I was just walking through some documents I had saved over the years, when it struck me that there has been very little new research work or relook into the history of the hill states. One particular format has been the examination of oral ballads, very few of which seem to be available in popular culture today. However, that was certainly not the case in the British era, when much field work seems to have been done by scholars of Europe on the subject, as they panned across the state of the Lahore kingdom and their adjunct territories. Sirmour was a Small Princely state along the Yamuna river's course While their purpose may have been malevolent in nature, many interesting insights got captured over the course of their work, and replication or improvement on the same seems to be rather scarce, especially in the context of what the European scholars used to call the "Punjab Hill States". One such case was on Sirmour, where very little information can be found in the publi...
Raja Sansar Chand Katoch and his son Anirudh Chand Worshipping at the Gauri Shankar Temple in Sujanpur Tira (from Eva-Seitz Collection) Kangra was one of the most important and largest hill state in Northern India, and held the distinction of perhaps having one of the oldest continuous dynastic lineage without break. The original claim of the Katoch clan of Kangra has been that they were the original rulers of the ancient Trigarta, which extended into Punjab to include the Jalandhar Doab. Moreover, the clan claims to have participated all the way back into the Mahabharata war on the side of the Kauravas. While the Mahabharata clan may be difficult to verify, the antiquity has certainly been unquestionable. Archaeological field reports by Alexander Cunningham among other sources clearly find reference to an ancient kingdom of that extent, with remains of coins having been found in and around the Jalandhar Doab among other remains and excavations, that have been documented in archae...