Kathwara is a large village in

Bakshi Ka Talab Bakshi Ka Talab is a nagar panchayat town in Lucknow district of Uttar Pradesh, India. It is also the headquarters of a corresponding tehsil, as well as a community development block of the same name. As of 2011, its population was 49,166, in 8 ...

block of Lucknow district,

Uttar Pradesh Uttar Pradesh ( ; UP) is a States and union territories of India, state in North India, northern India. With over 241 million inhabitants, it is the List of states and union territories of India by population, most populated state in In ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

. As of 2011, its population is 6,740, in 1,303 households. Kathwara is a village with a long history, with legendary origins said to date back to the

Dvapara Yuga ''Dvapara Yuga'' (International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration, IAST: ''Dvāpara-yuga'') (Devanagari: द्वापर युग), in Hinduism, is the third and third-best of the four ''yugas'' (world ages) in a ''Yuga Cycle'', preceded b ...

, and it is the site of the Chandrika Devi Temple.

History

Kathwara's origin myth states that the place was once ruled by one Daiyat Hansan Dhuj; when

Arjuna Arjuna (, , Help:IPA/Sanskrit, �ɾd͡ʒun̪ə is one of the central characters of the ancient Hindu epic ''Mahabharata''. He is the third of the five Pandava brothers, and is widely regarded as the most important and renowned among them. ...

set a horse loose as part of the

Ashvamedha The Ashvamedha () was a horse sacrifice ritual followed by the Śrauta tradition of Vedic religion. It was used by ancient Indian kings to prove their imperial sovereignty: a horse accompanied by the king's warriors would be released to wander ...

ritual horse-sacrifice, Hansan seized it, and Arjuna led an army to meet him in battle. The place where the two armies fought was then dubbed ''Katak-wasa'', or "the meeting of the armies", and has retained that name ever since. According to this legend, before the battle took place, Hansan had prepared a large cauldron with boiling oil and threatened that if any of his soldiers hesitated in mustering at the battlefield, he would throw them in to be boiled alive. However, in a twist of fate, it was his son, Sadhanand, who was late to arrive, having stayed behind one more day at the urging of his wife. Sadhanand was thrown into the cauldron but, miraculously, he was not harmed. This episode is said to have happened at the nearby hamlet of Chandanpur. Local tradition maintains that the

Bhar Bhar is a Caste system in India, caste or community in India. History Influenced by the Arya Samaj movement, as were members of other castes, Baijnath Prasad Adhyapak published ''Rajbhar Jati ka Itihas'' in 1940. This book attempted to p ...

s then ruled the area, and then after them the

Kurmi Kurmi is traditionally a non-elite tiller caste in the lower Gangetic plain of India, especially southern regions of Awadh, eastern Uttar Pradesh and parts of Bihar and Jharkhand. The Kurmis came to be known for their exceptional work ethic, ...

s, who had a strong fort at Kathwara. Then, around 1400, two Chauhan brothers, Acharaj and Bacharaj, came from

Mainpuri Mainpuri (; ) is a city in Mainpuri district in the States and territories of India, Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is the administrative headquarters of Mainpuri district and is 55 km from Etawah and 294 km from New Delhi. Mainp ...

, defeated the last Kurmi king, Rai Dhandhu, and established themselves as rulers of the area. Kathwara then served as the seat of a powerful Chauhan estate until modern times. The estate holders often caused trouble for the

Nawabs of Awadh The Nawab of Awadh or Nawab of Oudh was the title of the rulers of Kingdom of Awadh (anglicised as Oudh) in northern India during the 18th and 19th centuries. The Nawabs of Awadh belonged to an Iranian dynasty''Encyclopædia Iranica'', R. B. B ...

; for example in 1851 when they refused to pay revenue to the king, leading to the chakladar Khan Ali Khan leading a royal army to subjugate them. The Kathwara estate comprised 32 villages in 1866, but it declined in subsequent years, and by the turn of the 20th century it had dwindled to just the single village of Kathwara. Around that time, Kathwara was described as a large village in the western part of the

pargana Pargana or parganah, also spelt pergunnah, equivalent to Mohallah as a subunit of Subah (Suba), was a type of former administrative division in the Indian subcontinent during the time of the Delhi Sultanate, Mughal and British Colonial empire ...

of Mahona, almost completely surrounded by orchards. To the south of Kathwara, the Gomti banks were described as being scored by many deep ravines.

References

{{Reflist Villages in Lucknow district