The Thakial Rajputs: Bhimber’s Rulers Before the Chibs

The Thakial Rajputs (تھکیال راجپوت) were, according to Chib tradition, the ruling house of Bhimber, in today’s Azad Jammu and Kashmir, before the Chibs. Thakur Major Singh’s Tarikh-e-Chibhal (c. 1926), the oldest written history of the Chib Rajputs, names their last raja as Sri Pat, whose only daughter married Raja Chib Chand and whose throne passed to the Chibs; seven reigns later a Thakial bride became Rani Thakial, queen of Baba Shadi Shaheed. The newest Chib history, Chibhal Nama (c. 2023), adds a Thakial descent from Ajodhya and the story of their departure from Bhimber under Raja Rasm Dev.

Who were the Thakial Rajputs?

For some four centuries Bhimber, where the old road to Kashmir leaves the Punjab plains for the hills, was the capital of the Chib Rajputs. Yet every Chib chronicle agrees that the Chibs were newcomers. When Raja Chib Chand arrived from the Katoch kingdom of Kangra, Bhimber already had a ruling house, and in the oldest Chib history, as in Mian Onkar Singh’s later one, that house is the Thakial Rajputs.

Thakur Major Singh Chib of Dewa Vatala, a Hindu Chib whose Tarikh-e-Chibhal was printed in 1983 Bikrami (about 1926), says it plainly: “Bhimber was ruled by the Thakial Rajputs, and Raja Sri Pat was the ruler” (Major Singh (c. 1926), p. 22). In a later chapter he adds that the raj had belonged to the Thakials from ancient times, that Sri Pat was the last of their rajas, and that in Sri Pat’s day the palaces stood on Aadhi Dhak, where the shrine of Baba Shadi Shaheed is now, with the town of Jhangar two or three miles to the north (p. 61, quoted in Raja Muhammad Iftikhar Ali Khan’s history of 1997, p. 42).

Neither Major Singh nor the 1997 history gives the Thakials a genealogy. The manuscript of Maulvi Zain-ul-Abidin of Samahni, quoted in the 1997 history, pairs the Thakials with the Badhans as the rulers Chib Chand displaced (Iftikhar Ali Khan (1997), p. 119), and the 1997 compiler writes that the Budhan, Sudhan and Thakial tribes long held the Dewa Vatala country east of Bhimber (p. 138).

The newest Chib history supplies one from outside the Chib tradition. Following Kamran Azam Sohdarvi’s book Rajput Qaba’il, Captain Muhammad Nadeem Khan’s Chibhal Nama (c. 2023) makes the Thakials Suraj-bansi (solar) Rajputs of Ajodhya, named after a Raja Thakial. A Raja Jothar Singh, it says, came from Ajodhya and founded their rule at Bhimber, where his line reigned for hundreds of years, with Rajouri as its neighbour, until Sri Pat, the last of them (Chibhal Nama (c. 2023), pp. 50, 173–174). Crediting Rose’s Glossary, it also says that the Thakials’ Bhimber took in Tehsil Kharian, though the Urdu Rose in the 1997 history says nothing of them (p. 38).

Raja Sri Pat and the jewel

Major Singh’s second chapter tells how the two houses met. At the end of the thirteenth century Bikrami, he says, Raja Narain Chand, a grandson of Raja Megh Chand of Kangra, set out to win a kingdom with his four sons, Chib Chand, Dhru Chand, Ambu Chand and Aji Chand. Passing below the hills of Jammu with few men left, they camped like travellers at Mughlora, four miles east of Bhimber (pp. 9, 21); the date is weighed in When did the Chibs come to Bhimber?

Needing provisions, Narain Chand sent a servant to sell a valuable jewel in the town, for there were no banknotes then, the author explains, and travelling rajas carried their wealth as jewels or gold mohurs. The shopkeepers declared it fit for a raja, and Raja Sri Pat bought it and asked about its owner, reasoning that such a man must belong to some royal house. He invited Narain Chand, enquired into his family and proposed that his only daughter should marry Chib Chand. There was no question of refusing, and the wedding was celebrated with great pomp (pp. 21–22).

Chibhal Nama tells this part differently. Its travellers lodge at Malora, now Mughlora, with a Hindu old woman who serves in Sri Pat’s palace; the shopkeepers of Bhimber refuse to buy so royal a jewel and the servant comes back empty-handed, but word of it, and the old woman’s praise, bring Narain Chand and Chib Chand to Sri Pat’s court as royal guests. Its years, 1415 for the arrival and 1426 for the wedding, are its own (Chibhal Nama (c. 2023), pp. 50–51).

A marriage and a dowry

Chib Chand, it is also said, did not have all his lagis with him, the hereditary functionaries who serve at a family’s ceremonies, so his brothers stood in as family priest (purohit) and bard (bhat). Besides the dowry, Sri Pat gave his son-in-law several villages east of Bhimber. Narain Chand, already old, died a few days later, and Chib Chand settled for good, founding east of Mughlora a village he named Kangra after his old homeland, a name it still bore in Major Singh’s day (p. 22; see Kot Chibban and Mughlora).

Later accounts, quoted in the 1997 book, vary the terms. Rose’s Glossary (1911) says Sri Pat gave part of his state as dowry (p. 26); the family history of the Pothi, Kasgumah and Lehri Rajgan says a third of it (p. 165); Raja Wilayat Khan names the bride Punja Devi and says Sri Pat wanted a son-in-law to guard the country against invaders from the west (pp. 30–31); and Mian Onkar Singh’s later Tarikh-e-Chibhal adds an old Brahmin woman, who praised Chib Chand to the queens (p. 66). Chibhal Nama, which calls the bride Punja Devi in one chapter and Poncha Devi in another, leaves out the dowry villages but keeps the village of Kangra, founded east of Mughlora in Sri Pat’s lifetime (Chibhal Nama (c. 2023), pp. 51–52, 174).

How Thakial rule in Bhimber ended

Some time later Sri Pat died without a son. His near kinsmen expected the throne, but Chib Chand seized his chance and took possession of the raj (Major Singh (c. 1926), p. 22). Asking how a newcomer succeeded so quickly, Major Singh answers with a reflection on raj-niti, statecraft: throughout history, he writes, sons have imprisoned fathers and brothers shed each other’s blood for a throne, the shastra-writers call such methods niti, and no people has ever handed its rule to another willingly (pp. 22–23).

He then records what “is said” to have happened. At a wedding or some such occasion, Chib Chand gave a lavish feast for the whole Thakial biradari (kin-group) of Sri Pat; soldiers hidden nearby attacked, and many leading men were killed, while some held that the food was also poisoned. The survivors could not resist: some fled, the rest submitted, and Chib Chand became master of Bhimber (p. 23). For the Thakials it meant the loss of a kingdom and of many of their men. Major Singh presents the story as tradition, framed by his argument about statecraft; later histories tell it differently, and some omit it.

Chibhal Nama tells the end of Thakial rule without bloodshed: when Sri Pat died in 1450, his heirs could not prevail against Chib Chand’s popularity, and the son-in-law was made king (Chibhal Nama (c. 2023), p. 52). The Thakials, it adds, tried and failed to weaken him and, distrusted by the new raja and his ministers, left Bhimber under a chief of their own, Raja Rasm Dev (pp. 174–175). It does not deny that blood was shed. No deep tie was formed between the two peoples again, it writes, because of the severe tension between Chib Chand and Rasm Dev; fighting and killing between them are part of history, but the author will not record such events, so as not to sow hatred again (p. 178).

The Thakial purohits

The Thakial rajas’ court priests (raj-purohits) then asked Chib Chand how they were to live. He answered that a true Kshatriya must protect Brahmins and all the weak, and promised that he and his descendants would honour them as their own priests. These Brahmins, of the Verha caste (also read Vedra; reading uncertain), still received equal dues at Hindu Chib weddings in Major Singh’s day (pp. 23–25). Onkar Singh tells the same promise (Iftikhar Ali Khan (1997), p. 67); Chibhal Nama leaves it out. See Chib Chand’s Vow.

Rani Thakial: a second Thakial bride

The two families were joined again. Major Singh counts seven rajas after Chib Chand, the seventh being Raja Dharam Chand, remembered as Raja Shadab Khan and Baba Shadi Shaheed, who “too” married among the Thakial Rajputs (p. 26). His queen is known only as Rani Thakial because, the author explains, Rajput custom, above all among rajas, kept a queen’s name private and called her by her clan. He calls her very wise and a pativrata, wholly devoted to her husband, and credits her with Rani ke Kunwan, the queen’s well, three miles south of Bhimber (p. 26), the Rani da Khooh pictured in the 1997 book (p. 56).

In his account she is the raja’s counsellor when Sultan Ibrahim Lodi’s summons arrives, and it is she who, harassed by kinsmen in his absence, sends the letter that brings him home from Delhi (pp. 29–30). In Chibhal Nama the queen, whom it calls Rani Thakiala, stays a Hindu after her husband’s conversion; in his absence his younger brother, Raja Parab Chand, crowned by the Hindu nobles, presses her to marry him and threatens her children, and her letter brings the raja home (Chibhal Nama (c. 2023), p. 179). Her legends are told in Rani Thakial, Sajana Teli and the Black Dog, and her husband’s life in Baba Shadi Shaheed.

The Thakials after the Chibs

In Major Singh’s account the surviving Thakials fled or submitted (Major Singh (c. 1926), p. 23), and by his own day the clan had changed its faith: “the whole of it has come into the fold of Islam”, he writes, and its people lived at Mauza Thakiala, in Jammu State on the border of Poonch State (p. 26). The name is faint in the old lithograph and the 1997 quotation has Thakial, but Chibhal Nama’s Thakiala, in today’s Kotli district, supports the reading.

The Thakials did not simply vanish. Onkar Singh writes that the old rulers kept stirring up trouble (Iftikhar Ali Khan (1997), p. 67), and Maulvi Zain-ul-Abidin records a later bid for a return: after Baba Shadi Shaheed’s death his brother Raja Dom Khan conspired with the Thakials and Badhans, setting up a claimant from among them, until the emperor intervened and Dom Khan withdrew towards Poonch (p. 119), the country of his descendants, the Domal. The 1997 history also names an area of Poonch called Parawa Thakiala, where Dom Khan established his rule (pp. 33, 70); none of the three books says whether it is connected with the Thakials’ later home.

Raja Rasm Dev and the Bagial of Mendhar

Chibhal Nama is the first history to follow the Thakials out of Bhimber. Under their chief, Raja Rasm Dev, it says, they moved to the country of Thakiala and Nakial, Kotli and Poonch. Rasm Dev built palaces at Dharoti, in today’s Tehsil Fatehpur Thakiala of Kotli district, a place now called Thakar Thali (reading uncertain), where their ruins could still be seen. He meant to cross the Pir Panjal and try his fortune in Kashmir, but at the pass a saint turned him back, telling him that his destiny was to rule that very country and that there he would receive Islam. He settled, defeated the Jhebra tribe who held the land, took Mendhar and the country around it, became a Muslim as Raja Rasmi Khan, and was buried at Dharoti, where the Thakials still visit the grave of their ancestor (Chibhal Nama (c. 2023), p. 175).

His four sons were Sengi, Khengi, Bag and Kalu Khan. Bag Khan settled at Sangal in the Mendhar country and gave his name to the Bagial Rajputs, whose villages include Sangal, Kala Ban, Narol, Salwah, Sarhoti and Harni (p. 175). Chibhal Nama follows their chiefs at Narol, holders of the title Rais-e-Azam, down to Sardar Sakhi Wilayat Khan, head of the Bagial, who took part in the Kashmir freedom movement under Sardar Fateh Muhammad Khan Karelvi and suffered for it under the Dogra government, which auctioned the goods of his shops; one of his sons, a student at Aligarh, was poisoned there, the book says, at the Dogra rulers’ instigation. Sakhi Wilayat Khan later moved to Pakistan, lived for a time at Dina and died in 1970; he was buried at Narol (pp. 176–178).

Rasm Dev’s story closely resembles one the 1997 history tells of the Chib prince Raja Dom Khan, who in the same Thakiala country put down the Dareda and Jhabira tribes and became a Muslim at the hands of a dervish, Pir Fazil Shah (Iftikhar Ali Khan (1997), pp. 70, 82); Chibhal Nama gives the defeat of the Jhebra to the Thakial raja instead. Major Singh tells neither story.

The Thakials today

Chibhal Nama ends its chapter with the Thakials’ later homes: Muzaffarabad district, villages in Bagh and Abbottabad districts, Bhara Kahu near Rawalpindi, Dhond Sattiyan near Murree, Galyana near Gujar Khan and Sarhota in Kotli district. In 1947, it adds, thousands moved to Azad Kashmir and Pakistan and settled in Jhelum, Wah Cantt, Kahuta, Attock, Gujar Khan, Rawalpindi, Gujrat, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Chhamb, Jhang and Sargodha (Chibhal Nama (c. 2023), p. 178).

So the Chibs remember the Thakials three times over: as the dynasty they replaced, as the family of the bride who brought Chib Chand his first lands, and as the clan of the queen who lies beside Baba Shadi Shaheed on Aadhi Dhak. Major Singh’s book is introduced in Tarikh-e-Chibhal, chapter by chapter.

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• Raja Chib ChandThe Katoch prince who married Sri Pat’s daughter
• Rani Thakial, Sajana Teli and the Black DogThe Thakial queen of Baba Shadi Shaheed
• Chib Chand’s VowThe Verha Brahmins and a promise kept for centuries
• When Did the Chibs Come to Bhimber?Dating Raja Chib Chand
• Kot Chibban and MughloraChib Chand’s first home east of Bhimber
• Tarikh-e-Chibhal (c. 1926)The first history of the Chibs, chapter by chapter