The forest kingdom
The Chindaka Nāgas held Chakrakota, the hill and forest country of Bastar, from the eleventh century. Their inscriptions style them lords of Bhogavatī, the mythical city of the serpents, and claim nāga descent — a claim common among dynasties of the forested uplands and one that connects them to the local traditions of their subjects rather than to the Sanskritic lineages the plains dynasties preferred.
The temples at Barsur, with a large Gaṇeśa and a well-preserved shrine group, are their principal monuments.
Conquest and continuity
The Cholas raided Chakrakota in the eleventh century, and the Kākatīyas of Warangal pressed on it repeatedly. The dynasty ended around 1324, and the Bastar country then passed to a branch of the Kākatīya family which had fled south after the fall of Warangal.
That successor line ruled Bastar until Indian independence, and the Daśaharā festival at Jagdalpur, in which the raja's authority is bound to the goddess Danteśvarī, preserves an unusually direct continuity between a medieval kingdom's ritual order and a living practice.
Further reading
- Kulke, Hermann. A History of India. Routledge, 2004
- Hawley, John Stratton. A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement. Harvard University Press, 2015
- Kramrisch, Stella. The Hindu Temple. Motilal Banarsidass, 1976
- Michell, George. The Hindu Temple: An Introduction to Its Meaning and Forms. University of Chicago Press, 1988
- Nugteren, Albertina. Belief, Bounty, and Beauty: Rituals Around Sacred Trees in India. Brill, 2005
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.