Rajput, (from Sanskrit raja-putra, “son of a king”), any of about 12 million landowners organized in patrilineal clans and located mainly in central and northern India. They are especially numerous in the historic region of Rajputana (“Land of the Rajputs”) that also included portions of present-day eastern Pakistan.
The Rajputs regard themselves as descendants or members of the Kshatriya (warrior ruling) class, but they actually vary greatly in status, from princely lineages, such as the Guhilot and Kachwaha, to simple cultivators. Most authorities agree that successful claims to Rajput status frequently were made by groups that attained secular power; invaders from central Asia as well as patrician lines of indigenous tribal peoples were probably absorbed in that way. There are numbers of Muslim Rajputs in northwestern India and eastern Pakistan, and Rajputs generally have adopted the custom of purdah (seclusion of women). Their ethos includes an intense pride in ancestry and a mettlesome regard for personal honour. They seek hypergamous marriages (i.e., a bride marrying into a social group higher than her own).
The Rajputs’ origins seem to date from a great breakup of Indian society in the northern and northwestern Indian subcontinent under the impact of the Hephthalites (White Huns) and associated tribes from the mid-5th century ce onward. Following the breakup of the Gupta empire (late 6th century), invading groups were probably integrated within the existing society, with the present pattern of northwestern Indian society being the result. Tribal leaders and nobles were accepted as Kshatriyas, the second order of the Hindus, while their followers entered the fourth (Shudra, or cultivating) order to form the basis of tribal castes, such as the Jats, the Gujars, and the Ahirs. Some of the invaders’ priests became Brahmans (the highest-ranking caste). Some indigenous tribes and clans also attained Rajput status, such as the Rathors of Rajputana; the Bhattis of Punjab; and the Chandelas, Paramaras, and Bundelas of central India. Rajput ancestry can be divided between Suryavanshi (“House of the Sun,” or Solar people), or those descended from Rama, the hero of the epic Ramayana; and Chandravanshi (“House of the Moon,” or Lunar people), or those descended from Krishna, the hero of the epic Mahabharata. A third group, Agnikula (“Family of the Fire God”), is the group from which the Rajputs derive their claim to be Kshatriyas. Rajput habits of eating meat (except beef) and other traits suggest both foreign and aboriginal origins.
The Rajputs emerged into political importance as early as the 7th century. From about 800, Rajput dynasties dominated northern India, and the many petty Rajput kingdoms there were among the main obstacles to the complete Muslim domination of Hindu India. In the early 1020s the Rajput rulers at Gwalior and Kalinjar were able to hold off assaults by Maḥmūd of Ghazna (present-day Ghaznī, Afghanistan), although the two cities did pay him tribute. After the Muslim conquest of the eastern Punjab and the Ganges (Ganga) River valley, the Rajputs maintained their independence in the fastnesses of Rajputana and the forests of central India. Sultan ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Khaljī of Delhi (reigned 1296–1316) took the two great Rajput forts of Chitor and Ranthambhor in eastern Rajputana but could not hold them. The Rajput state of Mewar under Rana Sanga made a bid for supremacy but was defeated by the Mughal emperor Bābur at Khanua (1527).
Bābur’s grandson Akbar retook the Chitor and Ranthambhor forts (1568–69) and then made a settlement with all the Rajputana princes except Mewar. Accepting Mughal overlordship, the princes were admitted to the court and the emperor’s privy council and were given governorships and commands of armies. Some Rajput nobles further strengthened their ties with the Mughals by arranging marriages between their daughters and Mughal emperors or their sons. The Rajput-Mughal arrangement continued into the early part of the emperor Aurangzeb’s reign (1658–1707), but eventually the emperor’s intolerance turned the Rajputs against him, and the ensuing conflict between the two sides became one of the several factors leading to the collapse of the Mughal Empire itself in the 18th century. The Rajputs subsequently fell victims to the chiefs of the Maratha confederacy until they accepted British suzerainty (1818) at the end of the last Maratha war. After India’s independence (1947), most of the Rajput states in Rajputana were merged to form the state of Rajasthan within the Indian union.