The story as Mewar tells it
Our grandmother told it on winter nights with the lamp turned low. She never once said 'legend'. For her, Padmini was as real as the fort, and the fire was something that happened to women like her own great-great-grandmothers. We still hear her voice when we stand by the water at Chittor.
The queen: Padmini, a princess of great beauty from a distant island kingdom, comes to Chittor as the bride of its ruler, Rawal Ratan Singh.
- The sultan: Alauddin Khalji, the Sultan of Delhi, hears of her beauty and marches on Chittor to possess her.
- The reflection: the siege drags on, so the sultan asks only to see her. He is allowed a glimpse of her reflection, never her face.
- The betrayal: as Ratan Singh courteously walks his guest back to the gate, the sultan's men seize him and carry him to their camp.
- The palanquins: Padmini agrees to come to the sultan, but the covered litters that leave the fort hold armed warriors, not maids. The king is rescued.
- Gora and Badal: two loyal warriors, an uncle and his young nephew, lead the rescue. Gora dies fighting at the gate, and Badal brings the king home.
- The fire: the sultan returns in fury. When the fort can no longer hold, Padmini leads the women into the flames of jauhar, and the men ride out to die.
- The empty prize: Alauddin enters Chittor to find only ash. In every telling, that is the point of the story: he took the fort and lost what he came for.
What history actually records
The sultan was on a campaign of conquest: two years earlier, in 1301, Alauddin had taken Ranthambore from Hammir Dev Chauhan. Chittor was the next great Rajput stronghold on his list.
The fort fell in 1303: after a long siege the defenders could hold no longer, and the sultan's army took the rock.
- Siege began
- Early 1303
- Lasted
- About eight months
- Besieger
- Alauddin Khalji, Sultan of Delhi
- Defender
- Rawal Ratan Singh
- Eyewitness
- The poet Amir Khusrau
- Renamed
- Khizrabad, after the sultan's son
- An eyewitness wrote it down: Amir Khusrau, the great poet of the Delhi court, travelled with the sultan and describes the capture of the fort. He does not mention a queen.
- The fort got a new name: Alauddin gave Chittor to his young son Khizr Khan and called it Khizrabad. The name did not outlive Delhi's hold on the fort.
- Mewar came back: within a generation the fort was won back by Rana Hammir of the Sisodia branch, whose descendants ruled Mewar from then on. Our Rajput dynasties guide explains the family.
- What is missing: no writer of the sultan's own time names Padmini, describes a mirror or mentions the palanquins. Those details appear only centuries later.
- Why that matters: silence is not proof that she never lived. Court chroniclers left out a great deal, especially about women. But it is why historians call her story a legend.
How the story grew, version by version
Jayasi's Padmavat, 1540
The poet: Malik Muhammad Jayasi, a Sufi poet of Awadh, far to the east of Rajasthan, wrote in the Awadhi language.
- His Padmini: a princess of Singhal, an island kingdom, whose talking parrot carries word of her beauty to Ratan Sen of Chittor.
- His Ratan Sen: a king who leaves his throne as a wandering ascetic to win her. Half the poem is a love quest, not a war.
- The meaning: Jayasi wrote as a Sufi, and the poem is often read as an allegory of the soul's search for the divine, with Padmini standing for wisdom.
Hemratan's Rajasthani poem, 1589
The first Rajput telling: the Jain poet Hemratan wrote Gora Badal Padmini Chaupai, a poem in the language of the region.
- The shift: the love quest fades, and the courage of Gora and Badal and the honour of Chittor take centre stage.
- Why it matters: this is where the story turns from a Sufi romance into a Rajput epic of pride and sacrifice.
Persian and Urdu retellings
- A shared story: between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, Jayasi's poem was translated and adapted many times into Persian and Urdu.
- What that tells you: Padmini was loved across courts, faiths and languages long before she became a symbol of one community.
James Tod, 1829 to 1832
The source: Tod, a British officer posted in Rajputana, gathered bardic tales for his Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan.
- His changes: in Tod, Padmini's husband is Bhimsi, uncle of the young ruler, rather than Ratan Singh, and the island of Singhal becomes Ceylon.
- His influence: Tod's book reached readers across Britain and India, and much of the modern image of Padmini comes through him.
Plays, comics, songs and films
- Modern India: Padmini has been the heroine of nationalist plays, school textbooks, comic books, folk songs and paintings for more than a century.
- Still alive: a big Hindi film of 2018 drew protests and fierce debate across India. Few medieval stories can still stir feeling like that.
The people in the story
Rani Padmini
In the legend: a princess of Singhal, famed for her beauty and wisdom, who leads the women of Chittor into the fire.
- In the record: absent. No source of her own century names her.
- Her other name: Jayasi calls her Padmavati. In Rajasthan she is almost always Padmini, and both names come from padma, the lotus.
Rawal Ratan Singh
In the record: a real ruler of Mewar, of the Guhila line, who held Chittor when Alauddin came in 1303.
- In the legend: a lover and a gentleman, too courteous to suspect a guest of treachery.
- His fate: the sources disagree, and the legends give him different ends. Most say he was killed or captured when the fort fell.
Alauddin Khalji
In the record: the most powerful Sultan of Delhi of his age, who ruled from 1296 to 1316 and pushed his armies deep into Rajputana and the south.
- In the legend: a man ruined by desire, who wins every battle and loses the one thing he wanted.
- A fair note: historians see his Rajput campaigns as conquest and strategy, not romance. Chittor guarded the routes to Gujarat and Malwa.
Raghav Chetan
- In Jayasi: a learned courtier banished from Chittor, who takes his revenge by describing Padmini's beauty to the sultan.
- Why he matters: he explains how word of a hidden queen could reach Delhi. He appears in the poem, not in any chronicle.
Gora and Badal
- In the legend: the uncle and nephew who rescue the king. Hemratan's Rajasthani poem puts them at the centre of the story.
- In Chittor today: guides point to ruins they link with the two heroes. Treat the names as tradition.
Jauhar and saka, the words you will hear
What jauhar means: when a besieged fort could no longer hold, the chronicles say the women and children chose death by fire rather than capture and enslavement.
What saka means: after the fire, the men put on saffron robes, opened the gates and rode out to fight until none was left.
- Jauhar
- Women of a falling fort chose death by fire
- Saka
- The men's last charge, dressed in saffron
- Chittor's sieges
- 1303, 1535 and 1567 to 1568
- The tone
- Grief and pride together
- Not only Padmini: Chittor remembers three such sieges. In 1535 Rani Karnavati led the women, and in 1568 the fort fell to Akbar. Our Chittorgarh guide tells all three.
- Not only Chittor: the chronicles record jauhar at Ranthambore in 1301 and at Jaisalmer too. It belongs to the whole of medieval Rajputana.
- How we speak of it: as courage and as tragedy at once. These were real women in real despair, whatever the truth of any single name.
- What we ask of guests: keep voices low at the memorials and jauhar grounds, and let your guide set the tone. Many Indian visitors come here as pilgrims.
Where the story lives at Chittorgarh
Padmini's palace
What you see: a pale three-storey pavilion beside a large tank, with a smaller pavilion standing in the water.
- What guides say: this is where the sultan saw her reflection. The present building is largely a nineteenth-century reconstruction.
- When to come: late afternoon, when the water is still and the reflection is clearest. It is one of the calmest corners of the fort.
The seven gates
The climb: the road winds up through seven gates, or pols, each a little stronger than the last.
- The memorials: small chhatris between the gates honour warriors who died defending them, mostly from the last siege of 1567 to 1568.
- Watch for: red thread, flowers and coconuts left by local families. Please don't climb on the memorials for photographs.
The jauhar ground
- Where: an open ground near the Samadhishvar temple, beside the Vijay Stambha, that tradition links with the jauhar of the fort's women.
- Honest note: different guides point to more than one site. What matters here is the silence, not the exact spot.
Gaumukh and the water tanks
- Why water matters to the story: a fort could survive months of siege only if its tanks held. Chittor's plateau was cut with dozens of them.
- Gaumukh: a spring-fed tank below a cliff, where water flows from a carved cow's mouth. Locals still come to feed the fish.
The Vijay Stambha
- Not Padmini's, but part of the arc: Rana Kumbha raised this nine-storey tower of victory after defeating the Sultan of Malwa in 1440.
- Why see it here: it shows a Mewar that recovered after 1303 and grew strong again, which is the other half of the story.
Why the legend still matters in Mewar
It is family memory: for many Rajput families, Chittor is not a monument but an ancestral home. The names in the story are names in their own family trees.
It carries a whole age: the sieges, the fires and the loss of Chittor were real. Padmini gives those events a face that people can carry in their hearts.
- It is about refusal: in Mewar's telling, the point is not beauty but the refusal to submit. That same thread runs through to Maharana Pratap.
- It is sung, not read: village singers and bards kept the story alive in ballads long before most people could read.
- It is also debated: historians, writers and women's groups in India argue about what the story says about women, honour and faith. Both views are held sincerely.
- Our view: we tell the story as Mewar tells it, we tell the history as the sources tell it, and we let our guests make up their own minds.
How to visit Chittor with the story in mind
See it twice if you can: arrive in the late afternoon for Padmini's palace and the western ramparts at sunset, sleep nearby, and return at opening time for the palaces and temples.
Hire a real guide: the stories make the ruins. We use guides who know both the legend and the history, and who can sing a verse of the old ballads.
- From Udaipur
- About two hours by road
- Allow
- A full day, or two half days
- Best months
- October to March
- Getting round
- By car between sights, on foot at each
- Dress
- Covered shoulders, shoes off at temples
- Stay close: Castle Bijaipur, a sixteenth-century castle in the countryside, makes an easy base. Our Chittorgarh hotels guide has more.
- Pace the heat: the plateau has little shade. Rest through the middle of the day and keep the walking for the cool hours.
- The light and sound show: the evening show tells the story of the sieges with real drama. We check the language and timing on the day and translate for you.
- Read before you go: our history of Rajasthan and the Chittorgarh itinerary give you the context in an evening.
What most visitors miss
The smaller pavilion in the water: look at how it sits in the tank. Guides will tell you which window the reflection was seen from. Ask them where the sultan stood.
Two Ratan Singhs: a ruined palace in the north of the fort belongs to Rana Ratan Singh II of the early sixteenth century, not the Rawal Ratan Singh of 1303. Guides sometimes mix them up.
- The women at the memorials: local women still come to the sati and jauhar memorials to pray. Watch from a respectful distance.
- The view from the west wall: at sunset you see the plains Alauddin's army camped on. It makes the length of the siege easy to imagine.
- Meera Bai: the poet-saint who sang to Krishna lived here as a bride two centuries after Padmini. Her temple is a gentler counterweight to the stories of fire.
Who will love this story, and how to use it
Readers and history lovers: you will enjoy holding the legend and the record side by side, and arguing about them over dinner.
Families with older children: palanquins full of warriors and a sultan outwitted make a wonderful story at the gates. Save the darker parts for when they ask.
- Good for
- History lovers, readers, families with older children
- Pairs with
- Udaipur, Kumbhalgarh, Haldighati
- Best season
- October to March
- Time needed
- One night near the fort
- Travellers of Indian descent: many tell us Chittor is the most emotional day of their journey, because Padmini was in their school books.
- Photographers: the pavilion in still water, the towers in late light and the long ramparts reward an unhurried afternoon.
- Who might skip it: if you have only a few days and want lakes and palaces rather than ruins, stay in Udaipur and read this piece instead.
Where the story leads next
Kumbhalgarh, the fort that fell only once
- Why go: Rana Kumbha's great hill fort, with walls running for about 36 kilometres, is where Maharana Pratap is said to have been born.
- Pair it: about three hours from Chittor through the hills, or as part of a Mewar circuit from Udaipur.
Udaipur, the capital after Chittor
- Why go: after Chittor fell to Akbar in 1568, the court moved for good to the lake city Udai Singh II had founded in 1559.
- Pair it: most guests base themselves at the lakes and see Chittor as a long day out.
A journey through Mewar
- Our route: the Mewar lakes and temples journey links Udaipur, Chittor, Kumbhalgarh and Ranakpur at an easy pace.
- For history lovers: we add a night near Chittor so you can see the fort at both ends of the day.