What was the name of the family deity of the Chandelas?

Concept: A ruling clan's family deity (kuldevi/kuldevta) is a lineage-specific tutelary deity worshipped by that clan for protection and legitimacy. Early medieval dynasties that rose from a local base usually adopted the deity already established at their first seat of power, and that local cult was later drawn into the wider Puranic tradition as the dynasty's status grew.

Application: The Chandelas rose in the Bundelkhand region, where Mahoba and Khajuraho were their principal centres. Romila Thapar's Early India records that the Chandela rulers originally worshipped a rock called Maniya Deo, installed at Mahoba, and studies of the dynasty such as Sisirkumar Mitra's The Early Rulers of Khajuraho and Devangana Desai's Khajuraho describe Maniya Devi as the tutelary or family goddess of the clan. The family deity of the Chandelas is therefore Maniya Devi, whose shrines are associated with Mahoba and Maniyagarh.

Cross-check: the other three names belong to widely worshipped goddesses, but none of them is recorded as the ancestral clan deity of the Chandelas.

• Chamunda Devi — a fierce Matrika form named in the Devi Mahatmya after the demons Chanda and Munda; worshipped across India, but with no recorded link to the Chandela clan lineage.

• Kali Devi — the dark form of the Goddess associated with time and destruction, central to Shakta worship; likewise not attested as a Chandela clan deity.

• Janki Devi — a name of Sita, the daughter of King Janaka, belonging to the Ramayana tradition rather than to any dynastic kuldevi cult.

Note: scholars differ on whether Maniya was originally a tribal deity — R. K. Dikshit, for instance, disputes the tribal-origin argument — but the identification of Maniya Devi as the Chandelas' family deity is itself not in dispute.