Bonai State
Indian princely state
Bonai State (Odia: ବଣାଇ) was a minor princely state during the British Raj in what is today India. It was one of the Chota Nagpur States and had its capital at Bonaigarh, located in the present-day Sundergarh district of Odisha. It had an area of 8,907 square kilometres (3,439 sq mi), a population of 24,026 in 1892 and an average annual revenue of Rs. 60,000 in 1901.
History
Origins of the Kadamba dynasty of Bonai
As per legend, the founders of the dynasty claimed numerous obscure origins but lack of written archival records dispute them as untenable due to the mythical legends which shrouds the ancestry of the founding clans. Most research into the origins of the dynasty points that the founders of the Bonai State belonged to the head of the Bhuyan clans of the region which was later acquired mythical characteristics.
The founding of the Bonai State led to the establishment of the Kadamba dynasty, named after the flowers of the Kadamba tree (Neolamarckia cadamba) which is also present in the founding legendary myths of the dynasty and also remains the symbol of one of its collateral branch of Athmallik State. The Kadamba tree also plays a central element in the legends of the dominant Bhuyan clans of the region demonstrating the close relationship that the clans play in the royal traditions and rituals of the dynasty. Reconstruction of the court records points that the founder of the dynasty Pratap Bhanu Deo founded the State with the help of local Bhuyan landlords and subjugated the region. The local Bhuyan landlords maintained a strong presence at the royal court, administrative levels and socio-religious traditions of the kingdom.
The public source identifies “Bonai State” as indian princely state. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bonai, State and Indian.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q892061. Authority coordinates are 21.750, 84.970. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1892 and 1901.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bonai State” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.