Bastar

Bastar was a forest kingdom in the hills of south-eastern Gondwana. Around 1324 Annamadeva fled Warangal after the Kakatiya fall and established his seat at Bastar; the temple of Danteshwari at Dantewada became its holy centre.

In the fifteenth century Bastar split into two kingdoms, one based at Kanker. After Rajapala Deva died in 1721, his elder queen seized the throne for her brother; Rajapala's son Dalapati Deva fled to Jeypore and regained it in 1731. The capital moved to Jagdalpur on the Indravati, and Bastar remained fairly independent until the rise of the Marathas in the eighteenth century.