The Panwar (Parmar) kingdom of Garhwal was the west’s answer to the Chands — a line traced by tradition to Kanak Pal of Malwa, which reached its historic form when Ajay Pal united the quarrelling forts of the region — the ’64 garhs’ of tradition — into a single kingdom in the late 15th/early 16th century.
Milestones
- Capital moves: Chandpur → Devalgarh (before 1506) → Srinagar (by ~1519), which remained Garhwal’s heart for three centuries.
- The kings styled themselves Badshah; Mughal probes into the hills found the terrain a better defender than any army.
- Trans-Himalayan trade through the Mana and Niti passes and the Johar valley made the kingdom wealthy (Munsiyari’s Bhotiya trade memory).
The kingdom’s end came at the Battle of Khurbura (1804) — and its territory was split by the Sugauli settlement into British Garhwal and the princely state of Tehri.
