Rajput

Rajput

Any member of a caste of landowners located mainly in central and northern India. The Rajputs are organized in patrilineal clans and number about 12 million. They regard themselves as descendants or members of the Kshattriya (warrior ruling) class, though in fact they vary greatly in status. After the fall of the Gupta dynasty, invaders and indigenous peoples in northwestern India were probably integrated, the leaders in both groups becoming Kshattriyas. The Rajputs became important politically in the 9th–10th centuries, and for centuries they prevented complete Muslim domination of Hindu India. They eventually accepted Mughal overlordship and, in 1818, British suzerainty.

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Rajput 

a feudal warrior caste in medieval India and a group of high-status castes in modern India. The Rajputs claim descent from the ancient Kshatriya varna, and the name “Rajput” derives from the Sanskrit rajaputra, meaning “raja’s son.” However, most of the 36 Rajput clans are descended not from the Kshatriya but from the elite of the Saka, Huns, Gurjaras, and other tribes that invaded India in the fifth and sixth centuries and assumed a dominant position in various regions of North India in the eighth century. Later, members of the Gonds, Bhar, Kol, and other local feudalized tribes attained Rajput status.

Between the eighth and 12th centuries, states headed by Rajput dynasties spread throughout North India and Nepal. Ordinary clan members, who represented the states’ military strength, were given conditional possession of villages and became small-scale, and often collective, landowners. During the Muslim conquests of the 12th and 13th centuries, Rajput princes lost most of their holdings, retaining chiefly those holdings in the Himalayan foothills and Rajasthan. The smaller-scale feudal Rajput lords became zamindars under Muslim rule. To this day, Rajputs constitute a populous stratum among the landowners of North India.

L. B. ALAEV