A few
years later, the victor was himself vanquished and slain by the
advancing Muhammadans. Mahoba and the surrounding territories then
passed through many vicissitudes, imperfectly recorded in the pages
of history, and were ruled from time to time by Musalmans, Bhars,
Khangars, and others. The Bundelas, an offshoot of the Gaharwar clan,
did not come into notice before the middle of the fourteenth century,
and first became a power in India under the leadership of Champat
Rai, the contemporary of Jahangir and Shah Jahan, in the first half
of the seventeenth century. The line of Chandel kings was continued
in the persons of obscure local chiefs, whose very names are, for the
most part, forgotten. The story of Durgavati, briefly told in the
text, casts a momentary flash of light on their obscurity. The
principal nobleman of the Chandel race now occupying a dignified
position is the Raja of Gidhaur in the Mungir (Monghyr) district of
Bengal, whose ancestor emigrated from Mahoba.

The war between the Chandels and Chauhans is the subject of a long
section or canto of the Hindi epic, the _Chand-Raisa_, written by
Chand Bardai, the court poet of Prithiraj, of which the original MS.
in 5,000 verses still exists. It was subsequently expanded to 125,000
verses (_E.H.I._, 3rd ed., 1914, p. 387 note). The war is also the
theme of the songs of many popular rhapsodists. The story is, of
course, encrusted with a thick deposit of miraculous legend, and none
of the details can be relied on. But the fact and the date of the war
are fully proved by incontestable evidence.

37. The marriage of Durgavati is no proof that her father, the
Chandel Raja, was powerful in Mahoba in the time of Akbar. It is
rather an indication that he was poor and weak. If he had been rich
and strong, he would probably have refused his daughter to a Gond,
even though complaisant bards might invent a Rajput genealogy for the
bridegroom. The story about the army of fifty thousand men cannot be
readily accepted as sober fact. It looks like a courtly invention to
explain a mesalliance. The inducement really offered to the proud but
poor Chandel was, in all likelihood, a large sum of money, according
to the usual practice in such cases. Several indications exist of
close relations between the Gonds and Chandels in earlier times.

Early in Akbar's reign, in the year 1564, Asaf Khan, the imperial
viceroy of Karra Manikpur, obtained permission to invade the Gond
terr