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Khandesh : a fertile region in the valley of the Tāpti north of Nāshik. In 1382 it was taken over by one of the countless groups of roving jihadi raiders led by Khans permitted by Delhi’s Sultan Alā-ud-din Khilji after he pillaged & raided Gujarat – hence the name. In 1599 it was taken over by Akbar by using his “golden keys”. In 1718, it came under the control of Pilāji Gaekwād (q.v.) who was awarded the town of Navāpur (c.40km east of Vyārā) in it, for his successful raid of Surat (c.100km west of Navāpur) & defeating the army of its Mogul subā. It was from here that Pilāji first conquered Songadh & by 1755-8 all of Gujarat. His ancestral family held a jāgir of 46 villages in Nāshik district. After Pilāji & his eldest son died in 1732 (see Bājirao), his second son Dāmāji looked after their territories in Gujarat while the youngest, Pratāp Rao, stayed back in Kalvānā looking after their jāgir. Unfortunately, when Dāmāji was forced to surrender this jāgir to the Peshwa (who, in exchange gave him some from his own jāgirs in Gujarat), Pratāp Rao, left with just one village, had to take up farming. In 1761, Pratāp Rao joined Dāmāji when the armies of the Maratha Confederacy were led by the Peshwa into the disastrous war at Pāṇīpat. Pratāp Rao was one of those killed. Almost a century late, a descendent of his named Gopal (lit. go-pālaka, cowherd) whom Fate made the Gaekwād of Baroda as Sayājirao III (q.v.)