Place · Chandela capital · India
Mahoba
The historic Chandela royal centre at Mahoba in Bundelkhand, Uttar Pradesh, 120 kilometres from Khajuraho — one of the two main capitals of the Chandela dynasty (c.800-1310 CE) along with Khajuraho, named Mahotsavanagara in Chandela inscriptions. The town was ruled by Chandela king Parmardi Dev (1165-1203) at the moment of Prithviraj Chauhan's 1182 raid (the famous Alha-Udal ballad of Bundelkhand records the battle of Mahoba with Prithviraj) and fell to the Delhi Sultanate under Qutb-ud-din Aibak in 1203. The town preserves five Chandela-period Jain temples, the 11-century Rahila Sagar temple on the sacred tank, and the ruins of the Chandela royal palace. The Mahoba Pan (betel leaf) is a GI-tagged product. Modern Mahoba is a district headquarters in Bundelkhand.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Patron dynasty
- Chandela
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 25.290, 79.870
Connections (1)
- Legend set atĀlhā-Khaṇḍ
Mahoba is where the Ālhā cycle is set and where it is still sung hardest: the Chandela capital of Parmal, the tank and the temples the brothers are said to have defended, and the annual Alha singing that fills the town. The epic's Banaphar brothers were Mahoba's marshals, and the defeat it commemorates — Prithviraj Chauhan's sack of the city in 1182 — is the event the whole cycle exists to refuse to forget.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Mahoba”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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