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There were
about sixty to seventy successive Maharajas and, taking the average duration of each at
thirty years, the family has been obviously Hindu for centuries, It appears that the
British ethnologists had put too much stress on the family name "Naga-vanshi"
and thought that, since the family had a totem, It must be aboriginal in origin, as the
Mundas is totemistic.
This theory has no support. The Nagavanshi Maharaja family was
split into numerous branches and each One of them has an old genealogy and has married
freely into Rajput families. A parallel instance will be of the ruling families of the
princely States of Orissa, which have now been liquidated. The Maharaja of Mayurbhanj has
got the mayur or the peacock as the emblem.
No one has come out with the theory that the Mayurbhanj house is aboriginal in origin.
Serpents are held very sacred by this family, which associates its origin with the naga or
snake. No Nagavanshi would kill a snake and the monogram of the Maharaja of Chotanagpur
has the imprint of a snake.
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