There is an instructive story about the origins of Jamnagar, and it could well be a myth. After Jam Rawal, the ruling prince of Kutch, avenged his father Jam Lakha’s murder at the hands of his greedy and scheming cousins, he dreamt that the goddess Ashapura asked him to cross the waters and take his kingdom into Kathiawar, a peninsula on the Arabian Sea between Kutch and Khambhat. And so Jam Rawal moved, and began to look for a capital. On a hunt one day, he saw a hare fight tenaciously against wild dogs. The Jam is said to have thought: if this land can bear such brave hares, how brave might its men be? The place became his capital, Nawanagar, now known as Jamnagar, close to the Gulf of Kutch. One of the Jam’s father’s cousins was a Jadeja, from a princely warrior clan that continued to rule parts of Kutch until India’s independence. The Jadejas were an example of the sort of men Nawanagar produced, the kind the Jam had imagined back in 1540… Read More
