1.
Panipat district
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Panipat district pronunciation is one of the 21 districts of Haryana in north India. The historical town of Panipat is the headquarters of the district. The district occupies an area of 1268 km², making it the 19th largest in the state with Gurgaon, Panipat district was carved out from the erstwhile Karnal district on 1 November 1989. On 24 July 1991 it was merged with Karnal district. On 1 January 1992 it again became a separate district, according to the 2011 census Panipat district has a population of 1,205,437, roughly equal to the nation of Bahrain or the US state of New Hampshire. This gives it a ranking of 396th in India, the district has a population density of 951 inhabitants per square kilometre. Its population growth rate over the decade 2001-2011 was 24. 60%, Panipat has a sex ratio of 864 females for every 1000 males, and a literacy rate of 75. 94%
2.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
3.
India
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India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and it is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast. It shares land borders with Pakistan to the west, China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast, in the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Indias Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a border with Thailand. The Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE, in the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, early political consolidations took place under the Maurya and Gupta empires, the later peninsular Middle Kingdoms influenced cultures as far as southeast Asia. In the medieval era, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived, much of the north fell to the Delhi sultanate, the south was united under the Vijayanagara Empire. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal empire, in the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, and in the mid-19th under British crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which later, under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance, in 2015, the Indian economy was the worlds seventh largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption, malnutrition, a nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the third largest standing army in the world and ranks sixth in military expenditure among nations. India is a constitutional republic governed under a parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society and is home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindu, the latter term stems from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, which was the historical local appellation for the Indus River. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as The people of the Indus, the geographical term Bharat, which is recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations. Scholars believe it to be named after the Vedic tribe of Bharatas in the second millennium B. C. E and it is also traditionally associated with the rule of the legendary emperor Bharata. Gaṇarājya is the Sanskrit/Hindi term for republic dating back to the ancient times, hindustan is a Persian name for India dating back to the 3rd century B. C. E. It was introduced into India by the Mughals and widely used since then and its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety
4.
States and union territories of India
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India is a federal union comprising twenty-nine states and seven union territories. The states and union territories are further subdivided into districts and further into smaller administrative divisions, the Constitution of India distributes the sovereign executive and legislative powers exercisable with respect to the territory of any State between the Union and that State. The Indian subcontinent has been ruled by different ethnic groups throughout its history. Between 1947 and 1950, the territories of the states were politically integrated into the Indian Union. The new Constitution of India, which came into force on 26 January 1950, the new republic was also declared to be a Union of States. The nine Part A states were Assam, Bihar, Bombay, Madhya Pradesh, Madras, Orissa, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. The eight Part B states were former princely states or groups of states, governed by a rajpramukh, who was usually the ruler of a constituent state. The rajpramukh was appointed by the President of India, the Part B states were Hyderabad, Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Bharat, Mysore, Patiala and East Punjab States Union, Rajasthan, Saurashtra, and Travancore-Cochin. The ten Part C states included both the former chief commissioners provinces and some states, and each was governed by a chief commissioner appointed by the President of India. The Part C states were Ajmer, Bhopal, Bilaspur, Coorg, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Cutch, Manipur, Tripura, the only Part D state was the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which were administered by a lieutenant governor appointed by the central government. The Union Territory of Puducherry was created in 1954 comprising the previous French enclaves of Pondichéry, Karaikal, Yanam, Andhra State was created on 1 October 1953 from the Telugu-speaking northern districts of Madras State. The States Reorganisation Act of 1956 reorganised the states based on linguistic lines resulting in the creation of the new states, as a result of this act, Madras State retained its name with Kanyakumari district added to from Travancore-Cochin. Andhra Pradesh was created with the merger of Andhra State with the Telugu-speaking districts of Hyderabad State in 1956, kerala was created with the merger of Malabar district and the Kasaragod taluk of South Canara districts of Madras State with Travancore-Cochin. The Laccadive Islands which were divided between South Canara and Malabar districts of Madras State were united and organised into the territory of Lakshadweep. Bombay State was enlarged by the addition of Saurashtra State and Kutch State, Rajasthan and Punjab gained territories from Ajmer and Patiala and East Punjab States Union respectively and certain territories of Bihar was transferred to West Bengal. Bombay State was split into the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra on 1 May 1960 by the Bombay Reorganisation Act. Nagaland was formed on 1 December 1963, the Punjab Reorganisation Act of 1966 resulted in the creation of Haryana on 1 November and the transfer of the northern districts of Punjab to Himachal Pradesh. The act also designated Chandigarh as a territory and the shared capital of Punjab
5.
Haryana
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Haryana is one of the 29 states in India, situated in North India. It was carved out of the state of East Punjab on 1 November 1966 on a linguistic basis. It stands 21st in terms of its area, which is spread about 44,212 km2, as of 2011 census of India, the state is eighteenth largest by population with 25,353,081 inhabitants. The city of Chandigarh is its capital while the NCR city of Faridabad is the most populous city of the state, Haryana is one of the most economically developed regions in South Asia, and its agricultural and manufacturing industries have experienced sustained growth since the 1970s. Since 2000, the state has emerged as the largest recipient of investment per capita in India and it is bordered by Punjab and Himachal Pradesh to the north, and by Rajasthan to the west and south. The river Yamuna defines its border with Uttar Pradesh. Haryana surrounds the countrys capital Delhi on three sides, forming the northern, western and southern borders of Delhi, consequently, a large area of south Haryana is included in the National Capital Region for purposes of planning for development. The name Haryana is found in the works of the 12th-century AD Apabhramsha writer Vibudh Shridhar, the name Haryana has been derived from the Sanskrit words Hari and ayana, meaning the Abode of God. However, scholars such as Muni Lal, Murli Chand Sharma, HA Phadke and Sukhdev Singh Chib believe that the name comes from a compound of the words Hari and Aranya. Vedic state of Brahmavarta is claimed to be located in a new research in south Haryana, manusmriti, a flood time document composed by Manu and Bhrigu is now dated 10,000 years old. Rakhigarhi village in the Hisar district is home to the largest and one of the oldest ancient Indus Valley Civilization sites, evidence of paved roads, a drainage system, a large-scale rainwater collection storage system, terracotta brick and statue production, and skilled metal working have been uncovered. According to archeologists, Rakhigarhi may be the origin of Harappan civilisation, the area that is now Haryana has been ruled by major empires of India. Panipat is known for three seminal battles in the history of India, in the First Battle of Panipat, Babur defeated the Lodis. In the Second Battle of Panipat, Akbar defeated the local Haryanvi Hindu Emperor of Delhi, hemu, had earlier won 22 battles across India from Punjab to Bengal defeating Mughals and Afghans. Hemu had defeated Akbars forces twice at Agra and Battle of Delhi in 1556 to become last Hindu Emperor of India with formal Coronation at Purana Quila in Delhi on 7th Oct.1556, in the Third Battle of Panipat, the Afghan king Ahmad Shah Abdali defeated the Marathas. Haryana state was formed on 1 November 1966, the commission delivered its report on 31 May 1966 whereby the then-districts of Hisar, Mahendragarh, Gurgaon, Rohtak and Karnal were to be a part of the new state of Haryana. Further, the tehsils of Jind and Narwana in the Sangrur district—along with Naraingarh, Ambala, the commission recommended that the tehsil of Kharad, which includes Chandigarh, the state capital of Punjab, should be a part of Haryana. However, only a portion of Kharad was given to Haryana
6.
Postal Index Number
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A Postal Index Number or PIN or Pincode is a code in the post office numbering or post code system used by India Post, the Indian postal administration. The code is six digits long, the PIN Code system was introduced on 15 August 1972 by Shriram Bhikaji Velankar, an additional secretary in the Union Ministry of Communications. The system was introduced to simplify the manual sorting and delivery of mail by eliminating confusion over incorrect addresses, similar place names, there are nine PIN zones in India, including eight regional zones and one functional zone. The first digit of the PIN code indicates the region, the second digit indicates the sub-region, and the third digit indicates the sorting district within the region. The final three digits are assigned to individual post offices, a state may have one or more sorting districts depending on the volumes of mail handled. The fourth digit represents the route on which a Delivery office is located in the sorting district and this is 0 for offices in the core area of the sorting district. The last two represent the delivery office within the sorting district starting from 01 which would be the GPO or HO. The numbering of the office is done chronologically with higher numbers assigned to newer delivery offices. If the volume of mails handled at an office is too large, a new delivery office is created. Thus two delivery offices situated next to each other only have the first four digits in common. Each PIN code is mapped to exactly one delivery post office which receives all the mail to be delivered to one or more lower offices within its jurisdiction, all of which share the same code. The delivery office can either be a General Post Office, a Head Office or Sub Office which are located in urban areas. The post from the office is sorted and routed to other delivery offices for a different PIN or to one of the relevant sub offices or branch offices for the same PIN. Branch offices are located in areas and have limited postal services
7.
Vehicle registration plate
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A vehicle registration plate, also known as a number plate or a license plate, is metal or plastic plate attached to a motor vehicle or trailer for official identification purposes. The registration identifier is a numeric or alphanumeric ID that uniquely identifies the owner within the issuing regions database. The first two letters indicate the state to which the vehicle is registered, the next two digit numbers are the sequential number of a district. Due to heavy volume of vehicle registration, the numbers were given to the RTO offices of registration as well, the third part indicates the year of registration of the vehicle and is a 4 digit number unique to each plate. In some countries, the identifier is unique within the entire country, whether the identifier is associated with a vehicle or a person also varies by issuing agency. In the vast majority of jurisdictions, the government holds a monopoly on the manufacturing of vehicle registration plates for that jurisdiction. Thus, it is illegal for private citizens to make and affix their own plates. Alternately, the government will merely assign plate numbers, and it is the owners responsibility to find an approved private supplier to make a plate with that number. In some jurisdictions, plates will be assigned to that particular vehicle for its lifetime. If the vehicle is destroyed or exported to a different country. Other jurisdictions follow a policy, meaning that when a vehicle is sold the seller removes the current plate from the vehicle. Buyers must either obtain new plates or attach plates they already hold, as well as register their vehicles under the buyers name, a person who sells a car and then purchases a new one can apply to have the old plates put onto the new car. One who sells a car and does not buy a new one may, depending on the laws involved, have to turn the old plates in or destroy them. Some jurisdictions permit the registration of the vehicle with personal plates, in some jurisdictions, plates require periodic replacement, often associated with a design change of the plate itself. Vehicle owners may or may not have the option to keep their original plate number, alternately, or additionally, vehicle owners have to replace a small decal on the plate or use a decal on the windshield to indicate the expiration date of the vehicle registration. Plates are usually fixed directly to a vehicle or to a frame that is fixed to the vehicle. Sometimes, the plate frames contain advertisements inserted by the service centre or the dealership from which the vehicle was purchased. Vehicle owners can also purchase customized frames to replace the original frames, in some jurisdictions licence plate frames are illegal
8.
Delhi
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Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory of Delhi or NCT, is a city and a union territory of India. It is bordered by Haryana on three sides and by Uttar Pradesh to the east, the NCT covers an area of 1,484 square kilometres. According to 2011 census, Delhis city population was about 11 million, Delhis urban area is now considered to extend beyond the NCT boundary to include an estimated population of over 26 million people making it the worlds second largest urban area. As of 2016 recent estimates of the economy of its urban area have ranked Delhi either the top or second most productive metro area of India. Delhi is the second wealthiest city after Mumbai in India, with a wealth of $450 billion. Delhi has been inhabited since the 6th century BC. Through most of its history, Delhi has served as a capital of various kingdoms and it has been captured, ransacked and rebuilt several times, particularly during the medieval period, and modern Delhi is a cluster of a number of cities spread across the metropolitan region. New Delhi is jointly administered by the government of India and the local government of Delhi. Delhi is also the centre of the National Capital Region, which is a unique interstate regional planning area created by the National Capital Region Planning Board Act of 1985, Delhi ranks among the cities with the worst air pollution in the world. There are a number of myths and legends associated with the origin of the name Delhi, one of them is derived from Dhillu or Dilu, a king who built a city at this location in 50 BC and named it after himself. The coins in circulation in the region under the Tomaras were called dehliwal, according to the Bhavishya Purana, King Prithiviraja of Indraprastha built a new fort in the modern-day Purana Qila area for the convenience of all four castes in his kingdom. He ordered the construction of a gateway to the fort and later named the fort dehali, another theory suggests that the citys original name was Dhillika. The people of Delhi are referred to as Delhiites or Dilliwalas, the city is referenced in various idioms of the Northern Indo-Aryan languages. Dilli dilwalon ka shehr or Dilli Dilwalon ki meaning Delhi belongs to the large-hearted/daring, aas-paas barse, Dilli pani tarse, literally meaning it pours all around, while Delhi lies parched. An allusion to the sometimes semi-arid climate of Delhi, it refers to situations of deprivation when one is surrounded by plenty. The area around Delhi was probably inhabited before the second millennium BC, the city is believed to be the site of Indraprastha, the legendary capital of the Pandavas in the Indian epic Mahabharata. According to Mahabharata, this land was initially a huge mass of forests called Khandavaprastha which was burnt down to build the city of Indraprastha, the earliest architectural relics date back to the Maurya period, in 1966, an inscription of the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka was discovered near Srinivaspuri. Remains of eight cities have been discovered in Delhi
9.
Chandigarh
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Chandigarh is a city and a union territory of India that serves as the capital of the Indian states of Haryana and Punjab. As a union territory, the city is governed directly by the Union Government and is not part of either state, Chandigarh is bordered by the state of Punjab to the north, west and south, and to the state of Haryana to the east. Chandigarh is considered to be a part of the Chandigarh capital region or Greater Chandigarh, which includes Chandigarh, and it is located 260 km north of New Delhi,229 km southeast of Amritsar and just 116 km southwest of Shimla. Chandigarh was one of the planned cities in the post-independence India and is internationally known for its architecture. Most of the government buildings and housing in the city, were designed by the Chandigarh Capital Project Team headed by Le Corbusier, Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry. In 2015, an article published by BBC named Chandigarh as one of the cities of the world in terms of architecture, cultural growth. Chandigarh’s Capitol Complex was in July 2016 declared by UNESCO as World Heritage at the 40th session of World Heritage Conference held in Istanbul, UNESCO inscription was under “The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier an outstanding contribution to the Modern Movement”. The city tops the list of Indian States and Union Territories by per capita income followed by Haryana, the city was reported to be the cleanest in India in 2010, based on a national government study. The union territory also heads the list of Indian states and territories according to Human Development Index, in 2015, a survey by LG Electronics, ranked Chandigarh as the happiest city in India over the happiness index. The metropolitan of Chandigarh-Mohali-Panchkula collectively forms a Tri-city, with a population of over 2 million. The name Chandigarh is a portmanteau of Chandi and Garh, Chandi refers to Hindu Goddess Chandi, the warrior Avatar of Goddess Parvati, and Garh means home. The name is derived from Chandi Mandir, an ancient temple devoted to the Hindu Goddess Chandi, the logo of The City Beautiful derives from the City Beautiful movement that was a popular philosophy in North American urban planning during the 1890s and 1900s. Architect Albert Mayer, the planner of Chandigarh, lamented the American rejection of City Beautiful concepts. The phrase was used on as a logo in official publications in the 1970s, the city has a pre-historic past. Due to the presence of lake, the area has fossil remains with imprints of a variety of aquatic plants and animals, and amphibian life. As it was a part of the Punjab region, it had many rivers nearby where the ancient, so, about 8000 years ago, the area was also known to be a home to the Harappans. Chandigarh was the city of Indias first Prime Minister, Jawahar Lal Nehru. After the partition of India in 1947, the former British province of Punjab was split between East Punjab in India and West Punjab in Pakistan, the Indian Punjab required a new capital city to replace Lahore, which became part of Pakistan during the partition
10.
First Battle of Panipat
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The First Battle of Panipat, on 21 April 1526, was fought between the invading forces of Babur and the Lodi Empire. It took place in north India and marked the beginning of the Mughal Empire and this was one of the earliest battles involving gunpowder firearms and field artillery in India. After losing Samarkand for the time, Babur gave attention to conquer India as he reached the banks of the Chenab in 1519. Until 1524, his aim was to expand his rule to Punjab, mainly to fulfil his ancestor Timurs legacy. At the time parts of north India were under the rule of Ibrahim Lodi of the Lodi dynasty and he received invitations from Daulat Khan Lodi, Governor of Punjab and Ala-ud-Din, uncle of Ibrahim. He sent an ambassador to Ibrahim, claiming himself the heir to the throne of the country, however the ambassador was detained at Lahore. Babur started for Lahore, Punjab, in 1524 but found that Daulat Khan Lodi had been out by forces sent by Ibrahim Lodi. When Babur arrived at Lahore, the Lodi army marched out, in response, Babur burned Lahore for two days, then marched to Dipalpur, placing Alam Khan, another rebel uncle of Lodis, as governor. Alam Khan was quickly overthrown and fled to Kabul, in response, Babur supplied Alam Khan with troops who later joined up with Daulat Khan Lodi and together with about 30,000 troops, they besieged Ibrahim Lodi at Delhi. He defeated them and drove off Alams army and Babur realized Lodi would not allow him to occupy the Punjab. Hearing of the size of Ibrahims army, Babur secured his right flank against the city of Panipat, in the center, he placed 700 carts tied together with ropes. Between every two carts there were breastworks for his matchlockmen, Babur also ensured there was enough space for his cavalry to charge between these carts. When Ibrahims army arrived, he found the approach to Baburs army too narrow to attack, while Ibrahim redeployed his forces to allow for the narrower front, Babur quickly took advantage of the situation to flank the Lodi army. Many of Ibrahims troops, were unable to get into action and as the battle turned against Ibrahim, faced with musket fire, cannon fire and cavalry attacks from all sides, Ibrahim Lodi fought and died with 6,000 of his remaining troops. New tactics introduced by Babur were the tulghuma and the araba, tulghuma meant dividing the whole army into various units, viz. the Left, the Right and the Centre. The Left and Right divisions were subdivided into Forward and Rear divisions. Through this an army could be used to surround the enemy from all sides. The Centre Forward division was provided with carts which were placed in rows facing the enemy
11.
Second Battle of Panipat
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The Second Battle of Panipat was fought on November 5,1556, between the forces of Hem Chandra Vikramaditya, the Hindu king of Delhi and the army of the Mughal emperor, Akbar. Hemu had conquered Delhi a month earlier by defeating the Mughals led by Tardi Beg Khan at the Battle of Delhi, Akbar and his guardian, Bairam Khan, had immediately marched to Delhi to reclaim the city. The two armies clashed at Panipat not far from the site of the First Battle of Panipat of 1526, although Hemu had lost his artillery to the Mughals before the battle, his forces held the numerical superiority. However, Hemu was wounded by an arrow in the middle of the battle. Seeing their leader going down, his army panicked and dispersed, Hemu was captured and subsequently beheaded. The battle ended in a victory for Akbar. Humayun, the successor of Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire, had lost his inheritance when he was chased out of India by Sher Shah Suri who established the Sur Empire in 1540. Delhi and Agra fell into Sher Shahs hands, but he died soon after in 1545 at Kalinjar and he was succeeded by his younger son, Islam Shah Suri, who was a capable ruler. However, upon his death in 1553, the Sur Empire was caught up in a battle and was plagued by rebellion. Humayun made use of this discord to recapture what was lost and on 23 July 1555, Islam Shahs rightful successor, his 12-year-old son, Firoz Khan, had been murdered by his maternal uncle who had taken the throne as Adil Shah Suri. The new ruler was however, more interested in the pursuit of pleasure than in the affairs of his state. Those were largely left to Hemu, a Hindu from Rewari and he was in Bengal when Humayun died on 26 January 1556. The Mughal emperors death provided an opportunity to defeat the Mughals. Hemu started a march from Bengal and drove the Mughals out of Bayana, Etawah, Sambhal, Kalpi. In Agra, the governor evacuated the city and fled without a fight upon hearing of Hemus impending invasion and he took possession of Delhi after a days battle on 7 October 1556 and claimed royal status assuming the title of Vikramaditya. On hearing the news from Tughlaqabad, Humayuns successor, the 13-year-old Akbar. In a stroke of luck, Ali Quli Khan Shaibani, who had sent ahead with 10, 000-strong cavalry force. He was easily able to capture the train of artillery from the Afghans who abandoned the guns
12.
Third Battle of Panipat
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The specific site of the battle itself is disputed by historians, but most consider it to have occurred somewhere near modern-day Kaalaa Aamb and Sanauli Road. The battle lasted for days and involved over 125,000 troops. Protracted skirmishes occurred, with losses and gains on both sides, the forces led by Ahmad Shah Durrani came out victorious after destroying several Maratha flanks. According to the single best eyewitness chronicle--the bakhar by Shuja-ud-Daulahs Diwan Kashi Raj--about 40,000 Maratha prisoners were slaughtered in cold blood the day after the battle, grant Duff includes an interview of a survivor of these massacres in his History of the Marathas and generally corroborates this number. Shejwalkar, whose monograph Panipat 1761 is often regarded as the single best secondary source on the battle, says that not less than 100,000 Marathas perished during and after the battle. The result of the battle was the halting of further Maratha advances in the north, and this period is marked by the rule of Peshwa Madhavrao, who is credited with the revival of Maratha domination following the defeat at Panipat. The success of this campaign can be seen as the last saga of the story of Panipat. The decline of the Mughal Empire following the 27-year Mughal-Maratha war led to territorial gains for the Maratha Empire. Under Peshwa Baji Rao, Gujarat, Malwa and Rajputana came under Maratha control, finally, in 1737, Baji Rao defeated the Mughals on the outskirts of Delhi and brought much of the former Mughal territories south of Delhi under Maratha control. Baji Raos son Balaji Baji Rao further increased the territory under Maratha control by invading Punjab in 1758 and this brought the Marathas into direct confrontation with the Durrani empire of Ahmad Shah Abdali. In 1759 he raised an army from the Pashtun and Baloch tribes and he then joined with his Indian allies—the Rohilla Afghans of the Gangetic Doab—forming a broad coalition against the Marathas. The Marathas started their journey from Patdur on 14 March 1760. Both sides tried to get the Nawab of Awadh, Shuja-ud-Daulah, by late July Shuja-ud-Daulah made the decision to join the Afghan-Rohilla coalition, preferring to join what was perceived as the army of Islam. This was strategically a major loss for the Marathas, since Shuja provided much-needed finances for the long Afghan stay in North India and it is doubtful whether the Afghan-Rohilla coalition would have the means to continue their conflict with the Marathas without Shujas support. The Marathas had gained control of a part of India in the intervening period. In 1758 they occupied Delhi, captured Lahore and drove out Timur Shah Durrani and this territory was ruled through the Peshwa, who talked of placing his son Vishwasrao on the Mughal throne. However, Delhi still remained under the control of Mughals, key Muslim intellectuals including Shah Waliullah. In desperation they appealed to Ahmad Shah Abdali, the ruler of Afghanistan, in the final phase the Marathas, under Scindia, attacked Najib
13.
Hemu
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Hemu was a Hindu general and Chief Minister of Adil Shah Suri of the Suri Dynasty during a period in Indian history when the Mughals and Afghans were vying for power across North India. He fought Afghan rebels across North India from the Punjab to Bengal, a month later, Hemu was wounded by a chance arrow and captured during the Second Battle of Panipat. Akbars regent, Bairam Khan beheaded him shortly thereafter, modern historians differ on his familys ancestral home and caste, and the place and year of his birth. What is generally accepted is that he was born in a Hindu family of limited means, due to his familys financial condition, Hemu at a young age started working as a tradesman, either as a green-grocer or selling saltpetre. Details of Hemus early career are vague and involve much speculation, following his start as a seller of saltpetre, he is said to have been a trader or a weighman in the market. Hemu is subsequently said to have appointed the Chief of Intelligence. Other sources also place him as a surveyor of the imperial kitchens, Hemu was then dispatched to monitor the movements of Humayuns half-brother, Kamran Mirza, in the neighbourhood of Mankot. Islam Shah died on 30 October 1553 and was succeeded by his 12-year-old son, Firoz Khan, the new ruler was however more interested in the pursuit of pleasure than affairs of the state. But Hemu threw in his lot with Adil Shah and his successes led him to being elevated to the position of Chief Minister. According to Abul-Fazl, Hemu undertook all appointments and dismissals, Hemu, besides being a highly capable civil administrator, was also the finest military mind on the Afghan side after the demise of Sher Shah Suri. He is reputed to have waged and won as many as 22 battles against the opponents of Adil Shah, many of these battles were against Afghans who had rebelled against Adil Shah. One of these was Taj Khan Karrani, a member of Islam Shahs court who, rather than serving Adil Shah and he was overtaken by Hemu at Chibramau and defeated, but somehow managed to escape and plundered and robbed his way to Chunar. Hemu gave chase again and fought Karrani at Chunar and was once more. However, just as at Chibramau, Karrani gave him the slip again, Hemu asked Adil Shah—who had accompanied him—to remain at Chunar and proceeded to chase Karrani all the way to Bengal. After the victory of Humayun over Adil Shahs brother-in-law, Sikandar Shah Suri, on 23 July 1555, Hemu was in Bengal when Humayun died on 26 January 1556. His death gave Hemu an ideal opportunity to defeat the Mughals and he started a rapid march from Bengal and drove the Mughals out of Bayana, Etawah, Sambhal, Kalpi, and Narnaul. In Agra, the governor evacuated the city and fled without a fight upon hearing of Hemus invasion, Hemus most notable victory took place shortly thereafter against the Mughals at Tughlaqabad. Meanwhile, Tardi Beg Khan had also ordered all the Mughal nobles in the vicinity to muster their forces at Delhi, a council of war was convened where it was decided that the Mughals would stand and fight Hemu, and plans were made accordingly
14.
Pandava
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In the Mahabharata, a Hindu epic text, the Pandavas are the five acknowledged sons of Pandu, by his two wives Kunti and Madri, who was the princess of Madra. Their names are Yudhishthira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva, all five brothers were married to the same woman, Draupadi. Together the brothers fought and prevailed in a war against their cousins the Kauravas. The word Pandava is derived from their fathers name, Pandu, the other epithets of the Pandava group are, Panduputra - sons of Pandu Pandavakumara - young Pandavas Kaunteya - sons of Kunti Madreya - sons of Madri Yudhishthira, The eldest Pandava brother. His name means one who is steadfast even during war and his parents were Kunti and Dharma, god of virtue, justice and morality. Though he lacked the characteristic combat prowess of a Kshatriya, Yudhishthira was one of the most virtuous men, skilled in the duties of a king and he was a good king who, along with his brothers, founded the prosperous city of Indraprastha. In consequence of Krishnas machinations and also by his brothers conquest of the world and he performed two Ashwamedha sacrifices and one Rajasuya sacrifice. Yudhishthira learnt to control the dice from the Sage Brihadaswa and became good at playing chess and his other names are Ajatshatru and Dharmaraja. His name means of terrible might and his parents were Kunti and Vayu, the god of air and wind, who was known for his might. Bhima has the strength and prowess equal to ten thousand powerful bull elephants and was very athletic. He was aggressive and prone to anger, of all the brothers, he alone opposed Yudhishthira, although very loyal to him, for his questionable decisions opposing common sense in the name of dharma. Bhima was devoted to his family and was their natural protector and he was a master in wielding the mace. He was also an archer, having fought Drona and Ashwatthama. Bhima was also skilled in diverse areas of warfare, including wrestling, charioteering, riding elephants. Along with Arjuna, he went on expeditions to conquer the kingdoms to the east, during the Rajasuya Yagna, Bhima subjugated the kingdoms of the eastern direction completely. He slew Krishnas most dangerous enemy, Jarasandha, in a wrestling bout, during the war, Bhima was most famous for slaying one hundred Kauravas and Duryodhana himself. He was also skilled in chopping wood, cooking, culinary arts and his name means of stainless deeds. His parents were Kunti and Indra, king of the gods and he was very virtuous and avoided unjust acts
15.
Mahabharata
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The Mahābhārata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the Rāmāyaṇa. The Mahābhārata is a narrative of the Kurukṣetra War and the fates of the Kaurava. It also contains philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion of the four goals of life or puruṣārtha, traditionally, the authorship of the Mahābhārata is attributed to Vyāsa. There have been attempts to unravel its historical growth and compositional layers. The oldest preserved parts of the text are thought to be not much older than around 400 BCE, the text probably reached its final form by the early Gupta period. The title may be translated as the tale of the Bhārata dynasty. According to the Mahābhārata itself, the tale is extended from a version of 24,000 verses called simply Bhārata. The Mahābhārata is the longest known epic poem and has described as the longest poem ever written. Its longest version consists of over 100,000 śloka or over 200,000 individual verse lines, and long prose passages. About 1.8 million words in total, the Mahābhārata is roughly ten times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, or about four times the length of the Rāmāyaṇa. W. J. Johnson has compared the importance of the Mahābhārata in the context of civilization to that of the Bible, the works of Shakespeare. The epic is traditionally ascribed to the sage Vyāsa, who is also a character in the epic. Vyāsa described it as being itihāsa and he also describes the Guru-shishya parampara, which traces all great teachers and their students of the Vedic times. The first section of the Mahābhārata states that it was Gaṇeśa who wrote down the text to Vyasas dictation, the epic employs the story within a story structure, otherwise known as frametales, popular in many Indian religious and non-religious works. It is recited by the sage Vaiśampāyana, a disciple of Vyāsa, the text has been described by some early 20th-century western Indologists as unstructured and chaotic. Hermann Oldenberg supposed that the poem must once have carried an immense tragic force. Moritz Winternitz considered that only unpoetical theologists and clumsy scribes could have lumped the parts of disparate origin into an unordered whole, Research on the Mahābhārata has put an enormous effort into recognizing and dating layers within the text. Some elements of the present Mahābhārata can be traced back to Vedic times, the background to the Mahābhārata suggests the origin of the epic occurs after the very early Vedic period and before the first Indian empire was to rise in the third century B. C
16.
Sanskrit
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Sanskrit is the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, a philosophical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and a literary language and lingua franca of ancient and medieval South Asia. As a result of transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia and parts of Central Asia, as one of the oldest Indo-European languages for which substantial written documentation exists, Sanskrit holds a prominent position in Indo-European studies. The body of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of poetry and drama as well as scientific, technical, philosophical, the compositions of Sanskrit were orally transmitted for much of its early history by methods of memorization of exceptional complexity, rigor, and fidelity. Thereafter, variants and derivatives of the Brahmi script came to be used, Sanskrit is today one of the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which mandates the Indian government to develop the language. It continues to be used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals and Buddhist practice in the form of hymns. The Sanskrit verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- may be translated as refined, elaborated, as a term for refined or elaborated speech, the adjective appears only in Epic and Classical Sanskrit in the Manusmṛti and the Mahabharata. The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit, with the language of the Rigveda being the oldest and most archaic stage preserved, Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini, around the fourth century BCE. Sanskrit, as defined by Pāṇini, evolved out of the earlier Vedic form, the present form of Vedic Sanskrit can be traced back to as early as the second millennium BCE. Scholars often distinguish Vedic Sanskrit and Classical or Pāṇinian Sanskrit as separate dialects, although they are quite similar, they differ in a number of essential points of phonology, vocabulary, grammar and syntax. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, a collection of hymns, incantations and theological and religio-philosophical discussions in the Brahmanas. Modern linguists consider the metrical hymns of the Rigveda Samhita to be the earliest, for nearly 2000 years, Sanskrit was the language of a cultural order that exerted influence across South Asia, Inner Asia, Southeast Asia, and to a certain extent East Asia. A significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of Indian epic poetry—the Ramayana, the deviations from Pāṇini in the epics are generally considered to be on account of interference from Prakrits, or innovations, and not because they are pre-Paninian. Traditional Sanskrit scholars call such deviations ārṣa, meaning of the ṛṣis, in some contexts, there are also more prakritisms than in Classical Sanskrit proper. There were four principal dialects of classical Sanskrit, paścimottarī, madhyadeśī, pūrvi, the predecessors of the first three dialects are attested in Vedic Brāhmaṇas, of which the first one was regarded as the purest. In the 2001 Census of India,14,035 Indians reported Sanskrit to be their first language, in India, Sanskrit is among the 14 original languages of the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution. The state of Uttarakhand in India has ruled Sanskrit as its official language. In October 2012 social activist Hemant Goswami filed a petition in the Punjab. More than 3,000 Sanskrit works have been composed since Indias independence in 1947, much of this work has been judged of high quality, in comparison to both classical Sanskrit literature and modern literature in other Indian languages
17.
Sonipat
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Sonipat & Sonipat City also spelled as Sonepat, is a town and a Municipal Corporation in Haryana state of India. It comes under the National Capital Region and is around 20 kilometres from Delhi and it is also around 214 km southwest of Chandigarh, the state capital. The Yamuna River runs along the eastern boundary, on 22 December 1972, Sonipat was carved out of Rohtak and made a full-fledged district. According to legend, Sonipat was earlier known as Sonprastha, which later on became Svarnaprastha, later, the name Svarnaprastha changed into Svarnpath, and then to its current form, Sonipat/Sonepat. Reference to the city comes in the epic Mahabharata, Sonipat was founded as Swarnaprastha by the five Pandava brothers and it was one of the five prasthas or towns demanded by Yudhishthira as the price of peace from Duryodhana and in lieu of the kingdom of Hastinapur. The other four villages were Panprastha, Baghprastha, Tilprastha and Indraprastha, another legend ascribed it to Raja Soni, the thirteenth descendent of Arjuna, one of the Pandava brothers. Khanda, Sonipat village is very ancient village in Sonipat, though both are without supporting evidence but it had been noted much earlier by the grammarian Pāṇini in his celebrated sutra-style treatise on Sanskrit grammar Ashtadhyayi. The town was already in existence before 600 B. C. Sonipat is located at 28. 98°N77. 02°E /28.98,77.02 and it has an average elevation of 224.15 meters above sea level. Sonipat borders Delhi, the capital, to the south, Panipat district to the north, Uttar Pradesh state to the east. The total area of Sonipat district is 2,260 km2, topographically, Sonipat district is divided into three regions, the Khadar, Upland Plain and Sandy Region. Sonipat city lies on the plains, which are covered with old alluvium. Broadly speaking, the district is a part of the Haryana-Punjab Plain. Sonipat District has fine loamy soil with a rich color, however, some areas have sandy soil. Khanda, Sonipat village is Famous for Brick Factories there are 100 Bhattas in this village, the tomb of Khwaja Khizr houses the remains of the saint and son of Darya Khan who lived during the rule of Ibrahim Lodhi. The structure was built between 1522 and 1525 AD, the tomb stands on an elevated platform and is one of the few monuments where red sandstone along with ‘kankar’ blocks have been used. The ceiling is decorative and made of floral designs. The cenotaph chamber is surrounded by a structure which rests on a small drum of octagonal shape
18.
Baghpat
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Baghpat is a town of NCR and a Municipal board in Baghpat district in western Uttar Pradesh, India. It is the headquarters of Baghpat District. Prior to the establishment of Baghpat district in 1997, Baghpat was a Tehsil in Meerut district, the towns name derives from the Hindi word for tiger. Baghpat town is located on the banks of river Yamuna at 28 deg 57 North Latitude and 77 deg 13 East Longitude and it is 52 km from Meerut City and is on the main Delhi–Saharanpur Highway around 40 km from Delhi toward north. Barnava, near Binauli is the site of the Lakshagraha - palace made of wax, there are many versions of the story as to how the city derived its name. One less popular version states that the city has derived its name from the Sanskrit word Vakyaprastha, inspired by such words and versions, the city was finally named Baghpat during the Mughal Era. Baghpat is located in western Uttar Pradesh, on the east bank of the Yamuna River and it is 40 kilometres northeast of Delhi and 52 kilometres west of Meerut, on the main Delhi–Sharanpur highway. Baghpat is the headquarters of Baghpat district, which is in the shape of a north-south rectangle, as of 2001 India census, Baghpat had a population of 36,365. Males constitute 53% of the population and females 47%, Baghpat has an average literacy rate of 66%, higher than the national average of 59. 5%, with 82% of the males and 58% of females literate. 13% of the population is under 6 years of age, major castes are Jats, Yadav, Gujjars, Tyagis and Rajputs besides Dalits and a large number of Muslims. Baraut is a place with many Hindu Temples, Jain Temples and Mosques around. There are 32 Temples,45 Mosques,2 Gurudwaras and 2 churches around this region, one of the biggest temple in this area is known as Digamber Jain Bara Mandir. It is very famous and holds big importance here, on the day of Mahavir Jayanti during month of April a three-day carnival is organised every year. Another Hindu carnival is organised during Dusshera following Ramlila, another big Hindu temple in the heart of the town is Panchvati Temple, on the bank of nahar. This temple has three parts, first with Goddess Santoshi Ma temple, second is Ram Temple and third part is Ganesh, the district has a strong presence of Jainism. Bada Gaon is an important pilgrimage center for Jains and it is located near the town of Khekra. There is a place called Pakka Ghat where a popular Shankaracharya, Swami Savroopanand saraswati ji maharaj, according to the 2011 census, there are 3 towns—a municipal council, and 2 notified area, or city, councils —within the tehsil, as well as 103 villages. Occupation of the people of Baghpat is mostly Agriculture, approximately 70% people are dependent upon agriculture. Main crops of Baghpat are sugarcane, wheat and rice
19.
Ibrahim Lodi
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Ibrahim Lodi became the Sultan of Delhi in 1517 after the death of his father Sikandar. He attained the throne upon the death of his father, Sikandar and he faced a number of rebellions. The Mewar ruler Rana Sangram Singh extended his right up to western Uttar Pradesh. There was rebellion in the East also, Ibrahim Lodi also displeased the nobility when he replaced old and senior commanders by younger ones who were loyal to him. His Afghan nobility eventually invited Babur to invade India, in 1526, the Mughal forces of Babur, the king of Kabulistan, defeated Ibrahims much larger army in the Battle of Panipat. Ibrahim was killed during the battle and it is estimated that Baburs forces numbered around 25, 000–30,000 men and had between 20 and 24 pieces of field artillery. Ibrahim Lodi had around 30, 000–40,000 men along with at least 100 elephants, after the end of Lodhi dynasty, the era of Mughal rule commenced. His tomb is often mistaken to be the Shisha Gumbad within Lodi Gardens Delhi, rather Ibrahim Lodis Tomb is actually situated near the tehsil office in Panipat, close to the Dargah of Sufi saint Bu Ali Shah Qalandar. It is a rectangular structure on a high platform approached by a flight of steps. In 1866, the British relocated the tomb during construction of the Grand Trunk Road and renovated it with an inscription highlighting Ibrahim Lodhi’s death in the Battle of Panipat
20.
Delhi Sultanate
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The Delhi Sultanate was a Muslim kingdom based mostly in Delhi that stretched over large parts of the Indian subcontinent for 320 years. Five dynasties ruled over Delhi Sultanate sequentially, the Mamluk dynasty, the Khilji dynasty, the Tughlaq dynasty, the Sayyid dynasty, the first four dynasties were of Turkic origin, and the last dynasty was of Afghan origin. Qutb-ud-din Aibak, a slave of Muhammad Ghori, was the first sultan of Delhi. Afterwards the Khilji dynasty was able to conquer most of central India. The sultanate reached the peak of its reach during the Tughlaq dynasty. This was followed by due to continuing Hindu-Muslim wars, states such as the Vijayanagara Empire asserting independence. The Delhi Sultanate caused destruction and desecration of politically important temples of South Asia, in 1526 the Sultanate fell, to be succeeded by the Mughal Empire. By 962 AD, Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms in South Asia were under a wave of raids from Muslim armies from Central Asia. Among them was Mahmud of Ghazni, who raided and plundered kingdoms in north India from east of the Indus river to west of Yamuna river seventeen times between 997 and 1030, Mahmud of Ghazni raided the treasuries but retracted each time, only extending Islamic rule into western Punjab. The wave of raids on north Indian and western Indian kingdoms by Muslim warlords continued after Mahmud of Ghazni, the raids did not establish or extend permanent boundaries of their Islamic kingdoms. The Ghurid Sultan Muizz al-Din Muhammad began a war of expansion into north India in 1173. He sought to carve out a principality for himself by expanding the Islamic world, Mu’izz sought a Sunni Islamic kingdom of his own extending east of the Indus river, and he thus laid the foundation for the Muslim kingdom called the Delhi Sultanate. Some historians chronicle the Delhi Sultanate from 1192 due to the presence, Muizz al-Din was assassinated in 1206, by Ismāʿīlī Shia Muslims in some accounts or by Hindu Khokhars in others. After the assassination, one of Mu’izz slaves, the Turkic Qutbu l-Din Aibak, assumed power, Qutb al-Din Aibak, a slave of Muizz ad-Din Muhammad Ghori, was the first ruler of the Delhi Sultanate. Aibak was of Cuman-Kipchak origin, and due to his lineage, Aibak reigned as the Sultan of Delhi for four years. After Aibak died, Aram Shah assumed power in 1210, but he was assassinated in 1211 by Shams-ud-din Iltutmish, iltutmishs power was precarious, and a number of Muslim amirs challenged his authority as they had been supporters of Qutb al-din Aibak. After a series of conquests and brutal executions of opposition, he consolidated his power and his rule was challenged a number of times, such as by Qubacha, and this led to a series of wars. Iltumish conquered Multan and Bengal from contesting Muslim rulers, as well as Ranathambhore and he also attacked, defeated, and executed Taj al-Din Yildiz, who asserted his rights as heir to Muizz ad-Din Muhammad Ghori
21.
Babur
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He was a direct descendant of Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur from the Barlas clan, through his father, and also a descendant of Genghis Khan through his mother. Babur was the eldest son of Umar Sheikh Mirza and he ascended the throne of Fergana in 1495 at the age of twelve and faced rebellion from his own relatives. He conquered Samarkand two years later, only to lose the city of Fergana soon after, in his attempt to reconquer Fergana, he lost control of Samarkand. In 1501, his attempt to both cities went in vain as he was defeated by Muhammad Shaybani Khan. In 1504, he conquered Kabul, which was under the rule of the infant heir of Ulugh Begh. Babur formed a partnership with Safavid ruler Ismail I and reconquered parts of central Asia, including Samarkand, only to lose it. After losing Samarkand for the time, Babur turned his attention to creating his empire in north India. In 1524, Daulat Khan Lodi, a rebel of the Lodhi dynasty, invited Babur to overthrow Ibrahim, Babur defeated Ibrahim Lodi at the First Battle of Panipat in 1526 and founded the Mughal empire. However, he faced opposition, this time from Rana Sanga of Mewar who considered Babur a foreigner. The Rana was defeated at the Battle of Khanwa, notable among his sons are Humayun, Kamran Mirza and Hindal Mirza. Babur died in 1530 and was succeeded by Humayun, according to Baburs wishes, he was buried in Bagh-e-Babur in Kabul, Afghanistan. Being a patrilineal descendant of Timur, Babur considered himself a Timurid and Turk and he is considered a national hero in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Many of his poems also have become popular folk songs and he wrote his autobiography, Baburnama, in Chaghatai Turkic and this was translated into Persian during Akbars reign. Ẓahīr-ud-Dīn is Arabic for Defender of the Faith, and Muhammad honours the Islamic prophet, the name is generally taken in reference to the Persian babr, meaning tiger. The word repeatedly appears in Ferdowsis Shahnameh and was borrowed into the Turkic languages of Central Asia. The choice of vowel would nominally be restricted to one of the four front vowels, hence babr → babür, thackston argues for an alternate derivation from the PIE word beaver, pointing to similarities between the pronunciation Bābor and the Russian bobr. Babur bore the royal titles Badshah and al-ṣultānu l-ʿazam wa l-ḫāqān al-mukkarram pādshāh-e ġāzī and he and later Mughal emperors used the title of mirza when they were princes. Baburs memoirs form the source for details of his life
22.
Mughal Empire
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The dynasty, though ethnically Turco-Mongol, was Persianate in terms of culture. The Mughal empire extended over parts of the Indian subcontinent. The beginning of the empire is conventionally dated to the victory by its founder Babur over Ibrahim Lodi, the Mughal emperors were Central Asian Turco-Mongols belonging to the Timurid dynasty, who claimed direct descent from both Genghis Khan and Timur. During the reign of Humayun, the successor of Babur, the empire was briefly interrupted by the Sur Empire, the classic period of the Mughal Empire started in 1556 with the ascension of Akbar the Great to the throne. Under the rule of Akbar and his son Jahangir, the region enjoyed economic progress as well as harmony. Akbar was a warrior who also forged alliances with several Hindu Rajput kingdoms. Some Rajput kingdoms continued to pose a significant threat to the Mughal dominance of northwestern India, the reign of Shah Jahan, the fifth emperor, between 1628 and 1658 was the golden age of Mughal architecture. He erected several monuments, the best known of which is the Taj Mahal at Agra, as well as the Moti Masjid, Agra, the Red Fort, the Jama Masjid, Delhi. By the mid-18th century, the Marathas had routed Mughal armies, during the following century Mughal power had become severely limited, and the last emperor, Bahadur Shah II, had authority over only the city of Shahjahanabad. He issued a firman supporting the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and following the defeat was therefore tried by the British East India Company for treason, imprisoned and exiled to Rangoon. Contemporaries referred to the empire founded by Babur as the Timurid empire, which reflected the heritage of his dynasty, another name was Hindustan, which was documented in the Ain-i-Akbari, and which has been described as the closest to an official name for the empire. In the west, the term Mughal was used for the emperor, and by extension, the use of Mughal derived from the Arabic and Persian corruption of Mongol, and it emphasised the Mongol origins of the Timurid dynasty. The term gained currency during the 19th century, but remains disputed by Indologists, similar terms had been used to refer to the empire, including Mogul and Moghul. Nevertheless, Baburs ancestors were sharply distinguished from the classical Mongols insofar as they were oriented towards Persian rather than Turco-Mongol culture, ousted from his ancestral domains in Central Asia, Babur turned to India to satisfy his ambitions. He established himself in Kabul and then pushed steadily southward into India from Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass, Baburs forces occupied much of northern India after his victory at Panipat in 1526. The preoccupation with wars and military campaigns, however, did not allow the new emperor to consolidate the gains he had made in India, the instability of the empire became evident under his son, Humayun, who was driven out of India and into Persia by rebels. Humayuns exile in Persia established diplomatic ties between the Safavid and Mughal Courts, and led to increasing Persian cultural influence in the Mughal Empire, the restoration of Mughal rule began after Humayuns triumphant return from Persia in 1555, but he died from a fatal accident shortly afterwards. Humayuns son, Akbar, succeeded to the throne under a regent, Bairam Khan, through warfare and diplomacy, Akbar was able to extend the empire in all directions and controlled almost the entire Indian subcontinent north of the Godavari River
23.
Akbar
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Abul-Fath Jalal-ud-din Muhammad, popularly known as Akbar I and later Akbar the Great, was a Mughal Emperor from 1556 until his death. He was the ruler of the Mughal Dynasty in India. Akbar succeeded his father, Humayun, under a regent, Bairam Khan, a strong personality and a successful general, Akbar gradually enlarged the Mughal Empire to include nearly all of the Indian Subcontinent north of the Godavari river. His power and influence, however, extended over the country because of Mughal military, political, cultural. To unify the vast Mughal state, Akbar established a system of administration throughout his empire and adopted a policy of conciliating conquered rulers through marriage. To preserve peace and order in a religiously and culturally diverse empire, Mughal India developed a strong and stable economy, leading to commercial expansion and greater patronage of culture. Akbar himself was a patron of art and culture, holy men of many faiths, poets, architects and artisans adorned his court from all over the world for study and discussion. Akbars courts at Delhi, Agra, and Fatehpur Sikri became centres of the arts, letters, perso-Islamic culture began to merge and blend with indigenous Indian elements, and a distinct Indo-Persian culture emerged characterised by Mughal style arts, painting, and architecture. A simple, monotheistic cult, tolerant in outlook, it centred on Akbar as a prophet, for which he drew the ire of the ulema, many of his courtiers followed Din-i-Ilahi as their religion as well, as many believed that Akbar was a prophet. One famous courtier who followed this religion was Birbal. Akbars reign significantly influenced the course of Indian history, during his rule, the Mughal empire tripled in size and wealth. He created a military system and instituted effective political and social reforms. By abolishing the tax on non-Muslims and appointing them to high civil and military posts, he was the first Mughal ruler to win the trust. He had Sanskrit literature translated, participated in festivals, realising that a stable empire depended on the co-operation. Thus, the foundations for an empire under Mughal rule was laid during his reign. Akbar was succeeded as emperor by his son, Jahangir, defeated in battles at Chausa and Kannauj in 1539–40 by the forces of Sher Shah Suri Mughal emperor Humayun fled westward to Sindh. There he met and married the then 14-year-old Hamida Banu Begum, daughter of Shaikh Ali Akbar Jami, a teacher of Humauyuns younger brother Hindal Mirza. Jalal ud-din Muhammad Akbar was born the year on 15 October 1542 at the Rajput Fortress of Umerkot in Sindh
24.
Kabul
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Kabul is the capital of Afghanistan as well as its largest city, located in the eastern section of the country. According to a 2015 estimate, the population of the city was around 3,678,033 which includes all the ethnic groups. Rapid urbanization had made Kabul the worlds 64th largest city and the fifth fastest-growing city in the world, Kabul is said to be over 3,500 years old, mentioned since at least the time of the Achaemenid Empire. The city is at a location along the trade routes of South and Central Asia. It has been part of the Achaemenids, Seleucids, Mauryans, Kushans, Kabul Shahis, Saffarids, Ghaznavids, Later, it was controlled by the Mughal Empire until finally becoming part of the Durrani Empire in 1747. The city is located high up in a valley between the Hindu Kush mountains. Kabul became the capital of Afghanistan during the reign of Timur Shah Durrani, in the early 19th century, the British occupied the city but were compelled to abandon it. Relations between Afghanistan and Great Britain were later established, the city was occupied by the Soviets in 1979 but they too abandoned it after the 1988 Geneva Accords were signed. A civil war in the 1990s between various rebel groups destroyed much of the city, resulting in many casualties, since the removal of the Taliban from power in late 2001, the city gradually began rebuilding itself with assistance by the international community. Despite the many terrorist attacks by elements, the city is growing and developing. The city is divided into about 18 districts, the Kabul International Airport is located in the Wazir Akbar Khan district a few miles from the foreign embassies. The Parliament of Afghanistan, built by India, is located in the Kārte Seh district, Kabul, also spelled Cabool, Caubul, Kabol, or Cabul. The word Kubhā is mentioned in the Rigveda, one of the four sacred texts of Hinduism, and the Avesta. The Rigveda praises it as a city, a vision of paradise set in the mountains. The area in which the Kabul valley sits was ruled by the Medes before falling to the Achaemenids, there is a reference to a settlement called Kabura by the rulers of the Achaemenid Empire, It became a center of Zoroastrianism followed by Buddhism and Hinduism. The region became part of the Seleucid Empire but was given to the Indian Maurya Empire. The Greco-Bactrians captured Kabul from the Mauryans in the early 2nd century BC, indo-Scythians expelled the Indo-Greeks by the mid 1st century BC, but lost the city to the Kushan Empire about 100 years later. Some historians ascribe Kabul the Sanskrit name of Kamboja and it is mentioned as Kophes or Kophene in some classical writings
25.
Maratha Empire
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The Maratha Empire or the Maratha Confederacy was an Indian power that existed from 1674 to 1818 and ruled over much of the Indian sub-continent. The Marathas are credited to an extent for ending the Mughal rule in India. The Marathas are Hindu warrior group from the western Deccan Plateau that rose to prominence by establishing a Hindavi Swarajya, known for their mobility, the Marathas were able to consolidate their territory during the Mughal–Maratha Wars and later controlled a large part of India. Chhattrapati Shahu, grandson of Shivaji, was released by Mughals after the death of Emperor Aurangzeb, following a brief struggle with his aunt Tarabai, Shahu became ruler and appointed Balaji Vishwanath and later, his descendants, as the peshwas or prime ministers of the empire. Balaji and his descendants played a key role in expansion of Maratha rule, the empire at its peak stretched from Tamil Nadu in the south to Peshawar in the north, and Bengal and Andaman Islands in the east. In 1761, the Maratha Army lost the Third Battle of Panipat to Ahmad Shah Abdali of the Afghan Durrani Empire which halted their imperial expansion into Afghanistan, ten years after Panipat, the young Peshwa Madhavrao Is Maratha Resurrection reinstated Maratha authority over North India. In a bid to manage the large empire, Madhavrao I gave semi-autonomy to the strongest of the knights. They became known as the Gaekwads of Baroda, the Holkars of Indore and Malwa, the Scindias of Gwalior and Ujjain, the Bhonsales of the Nagpur and the Puars of Dhar and Dewas. In 1775, the East India Company intervened in a Peshwa family succession struggle in Pune, the Marathas remained the preeminent power in India until their defeat in the Second and Third Anglo-Maratha Wars which left the East India Company in control of most of India. A large portion of the Maratha empire was coastline, which had secured by the potent Maratha Navy under commanders such as Kanhoji Angre. He was very successful at keeping foreign naval ships, particularly of the Portuguese and British, securing the coastal areas and building land-based fortifications were crucial aspects of the Marathas defensive strategy and regional military history. The Maratha Empire is also referred to as the Maratha Confederacy, the historian Barbara Ramusack says that the former is a designation preferred by Indian nationalists, while the latter was that used by British historians. Maratha power was fragmented among several discrete fragments, although at present, the word Maratha refers to a particular caste of warriors and peasants, in the past the word has been used to describe Marathi people, including Marathas themselves. Shivaji was a Maratha aristocrat of the Bhosle clan who is considered to be the founder of the Maratha empire. Shivaji led a resistance to free the Maratha people from the Sultanate of Bijapur and he created an independent Maratha kingdom with Raigad as its capital and successfully fought against the Mughals to defend his kingdom. He was crowned as Chhatrapati of the new Maratha kingdom in 1674, the state Shivaji founded was a Maratha kingdom comprising about 4. 1% of the subcontinent, but spread over large tracts. At the time of his death is was dotted with about 300 forts, about 40,000 cavalry,50,000 foot soldiers and naval establishments all over the west coast. Over time, the kingdom would increase in size and heterogeneity, Shivaji had two sons, Sambhaji and Rajaram
26.
Afghanistan
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Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located within South Asia and Central Asia. It has a population of approximately 32 million, making it the 42nd most populous country in the world. It is bordered by Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan in the north and its territory covers 652,000 km2, making it the 41st largest country in the world. The land also served as the source from which the Kushans, Hephthalites, Samanids, Saffarids, Ghaznavids, Ghorids, Khiljis, Mughals, Hotaks, Durranis, the political history of the modern state of Afghanistan began with the Hotak and Durrani dynasties in the 18th century. In the late 19th century, Afghanistan became a state in the Great Game between British India and the Russian Empire. Following the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, King Amanullah unsuccessfully attempted to modernize the country and it remained peaceful during Zahir Shahs forty years of monarchy. A series of coups in the 1970s was followed by a series of wars that devastated much of Afghanistan. The name Afghānistān is believed to be as old as the ethnonym Afghan, the root name Afghan was used historically in reference to a member of the ethnic Pashtuns, and the suffix -stan means place of in Persian. Therefore, Afghanistan translates to land of the Afghans or, more specifically in a historical sense, however, the modern Constitution of Afghanistan states that he word Afghan shall apply to every citizen of Afghanistan. An important site of historical activities, many believe that Afghanistan compares to Egypt in terms of the historical value of its archaeological sites. The country sits at a unique nexus point where numerous civilizations have interacted and it has been home to various peoples through the ages, among them the ancient Iranian peoples who established the dominant role of Indo-Iranian languages in the region. At multiple points, the land has been incorporated within large regional empires, among them the Achaemenid Empire, the Macedonian Empire, the Indian Maurya Empire, and the Islamic Empire. Archaeological exploration done in the 20th century suggests that the area of Afghanistan has been closely connected by culture and trade with its neighbors to the east, west. Artifacts typical of the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, urban civilization is believed to have begun as early as 3000 BCE, and the early city of Mundigak may have been a colony of the nearby Indus Valley Civilization. More recent findings established that the Indus Valley Civilisation stretched up towards modern-day Afghanistan, making the ancient civilisation today part of Pakistan, Afghanistan, in more detail, it extended from what today is northwest Pakistan to northwest India and northeast Afghanistan. An Indus Valley site has found on the Oxus River at Shortugai in northern Afghanistan. There are several smaller IVC colonies to be found in Afghanistan as well, after 2000 BCE, successive waves of semi-nomadic people from Central Asia began moving south into Afghanistan, among them were many Indo-European-speaking Indo-Iranians. These tribes later migrated further into South Asia, Western Asia, the region at the time was referred to as Ariana
27.
Baloch people
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They mainly speak the Balochi language, a branch of Northwestern Iranian languages, and are an Iranic people. About 50% of the total Baloch population live in Balochistan, a province of Pakistan, 40% of Baloch are settled in Sindh. They make up nearly 3. 6% of the Pakistani population, about 2% of Irans population, prominent Baloch people in Pakistan include former Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali and former President Asif Ali Zardari who is an ethnic Baloch from Sindh. Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry born in Quetta, is the longest-serving Chief Justice of Pakistan is another prominent Baloch personality, the son of Benazir Bhutto, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is the Chief of the Baloch Zardari tribe. Farooq Leghari was the first ever ethnic Baloch to be elected President, the exact origin of the word Baloch is unclear. Rawlinson believed that it is derived from the name of the Babylonian king, dames believed that it is derived from the Persian term for cockscomb, said to have been used as a crest on the helmets of Baloch troops in 6th century BCE. Herzfeld proposed that it is derived from the Median term brza-vaciya, the remnants of the original name such as Balochuk and Balochiki are said to be still used as ethnic names in Balochistan. Some writers suggest a derivation from Sanskrit words bal, meaning strength, the army in question is that of the Umayyad Caliphate after the conquest of Sindh. According to Baloch lore, their ancestors hail from Aleppo in what is now Syria and they are descendants of Hazrat Ameer Hamza, uncle of the prophet Muhammad, who settled in Halab. and they fled to the Sistan region. They allegedly remained there for nearly 500 years until they fled following a deception against the Sistan leader Badr-ud-Din to the Makran region, the Baloch began migrating towards the east in the late Sasanian period. The cause of the migration is unknown but may have been as a result of the unstable conditions in the Caspian area. The migrations occurred over several centuries and this brought them into conflict with the Buyids, and later the Ghaznavids and the Seljuqs. Adud al-Dawla of the Buyid dynasty launched a campaign against them. By the 13/14th centuries waves of Baloch were moving into Sindh, according to Dr. Akhtar Baloch, Professor at University of Karachi, the Balochis migrated from Balochistan during the Little Ice Age and settled in Sindh and Punjab. The Little Ice Age is conventionally defined as an extending from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, or alternatively. Although climatologists and historians working with local records no longer expect to agree on either the start or end dates of this period, which varied according to local conditions. According to Professor Baloch, the climate of Balochistan was very cold, the area where the Baloch tribes settled was disputed between the Persian Safavids and the Mughal emperors. Although the Mughals managed to some control over the eastern parts of the area, by the 17th century
28.
Foot (unit)
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The foot is a unit of length in the imperial and US customary systems of measurement. Since 1959, both units have been defined by international agreement as equivalent to 0.3048 meters exactly, in both systems, the foot comprises 12 inches and three feet compose a yard. Historically the foot was a part of local systems of units, including the Greek, Roman, Chinese, French. It varied in length from country to country, from city to city and its length was usually between 250 mm and 335 mm and was generally, but not always, subdivided into 12 inches or 16 digits. The United States is the industrialized nation that uses the international foot and the survey foot in preference to the meter in its commercial, engineering. The foot is legally recognized in the United Kingdom, road signs must use imperial units, the measurement of altitude in international aviation is one of the few areas where the foot is widely used outside the English-speaking world. The length of the international foot corresponds to a foot with shoe size of 13,14,15.5 or 46. Historically the human body has been used to provide the basis for units of length. The foot of a male is typically about 15. 3% of his height, giving a person of 160 cm a foot of 245 mm. These figures are less than the used in most cities over time. Archeologists believe that the Egyptians, Ancient Indians and Mesopotamians preferred the cubit while the Romans, under the Harappan linear measures, Indus cities during the Bronze Age used a foot of 13.2 inches and a cubit of 20.8 inches. The Egyptian equivalent of the measure of four palms or 16 digits—was known as the djeser and has been reconstructed as about 30 cm. The Greek foot had a length of 1⁄600 of a stadion, one stadion being about 181.2 m, the standard Roman foot was normally about 295.7 mm, but in the provinces, the pes Drusianus was used, with a length of about 334 mm. Originally both the Greeks and the Romans subdivided the foot into 16 digits, but in later years, after the fall of the Roman Empire, some Roman traditions were continued but others fell into disuse. In AD790 Charlemagne attempted to reform the units of measure in his domains and his units of length were based on the toise and in particular the toise de lÉcritoire, the distance between the fingertips of the outstretched arms of a man. The toise has 6 pieds each of 326.6 mm, at the same time, monastic buildings used the Carolingian foot of 340 mm. The procedure for verification of the foot as described in the 16th century by Jacob Koebel in his book Geometrei, the measures of Iron Age Britain are uncertain and proposed reconstructions such as the Megalithic Yard are controversial. Later Welsh legend credited Dyfnwal Moelmud with the establishment of their units, the Belgic or North German foot of 335 mm was introduced to England either by the Belgic Celts during their invasions prior to the Romans or by the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th & 6th century
29.
Grand Trunk Road
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The Grand Trunk Road is one of Asias oldest and longest major roads. For more than two millennia, it has linked South Asia with Central Asia and it runs from Chittagong, Bangladesh west to Howrah, West Bengal in India, then across Northern India through Delhi, passing from Amritsar. From there, the road continues towards Lahore and Peshawar in Pakistan, finally terminating in Kabul, the route spanning the Grand Trunk road existed during the reign of Chandragupta Maurya, extending from the mouth of the Ganges to the north-western frontier of the Empire. The predecessor of the road was rebuilt by Sher Shah Suri. The road was upgraded in the British period between 1833 and 1860. It coincides with current N1, N4 & N405, N507 and N6 in Bangladesh, NH12, NH27, NH19 and NH44 in India, NH5 in Pakistan, Takshashila was well connected by roads with other parts of the Maurya empire. The Mauryas had built a highway from Takshashila to Pataliputra, Chandragupta Maurya had a whole army of officials overseeing the maintenance of this road as told by the Greek diplomat Megasthenes who spent fifteen years at the Mauryan court. Author Rudyard Kipling described the road as such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the entire world He writes, and chumars, bankers and tinkers, barbers and bunnias, pilgrims -and potters - all the world going and coming. It is to me as a river from which I am withdrawn like a log after a flood, and truly the Grand Trunk Road is a wonderful spectacle. It runs straight, bearing without crowding Indias traffic for fifteen hundred miles - such a river of life as nowhere else exists in the world, mughals extended Grand Trunk Road westwards. At one time, it extended to Kabul in Afghanistan, crossing the Khyber Pass, the road was later improved by the British rulers of colonial India. It was extended to run from Calcutta to Peshawar, over the centuries, the road acted as one of the major trade routes in the region and facilitated both travel and postal communication. Since the era of Sher Shah, the road was dotted with caravansarais at regular intervals, Sher Shah made many roads for tax free trade. The Grand Trunk Road is still used for transportation in present-day India, farooque, Abdul Khair Muhammad, Roads and Communications in Mughal India. Weller, Anthony, Days and Nights on the Grand Trunk Road, considered one of Kiplings finest works, it is set mostly along the Grand Trunk Road. Free e-texts are available, for instance here, historical routes of north west Indian Subcontinent, Lahore to Delhi, 1550s-1850s A. D. Sagar Publications. In Islam, Sirajul, Jamal, Ahmed A. Banglapedia, National Highway Authority of India National Highway Authority of Pakistan NPR, Along the Grand Trunk Road
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Maratha
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The Maratha is a group of castes in India found predominantly in the state of Maharashtra. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Marathas are people of India, famed in history as yeoman warriors and they reside primarily in the Indian state of Maharashtra. The general body of lists are often at variance with each other. The term Maratha originally referred to the speakers of the Marathi language, in the 17th century, it emerged as a designation for soldiers serving in the armies of Deccan sultanates. A number of Maratha warriors, including Shivajis father, Shahaji, by the mid-1660s, Shivaji had established an independent Maratha kingdom. After his death, Marathas fought under his sons and defeated Aurangzeb in the war of 27 years, the Confederacy remained the pre-eminent power in India until their defeat by the British East India Company in the Third Anglo-Maratha War. By 19th century, the term Maratha had several interpretations in the British administrative records, in the Thane District Gazetteer of 1882, the term was used to denote elite layers within various castes, for example, Maratha-Agri within Agri caste, Maratha-Koli within Koli caste and so on. In the Pune District, the words Kunbi and Maratha had become synonymous, the Pune District Gazetteer of 1882 divided the Kunbis into two classes, Marathas and other Kunbis. The 1901 census listed three groups within the Maratha-Kunbi caste complex, Marathas proper, Maratha Kunbis and Konkani Marathas, the Kunbi class comprised agricultural workers and soldiers. The upper-class Marathas proper claimed Rajput descent with Kshatriya status, and included princes, some of the Maratha clans claiming Rajput descent include Bhonsales, Chavans, and Pawar. Gradually, the term Maratha came to denote an endogamous caste, from 1900 onwards, the Satyashodhak Samaj movement defined the Marathas as a broader social category of non-Brahmin groups. These non-Brahmins gained prominence in Indian National Congress during the Indian independence movement, in independent India, these Marathas became the dominant political force in the newly-formed state of Maharashtra. The empire also resulted in the relocation of substantial numbers of Maratha and other Marathi-speaking people outside Maharashtra. Today several small but significant communities descended from these live in the north, south. These descendant communities tend often to speak the languages, although many also speak Marathi in addition. Notable Maratha families outside Maharashtra include Scindia of Gwalior, Gaekwad of Baroda, Holkar of Indore, Puar of Dewas & Dhar, Ghorpade of Mudhol, and Bhonsle of Nagpur. These Brahmins supported the Maratha claim to Kshatriya status, but their success in political alliance was sporadic. Marathas have dominated the politics of Maharashtra since its inception in 1960
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Sadashivrao Bhau
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Sadashiv Rao Bhau was son of Chimaji Appa and Rakhmabai and the nephew of Peshwa Bajirao I. He served as the Sardar Senapati of the Maratha army at the battle of Panipat. Sadashivrao was born at Saswad near Pune and he was the son of Peshwa Baji Raos brother Chimaji Appa. His mother Rakhmabai died when he was barely a month old and his father died when he was ten years old. He was cared by his grandmother Radhabai his aunt Kashibai and he was very bright from early years. His tutor was shrewd Ramchandrababa Shenvi, Nanasaheb stayed in Satara though he had become Peshwa. The campaign continued till May 1747 mostly in the western Karnatak region, all together 36 parganas were captured in this campaign. Sadashivraos first military achievement was in 1760 in Carnatic region with Mahadjipant Purandare and Sakharam Bappu as his political advisers. He conquered from the Nawab of Savanur and subsequently annexed the cities of Kittur, Parasgad, Gokak, Yadwad, Bagalkot, Badami, Navalgund, Umbal, Giri, Torgal, Haliyal, Harihar and he crushed the revolt of Yamaji Shivdev. Mahadjipant Purandare was Diwan of Peshwa during that period, Sadashivrao was Diwan of Bhosale of Nagpur. After the death of Chhattrapati Shahu, Ramchandrababa Shenvi suggested to Sadashivrao to take Peshwai of Kolhapur, Mahadjipant Purandare resigned and Sadashivrao became the Diwan of Peshwa. He successfully led the Battle of Udgir which weakened the Nizam of Hyderabad and he won the fort of Daulatabad. The news of Ahmad Shah Abdalis march towards Delhi and the subsequent death of Dattaji Scindia at the battle of Burari Ghat had arrived, therefore, Sadashivrao was called back from Udgir to Partur where the Council of war was held. It was decided that Sadashivrao would go north to resist the Afghans, in January 1760, news reached the prime minister Nanasaheb Peshwa that Ahmad Shah Durrani better known as Ahmad Shah Abdālī had invaded and captured the Punjab region. Abdali had formed an alliance against the Marathas with other Rohilla chieftains principally Najib-ul-Daula, all the Muslims in north India including Shuja-ud-Daula were persuaded by Abdali and Najib to join the Afghans in the name of religion and to save Islam. Abdali recruited Afghans displaced by the war, Prince Vijay Singh of Jodhpur and Kachawa Prince Madho Singh of Amber also formed an alliance with Abdali but did not join him with their forces. Nanasaheb Peshwa was then at the zenith of his power, having defeated the Nizam at Udgir and he chose Sadashivrao Bhau to lead the Maratha army to Delhi. Unlike Malharrao Holkar and Raghunathrao, both of whom had deep knowledge of northern India, Sadashivrao Bhau was unfamiliar with the personages and this was to prove costly, as he mishandled the regional kings and failed to form alliances with them
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Vishwasrao
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Vishwas Rao was the eldest son of Balaji Baji Rao, Peshwa of Pune of the Maratha Empire and also was the heir to the title of Peshwa of Maratha Empire. He was killed during the period of the most intense fighting at Third Battle of Panipat and it is generally accepted that the third battle of Panipat, which hung in balance till his death, moved decisively in favour of the Afghans and ended up in victory of Durrani Empire. At the time of the battle, the Maratha Empire was in control of about 2/3rd of present India, Vishwasrao was born as the eldest son of Balaji Baji Rao at Supe near Pune (Supe was the Jagir of Shahaji near Pune. He was trained in Administrative matters and was exposed to Military training early in his life, viswasrao had inherited the looks of his grandfather Bajirao and had even exceeded his charm. G. S. Sardesai writes that none was there with more handsome-looks in Peshwa lineage than this Viswas Rao. Chatrapati Shahu, to broaden the base of his Peshwa administration, chatrapati Shahu’s confidante Parvatibai had likewise become the wife of Sadashivrao Bhau. Gopikabai had reservations about this match, as Radhikabai was not from the Chitpavan community and he was killed during the Third Battle of Panipat when a stray cannon shell hit his head
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Baji Rao I
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Pantpradhan Shreemant Peshwa Bajirao Ballal Balaji Bhat was a general of the Maratha Empire in India. He served as Peshwa to the fourth Maratha Chhatrapati Shahu from 1720 until Bajiraos death and he is also known by the names Bajirao Ballal and Thorale Bajirao. Bajirao is credited with expanding the Maratha Empire, especially in the north, in his brief military career spanning 20 years, Bajirao never lost a battle and won 41 battles. According to the British Army officer Bernard Montgomery, Bajirao was possibly the finest cavalry general ever produced by India, Bajirao was born into the Bhat family of Kokanastha Chitpavan Brahmin lineage. His father Balaji Vishwanath was the first Peshwa of Chhatrapati Shahu, Bajirao had a younger brother Chimaji Appa and two sisters, Bhiubai Joshi and Anubai Ghorpade. He spent his childhood in his fathers newly acquired fiefdom of Saswad, Bajirao would often accompany his father on military campaigns. He was with his father when the latter was imprisoned by Damaji Thorat before being released for a ransom, when Vishwanath died in 1720, Shahu appointed the 20-year old Bajirao as the Peshwa. He is said to have preached the ideal of Hindu Pad Padshahi, Bajirao intended to plant the Maratha flag upon the walls of Delhi and other cities governed by the Mughals and he intended to replace the Mughal Empire and create a Hindu-Pat-Padshahi. By the time Bajirao became the Peshwa, Chhatrapati Shahu was almost a titular ruler, the Maratha confederacy was run in his name, but the real power lay in the hands of the Peshwa. By the time of Bajiraos appointment, Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah had recognized Marathas rights over the territories possessed by Shivaji at his death, in 1719, the Mughals had also recognized the Maratha rights to collect taxes in the six provinces of Deccan. Bajirao believed that the Mughal Empire was in decline and wanted to take advantage of this situation with aggressive expansion in north India. Sensing the declining fortune of the Mughals, he is reported to have said, Strike, strike at the trunk and the branches will fall off themselves. Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah I, the Mughal viceroy of Deccan, had created his own independent kingdom in the region. For example, the Siddis controlled the Janjira fort, on January 4,1721, Bajirao met Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah I at Chikhalthan to settle their disputes through agreement. However, Nizam refused to recognize the Maratha rights to collect taxes from the Deccan provinces, Nizam was made Vizier of Mughal Empire in 1721, but alarmed at his growing power, emperor Muhammad Shah transferred him from Deccan to Awadh in 1723. Nizam rebelled against the order, resigned as the Vizier and marched towards Deccan, the emperor sent an army against him, which the Nizam defeated in the Battle of Sakhar-kheda. In response, Mughal emperor was forced to recognize him as the viceroy of Deccan, the Marathas, led by Bajirao, helped Nizam win this battle. In fact, for his bravery in the battle, Bajirao was honored with a robe, a mansabdari of 7,000, an elephant, after the battle, Nizam tried to appease both the Maratha Chhatrapati Shahu as well as the Mughal emperor
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Mastani
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Mastani Bai was second wife of Maratha Peshwa Bajirao I. She is said to have been a beautiful and brave woman, skilled in arts and she had been dearly loved by Peshwa Bajirao but always neglected by his mother Radhabai and his brother Chimajiappa. Mastani was born to Bundelkhands Maharaja Chhatrasal of the Rajput clan and she was born in Mau Sahaniya, now a village in the Chhatarpur district of Madhya Pradesh. There is a Mastani Mahal in Dhubela where Mastani lived, there are many legends associated with Mastani. One of the most well-known is that Mastani was daughter of Bundela Rajput leader Maharaja Chhatrasal, Bajirao came to the rescue of Chhatrasal. In gratitude, Chattrasal gave Bajirao his daughter Mastani and a third of his kingdom, including Jhansi, Sagar and he also gifted a Diamond mine to Bajirao in marriage to Mastani along with handful of villages. However, sources vary on this context, according to another view of Chhatrasal, she was the daughter of Nizam of Hyderabad. However, the most accepted and conclusive version is that she was the daughter of Chhatrasal with his Persian Muslim wife Ruhaani Bai, Mastani is often referred to as Bajiraos concubine or mistress, but she was his lawfully wedded wife. Mastani was skilled in horse-riding, spear-throwing and swordsmanship and a dancer and singer. She accompanied Bajirao on his military campaigns, Bajiraos first wife, Kashibai and Mastani bore sons to Bajirao within a few months of each other. Kashibais child was named Raghunathrao and Mastanis child was named Shamsher Bahadur, Bajirao bestowed the Jagir of Banda on Shamsher. The son fought on the side of the Marathas in the third Battle of Panipat in 1761 against Ahmed Shah Abdali and is said to have killed in the battle. Bajiraos love for his half-Muslim wife Mastani and neglect of Kashibai angered his mother, in deference to Radhabai, Bajiraos brother, Chimajiappa, tried to send Mastani into exile. Bajiraos son, Balaji, also tried to coerce Mastani into leaving his father, enraged by her growing influence on Bajirao and Bajiraos neglect of Kashibai, Balaji had Mastani placed under house arrest for a time, while Bajirao was on military campaign. Mastani lived for time with Bajirao at his palace of Shaniwar Wada in the city of Pune. The palaces north-east corner held Mastani Mahal and had its own external doorway called Mastani Darwaza, because of his familys intolerance of Mastani, Bajirao later built a separate residence for Mastani at Kothrud in 1734, some distance away from Shaniwar Wada. The site still exists at the Mrutyunjay temple on Karve road, the palace at Kothrud was dismantled and parts of this are displayed at a special section of Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum. Court records during Bajiraos regime specifically never included any reference to her, historians have determined that the paintings of Mastani in both Raja Kelkar Museum and Wai museum are not authentic
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Hindu
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Hindu refers to any person who regards themselves as culturally, ethnically, or religiously adhering to aspects of Hinduism. It has historically used as a geographical, cultural, or religious identifier for people indigenous to South Asia. The historical meaning of the term Hindu has evolved with time, by the 16th century, the term began to refer to residents of India who were not Turks or Muslims. The historical development of Hindu self-identity within the Indian population, in a religious or cultural sense, is unclear, competing theories state that Hindu identity developed in the British colonial era, or that it developed post-8th century CE after the Islamic invasion and medieval Hindu-Muslim wars. A sense of Hindu identity and the term Hindu appears in texts dated between the 13th and 18th century in Sanskrit and regional languages. The 14th- and 18th-century Indian poets such as Vidyapati, Kabir and Eknath used the phrase Hindu dharma, the Christian friar Sebastiao Manrique used the term Hindu in religious context in 1649. In the 18th century, the European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus, in contrast to Mohamedans for Mughals, scholars state that the custom of distinguishing between Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs is a modern phenomenon. Hindoo is a spelling variant, whose use today may be considered derogatory. At more than 1.03 billion, Hindus are the third largest group after Christians. The vast majority of Hindus, approximately 966 million, live in India, according to Indias 2011 census. After India, the next 9 countries with the largest Hindu populations are, in decreasing order, Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, United States, Malaysia, United Kingdom and Myanmar. These together accounted for 99% of the worlds Hindu population, the word Hindu is derived from the Indo-Aryan and Sanskrit word Sindhu, which means a large body of water, covering river, ocean. It was used as the name of the Indus river and also referred to its tributaries, the Punjab region, called Sapta Sindhava in the Vedas, is called Hapta Hindu in Zend Avesta. The 6th-century BCE inscription of Darius I mentions the province of Hidush, the people of India were referred to as Hinduvān and hindavī was used as the adjective for Indian in the 8th century text Chachnama. The term Hindu in these ancient records is an ethno-geographical term, the Arabic equivalent Al-Hind likewise referred to the country of India. Among the earliest known records of Hindu with connotations of religion may be in the 7th-century CE Chinese text Record of the Western Regions by the Buddhist scholar Xuanzang, Xuanzang uses the transliterated term In-tu whose connotation overflows in the religious according to Arvind Sharma. The Hindu community occurs as the amorphous Other of the Muslim community in the court chronicles, wilfred Cantwell Smith notes that Hindu retained its geographical reference initially, Indian, indigenous, local, virtually native. Slowly, the Indian groups themselves started using the term, differentiating themselves, the poet Vidyapatis poem Kirtilata contrasts the cultures of Hindus and Turks in a city and concludes The Hindus and the Turks live close together, Each makes fun of the others religion
36.
`Abd al-Qadir Bada'uni
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ʿAbd-ul-Qadir Badauni was a historian and translator living in the Mughal Empire. He translated the Hindu works, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, however, as an orthodox Muslim, he strongly resented the reforms of Akbar, and the elevation of Hindus to high offices. He was also renowned for his rivalry with Abul-Fazl ibn Mubarak and he was son the of Muluk Shah. He lived in Basavar as a boy studying in Sambhal and Agra and he moved to Badaun, the town of his name, in 1562 before moving on to enter the service of prince Husayn Khan for the next nine years in Patiala. His later years of study were governed by Muslim mystics, the Mughal emperor, Akbar, appointed him to the religious office in the royal courts in 1574 where he spent much of his career. The most notable work of Badauni is Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh or Tarikh-i-Badauni composed in 1004 AH and this work in three volumes is a general History of the Muslims of India. The first volume contains an account of Babur and Humayun, the second volume exclusively deals with Akbars reign up to 1595. This volume is a frank and critical account of Akbars administrative measures, particularly religious. This volume was kept concealed till Akbars death and was published after Jahangirs accession and this book gives a contemporary perspective regarding the development of Akbars views on religion and his religious policy. S. A. Ranking, W. H. Lowe and T. W. Haig, all three volumes of his Muntakhab al-Tavarikh are available and searchable here, http, //persian. packhum
37.
Ghazi (warrior)
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The related word ghazwa is a singulative form meaning a battle or military expedition, often one led by the Islamic prophet Muhammad. In English language literature, the word appears as razzia. In pre-Islamic Bedouin culture, ghazw was a form of limited warfare verging on brigandage that avoided head-on confrontations and instead emphasized raiding and looting, usually of livestock. The word was adopted from ġaziya of Algerian Arabic vernacular and later became a name for any act of pillage. The verbal noun of ġazā is ġazw or ġazawān, with the meaning raiding, a derived singulative in ġazwah refers to a single battle or raid. The term ghāzī dates to at least the Samanid period, where he appears as a mercenary and frontier fighter in Khorasan, later, up to 20,000 of them took part in the Indian campaigns of Mahmud of Ghazni. Ghāzī warriors depended upon plunder for their livelihood, and were prone to brigandage, the corporations into which they organized themselves attracted adventurers, zealots and religious and political dissidents of all ethnicities. In the west, Turkic ghāzīs made continual incursions along the Byzantine frontier zone, the height of the organizations would come during the Mongol conquest when many of them fled from Persia and Turkistan into Anatolia. In an inscription of 1337, Orhan, second ruler of the Ottoman line, describes himself as Sultan, son of the Sultan of the Gazis, the Ottoman poet Ahmedi, writing ca. 1402, defines gazis as the instruments of Gods religion, a servant of God who cleanses the earth from the filth of polytheism, the first nine Ottoman chiefs all used Ghazi as part of their full throne name, and often afterwards. When they won victories in the ghazā in the Balkans they used to send accounts of them as well as slaves, some Muslim rulers personally used the subsidiary style Padshah-i-Ghazi. The first Ghazwa he participated in was the Invasion of Waddan in August 623, when performed within the context of Islamic warfare, the ghazws function was to weaken the enemys defenses in preparation for his eventual conquest and subjugation. Non-Muslims acquired the status of dhimmīs, living under its protection, most Christian sources confuse these two stages in the Ottoman conquests. The Ottomans, however, were careful to abide by these rules, peasants in open country in particular lost nothing by this change. One such source is Averroes Bidāyat al-Mujtahid wa-Nihāyat al-Muqtasid, in the 19th century, Muslim fighters in North Caucasus who were resisting the Russian military operations declared a gazawat against the Russian Orthodox invasion. Although uncertain, it is believed that Dagestani Islamic scholar Muhammad Yaragskii was the ideologist of this holy war, in 1825, a congress of ulema in the village of Yarag declared gazawat against the Russians. Its first leader was Ghazi Muhammad, after his death, Imam Shamil would eventually continue it, during the Second Chechen War, Chechnya announced gazawat against Russia. After the terrorist attacks on Paris in November 2015, the Islamic State group is said to have referred to its actions as ghazwa, probably the most famous use of the term ghazwa is in the phrase Manhattan Raid, used by Al-Qaeda to refer to the September 11th attacks
India
pronunciation (help·info), is a historic city in Haryana, India. It is 90 km north of Delhi and 169 km south of Chandigarh on NH-1. The three battles fought near the city in 1526, 1556 and 1761 were all turning points in Indian history. The city is famous in India by the name of "City of Weavers" and "Textile City". It is also known as the "cast-off capital" due to being "the global centre for recycling textiles".[2]
Panipat travel guide from Wikivoyage
"Panipat". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.
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