Rani Durgavati Ruled Garha-Katanga for About 15 Years, Won the First Day's Fight Against Asaf Khan at Narrai in 1564, and Now Gives Her Name to a University, a Tiger Reserve and a Planned Rs 100 Crore Memorial

Rani Durgavati ruled the Gond kingdom of Garha-Katanga, in the Narmada valley around present-day Jabalpur, for about 15 years, from roughly 1550 until she died fighting the Mughal general Asaf Khan in 1564. Abul Fazl, the chronicler of the emperor whose army ended her rule, wrote that she was “distinguished for courage, counsel and munificence”.

Her war is known mostly from the Mughal side: Abul Fazl’s Akbarnama, Nizamuddin Ahmad’s Tabakat-i Akbari, and a 1909 gazetteer of Jabalpur district, compiled by the Central Provinces government, that cites them. Each claim below says whose voice it is.

What Akbar’s chronicler says she ruled

Abul Fazl says he heard from experienced men who had been to Garha-Katanga that 23,000 cultivated villages were in her possession, and that in 12,000 of them she had resident governors. Remaining villages, he writes, were subordinate to her and their headmen answered to her. In her battles, he adds, she had 20,000 good cavalry and a thousand famous elephants.

He places Panna to the country’s north and the Deccan to its south, and names its capital as the fort of Chauragarh. He and Nizamuddin both repeat a figure of 70,000 villages for the whole country, and a footnote in Elliot and Dowson’s English edition calls that number a manifest error. Abul Fazl calls the Gonds a low-caste tribe, and then lists Durgavati’s courage, counsel and munificence.

The Gond house and the Chandel princess

In the 1909 Gazetteer’s telling, the dynasty rose with Sangram Shah, who became king around 1480. He extended the kingdom to 52 garhs, or districts, taking in Saugor, Damoh, the Narmada valley and parts of the Satpura plateau, though the Gazetteer adds that he merely raided some of them. It calls him the most illustrious prince of the Gond line and credits him with the fort of Chauragarh and the Sangram Sagar lake near Garha. His son Dalpat Shah moved the seat of government to the hill fort of Singorgarh.

Durgavati came from the Chandel house of Mahoba. Vincent Smith, writing in 1917, calls her a princess of the famous Chandel dynasty. Abul Fazl names her father as Rajah Salbahan of Rath and Mahoba, and says he gave her to Dalpat because he was in bad circumstances. Another version, in the Gazetteer, has the Chandella raja turning the proposal down, and Dalpat marching out, winning a battle and bringing her home. Khajuraho’s temples belong to the same Chandel line.

Fifteen years as regent

Dalpat died while their son Bir Narayan was a small child. Abul Fazl puts the boy at five and says Dalpat had reigned seven years. By the Gazetteer’s count Dalpat died about four years after the marriage, leaving a son of about three. Jabalpur university’s page dates the marriage to 1542, the son’s birth to 1545 and Dalpat’s death to about 1550. Her rule lasted sixteen years in Abul Fazl’s count, and fifteen in the Gazetteer’s and Smith’s.

With two ministers, Adhar and Man, she gave her son the title of raja and exercised the real authority herself, in Abul Fazl’s words. He says she fought Baz Bahadur, whom the university page calls the ruler of Malwa from 1556, and the Miana chiefs, and “was always victorious”. He also records that she was a good shot with gun and arrow, and that on hearing of a tiger she would not drink water until she had shot it.

Her public works are in the Gazetteer: the Rani Tal reservoir beside Garha, and many other useful works there and at Mandla, where she kept her stud of elephants. Of all the rulers of the dynasty, it adds, she lives most in history and in the grateful memory of the people. Smith says her name was still remembered and revered in his day. On the university page she also patronised scholars and gave important posts to Muslims, and Abul Fazl names Shams Khan Miana and Mubarik Khan Baluch among the fighters on her side at Narrai.

Abul Fazl’s one reproach is that, flattered by her success, she did not submit at the emperor’s threshold.

Asaf Khan comes to Damoh, and the first day at Narrai

Asaf Khan, the Mughal governor of Karra, had just taken Panna when he turned to Garha-Katanga. Abul Fazl says he first kept up friendly relations, sent spies and traders to learn her revenue and treasure, and raided border villages. Then, by the emperor’s orders, he gathered 10,000 cavalry and a large body of infantry and marched to Damoh. Nizamuddin gives his force as 50,000 horse and foot. According to the Gazetteer, he invaded without troubling much for a pretext, and Smith judged the attack unprovoked aggression.

Abul Fazl says her soldiers scattered to protect their families when the news reached her, leaving about 500 men. When Adhar, who ran her administration, warned her of the desertions and the size of the Mughal army, she answered, in Abul Fazl’s report, that it was “better to die with glory than to live with ignominy”. She gathered 2,000, moved through forest and finally reached Narhi, which the university page spells Narrai: a place with high hills on four sides, the Gaur river in front and the Narmada on another side, and a ravine so narrow that it was hard to enter or leave. About 5,000 men had joined her by then, he writes.

On the first day Mughal troops seized the head of the ravine and killed Arjan Das Bais, the commander of her elephants. Abul Fazl says the Rani put on armour, mounted an elephant and told her men to let the enemy enter the pass and then fall on them from all sides. In his account the plan worked: three hundred Mughals were killed, and she pursued the survivors out of the ravine. That night she proposed an attack on the Mughal camp, before Asaf Khan could bring up artillery and fortify the pass. No one agreed, and she gave way to the majority.

The second day and the date of her death

In the morning Asaf Khan came with his guns and fortified the mouth of the pass. Abul Fazl says the Rani rode out on her best elephant, Sarman, and the fighting went from arrows and muskets to swords and daggers until the third watch of the day. Bir Narayan, whom he calls Raja Bir Sa, drove the Mughals back three times. He was wounded the third time, and she had him carried to safety. Many of her troops left the field, and about 300 stayed with her.

Then an arrow hit her right temple, and she pulled it out; another struck her neck, and she fainted. Abul Fazl writes that she asked Adhar, who was riding in front of her on the elephant, to kill her with a dagger, that he refused, and that she then stabbed herself. Nizamuddin says only that an arrow struck her and that, afraid of being taken alive, she made her elephant-driver kill her. In London, the Victoria and Albert Museum holds a painting from an illustrated Akbarnama, made around 1590 to 1595, with the outline by Kesav and the colours by Jagannath, showing her death in battle.

Abul Fazl dates the campaign only to the ninth year of Akbar’s reign, and the Gazetteer says 1564. Her date of death, 24 June 1564, comes from the Jabalpur university’s page, which says that her martyrdom day is commemorated as Balidan Diwas.

Chauragarh, the treasure and what followed

Abul Fazl says Asaf Khan took the fort of Chauragarh two months later. Bir Narayan, who had been shut inside, came out to fight, and the fort fell after a short contest; the young raja died fighting. In the Gazetteer he is trampled to death in the confusion of the storming. Abul Fazl records that the women of the fort were burned in a jauhar, the pyre that Rajput households lit rather than face capture, and that two women survived: the Rani’s sister Kamlavati, and a princess brought for the raja. Both were sent to Akbar.

Chauragarh’s treasure was large. Abul Fazl lists coined and uncoined gold, jewels, pearls and a hundred jars of Ala-ud-din ashrafis, which are gold coins. He says Asaf Khan sent the emperor only 200 of a thousand captured elephants and hid the rest. Akbar, in his telling, overlooked it. Smith writes that in 1565 Asaf Khan defected and fled when he heard he might be made to account for the treasure, and the Gazetteer reports that he is said to have held Garha for some years as an independent ruler before being pardoned and restored to Karra.

Gond rule did not end in 1564. Chandra Shah, Dalpat’s brother, was declared raja of Garha-Mandla and had to cede ten districts to Akbar, which the Gazetteer says later formed the principality of Bhopal. It follows the dynasty through to Narhar Shah, who died a prisoner at Ahurai in Saugor in 1789, and treats that as the end of the Garha-Mandla line. How the empire that absorbed Garha was run is the subject of our piece on Akbar’s state.

Where the accounts differ

Several details change from source to source.

Her birth and parents: the university page says she was born on 5 October 1524 at Kalanjar fort to the Chandel ruler Keerat Rai, while Abul Fazl names her father as Salbahan. Dalpat’s father: the Gazetteer and the university page say Sangram Shah, while Abul Fazl makes him the son of Aman Das, who took the title Sangram Shahi from Sultan Bahadur of Gujarat, and adds a rumour about Dalpat’s birth that no other source here repeats.

Where the fight happened: Abul Fazl names Narhi, Smith says a point between Garha and Mandla, and the Gazetteer says she met Asaf Khan near Singorgarh in Damoh and was beaten, then retired to a pass on the Mandla road. In June 2024 the Hitavada reported that the Chief Minister paid tribute at her samadhi at Narai Nala.

How big the armies were: Nizamuddin gives her 700 elephants and 20,000 horse, and a footnote in Elliot and Dowson says Firishta gives 1,500 elephants and 8,000 horse and foot. Another footnote says the manuscripts of Nizamuddin differ on the size of Asaf Khan’s force, with one giving five thousand and the other fifty thousand.

Her name today

Madhya Pradesh’s government renamed the University of Jabalpur as Rani Durgavati Vishwavidyalaya in 1983, according to the university’s own page, which also records a Government of India postage stamp in her honour on 24 June 1988.

On 5 October 2023 the Prime Minister performed the bhoomi poojan, the ground-breaking ceremony, for the Veerangana Rani Durgavati Smarak aur Udyaan in Jabalpur and released a commemorative coin and stamp for her 500th birth anniversary. According to the Press Information Bureau, the memorial will cost about Rs 100 crore and spread over about 21 acres, with a 52-foot bronze statue and a museum on the history of Gondwana. Counting from the 1524 birth date, five centuries were complete on 5 October 2024.

On 25 June 2024 the Hitavada reported that, at her Balidan Diwas event, the state’s Chief Minister, Mohan Yadav, announced that Jabalpur airport and a flyover at Madan Mahal would be named for her and that her life would be added to the school curriculum. A tiger reserve in Madhya Pradesh was declared in her name in 2023 (our piece on how India counts its tigers and lions covers the national survey), and the Press Information Bureau’s year-end note of 29 December 2023 counted 54 tiger reserves covering more than 78,000 square kilometres, 2.30 per cent of India, after the Rani Durgavati reserve was added.