Place · Nagvanshi capital · India
Navratangarh
Also known as Navratangarh, Doisa, Nagvanshi, Durjan Sal
The Nagvanshi capital at Doisa in Gumla district, built by Raja Durjan Sal in the early seventeenth century: a five-storey palace, a fort, temples and tanks on a low hill, abandoned in 1717 when the seat moved to Palkot. The Nagvanshis ruled Chotanagpur for some nine hundred years and this is their best surviving work.
- Date
- c. 1610–1717
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 23.050, 84.650
Worth knowing
Durjan Sal was imprisoned at Gwalior by Jahangir for twelve years and is said to have been released after identifying a genuine diamond among fakes, which is the story the dynasty told about itself. The site was overgrown and unprotected until the 2000s, and the palace is the only multi-storey pre-colonial secular building in Jharkhand.
Connections (3)
- AnalogueGarha-Katanga / Jabalpur
Navratangarh in Chotanagpur and Garha-Katanga in the Narmada valley are the two clearest cases of an Adivasi-rooted dynasty building like any other: a five-storey palace, a fort and tanks in one, hill forts and a cash revenue system in the other. The Nagvanshis ruled for some nine hundred years and the Gonds for four hundred, and neither appears in a standard dynastic list.
- Power passed toUlihatu / Khunti
The Nagvanshis held Chotanagpur for some nine hundred years, and the Munda khuntkatti tenure survived under them because they took tribute rather than title. What broke it was the colonial settlement's insistence on individual ownership, which let outside landlords and moneylenders in — and the Ulgulan of 1899 was fought against exactly that, two centuries after Doisa was abandoned.
- CampaignTilka Manjhi
Tilka Manjhi's 1783-1785 Pahadia uprising against the British East India Company operated in the Rajmahal Hills of modern Jharkhand and Bihar. The 1770 Bengal Famine's devastation of the Pahadia Santhal tribal communities drove the uprising, which was crushed by the EIC through the use of divide-and-rule between the Pahadia and Santhal tribes. His 1785 Bhagalpur execution preceded the 1830s Kol and 1855 Santhal uprisings in the Jharkhand-Chotanagpur tribal belt.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Navratangarh”. Archaeological Survey of India, Ranchi circle records; Bihar and Orissa District Gazetteer, Ranchi.
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