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Bikaner
Bikaner
Walled desert city founded in 1488 by Rao Bika; capital of Bikaner State until 1947.
Lunkaran
Third Rao of Bikaner, 1505–1526. Consolidated and expanded the young kingdom; celebrated for his liberality as the 'Karna of the Kaliyug'. Killed with three of his sons at the Battle of Dhosi.
p>Lunkaran was born at Deshnoke on 12 January 1470, a younger son of Rao Bika by his Bhati wife Rang Kanwar, daughter of Rao Shekha of Pugal. Deshnoke was where his father had made his headquarters in 1468, four years before proclaiming independent rule at Kodamdesar and twenty before founding the city.</p><p>He came to the throne on 23 January 1505 at the age of thirty-five, after the premature and childless death of his elder brother Naro. He inherited an unfinished problem: the chiefs whom Rao Bika had dispossessed had risen during Naro's short reign, and the founder's authority had not transferred to his heirs. Lunkaran's first campaign was against them.</p>
p>With the internal revolt settled, Lunkaran spent the rest of his reign pushing the frontiers outward, and he was systematic about it.</p><p>In 1509 he marched on Man Singh Chauhan of Dardrewa and took the place after a seven-month siege, absorbing his lands. In 1512 he moved on Fatehpur, ruled by the Kayam Khani chief Daulat Khan; a feud between Khan and a rival gave him his opening and he annexed a hundred and twenty villages. He later married a daughter to Nahar Khan, Daulat Khan's son — conquest followed by alliance, the same pattern his father had used at Pugal.</p><p>In 1513 he defeated the Khanzada ruler of Nagaur in the field and took extensive territory from the Chayal Rajputs in the Hisar and Sirsa direction, pressing Bikaner's claim on precisely the frontier where Rawat Kandhal had died a generation earlier. In 1514 he married a daughter of Rana Raimal of Mewar, connecting the junior desert house to the most senior Rajput lineage in Rajputana.</p>
p>Lunkaran's reputation in the Rajasthani literary tradition rests on his liberality rather than his campaigns. Bithu Suja's <em>Rao Jaitsi ro Chhand</em> — the poem written for his son — praises his generosity and courage, and Jaysom's Sanskrit <em>Karmachandravanshotkirtanakavyam</em> compares his charity to that of Karna in the Mahabharata. From this came the epithet by which he is still known: the Karna of the Kaliyug.</p><p>The public works of his reign fit the reputation. He built the Laxminath temple in Bikaner, dedicated to Vishnu and Lakshmi, which remains among the oldest temples in the city; and he excavated the lake at Lunkaransar, which carries his name.</p>
p>The last year of Lunkaran's reign contains both his most theatrical victory and his death.</p><p>In early 1526 Rawal Jait Singh of Jaisalmer insulted the Rathores publicly at his court. When a visiting Bikaner noble objected, the Rawal escalated: he would grant the Brahmins of his kingdom as much land as the Rathores could ride over. Lunkaran took the taunt at face value, rode into Jaisalmer territory, reached the city itself, laid siege to it and captured the Rawal. He lifted the siege only on Jait Singh's undertaking to give a daughter in marriage to one of his sons.</p><p>In March of the same year he rode against the Nawab of Narnaul with four of his five surviving elder sons — Ratan Singh, Pratap Singh, Nait Singh and Bhairi Sal — and Rao Ranmal of Nasibpur. At the village of Dhosi several of his supporters withdrew from the field. The Bikaner force was overwhelmed. Lunkaran, three of his sons and his purohit Devidas were killed on 30 March 1526.</p><p>He had deliberately left his second son Jait Singh behind at Bikaner so that the throne would not be left empty. It was a sound precaution, and it produced a complication: Jait Singh was crowned on the news, and then the wounded eldest son Ratan Singh, presumed dead, walked back into Bikaner. He declined to contest it, took the estate of Mahajan and the style of Maharaj, and founded the Ratansinghot sub-clan of the Bika Rathores.</p>
p>Richard Saran and Norman P. Ziegler, <em>The Mertīyo Rāṭhoṛs of Meṛto, Rājasthān</em> (2001), p. 194; K. K. Sehgal, <em>Rajasthan District Gazetteers — Bikaner</em> (1962), p. 28; Rajvi Amar Singh, <em>Mediaeval History of Rajasthan: Western Rajasthan</em> (1992); Ranbir Sinh, <em>History of the Shekhawats</em> (2001), p. 12; Sunita Budhwar, 'The Qayamkhani Shaikhzada family of Fatehpur–Jhunjhunu', <em>Proceedings of the Indian History Congress</em> 39 (1978).</p><p><strong>Note.</strong> Wikidata QID not yet confirmed; a local QID has been minted pending verification.</p>
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