India’s largest state is literally named the land of kings
Rajasthan covers 342,239 square kilometres—10.4 percent of India—as the country’s largest state by area and seventh by population. Merged from Rajputana Agency princely states on 30 March 1949, it took a Sanskrit-Persian “land of kings” name Jaipur now caps as capital.
Most of the harsh Thar Desert lies within the state, which borders Pakistan’s Sindh and Punjab to the west and five Indian states on its other sides. Indus ruins at Kalibangan and Balathal, Dilwara Jain temples, and Mount Abu in the Aravallis headline heritage. Bharatpur’s Keoladeo National Park is a World Heritage Site prized for birds, and Ranthambore and Sariska are among five tiger reserves.
Stone tools from 5,000 to 200,000 years turn up in Bundi and Bhilwara districts; Balathal settlement tracks Harappan-era dates around 3000–1500 BCE. Kalibangan in Hanumangarh district served as a major provincial capital of the Indus civilisation, and the Vedic kingdom of Matsya, ruled from Viratanagar, roughly matched old Jaipur state. An inscription of Samudragupta dated AD 360 names the Abhiras as masters of the whole region, and later the Pratiharas held back Arab armies from the eighth to the eleventh century.
Prithviraj Chauhan beat Muhammad Ghori at the first battle of Tarain in 1191 but lost the second in 1192. Mewar led Rajput resistance: Rana Kumbha defeated the sultans of Malwa, Gujarat and Nagaur, and Rana Sanga fell to Babur. After Akbar’s massacre of 20,000 to 25,000 civilians at Chittor, Maharana Pratap fought the Mughals until his death and freed most of Mewar.
James Tod’s 1829 Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan popularized the printed name. The state economy is India’s seventh largest, but Rajasthan ranks only 22nd on the human development index.
Source: Rajasthan
