and died at the First Battle of Panipat.

The Gonds, a tribal people of the central forests, founded Garha-Mandla in the upper Narmada valley. Its founding is dated to about 1440 in the usual account, and the founder is traditionally named Jadurai. The seat moved as power shifted: first at Garha, then Singorgarh (1488–1564), then Chauragarh (1564–1634), and finally Ramnagar (1634–1781). The early history rests largely on later chronicles, so the origin story is a tradition rather than a fully documented fact.

Sangram Shah (1513–1543 in the usual list; sources differ by some years) is the best-documented ruler of the line. Abul Fazl's account in the Akbarnama reports that the kingdom grew under him to 70,000 villages and 52 forts, and the Chauragarh fort in Narsinghpur is said to commemorate those forts. He is remembered as a patron of learning, and a Sanskrit work on poetics, the Rasratnamala, is credited to him. His son Dalpat Shah married Durgavati, whose later role belongs to the freedom and princely-state chapter.

The table places the dynasties in the order of their rise. The dates are the usual ranges, and early chronology carries real uncertainty. In an examination, prefer the century and the anchor monument to a single year where the sources differ.

Read the table as a series of shifts. The Gupta-age feudatories (Parivrajaka, Uchchakalpa and Aulikara) held the Gupta periphery. The Kalachuris and Chandelas held the north-east and Bundelkhand. The Paramaras held Malwa. The Pratiharas and the Kachchhapaghatas contested Gwalior, and the Tomaras held it after them. The Gonds held the Narmada and Satpura forests until the Marathas arrived.