Meena

The Meenas are a tribal people of northern and western India who claim descent from the Matsya, the fish incarnation of Vishnu, and once ruled chiefdoms in the country that became Rajasthan. By the thirteenth century their chieftains held the Hadoti hills, where Bundi takes its name from the Meena leader Bunda Meena.

Their rule was broken by expanding Rajput clans: Rao Dewa of the Hada Chauhans took Bundi in 1342 and made it the seat of his Hadoti kingdom, while the Kachhwahas seized Dhundhar. Driven into the forests and hills, the dispossessed Meenas kept up a long armed struggle against the new Rajput states, notably Amber, which eventually made peace with them through a conditional treaty.