Emperor Ashok rock inscription present in gujarra. Datia had formerly been a state in the Bundelkhand region. The ruling family were Rajputs of the Bundela clan; they descended from a younger son of a former raja of Orchha. The chief rulers of Datia were Bhagwan Rao, Shubhkaran Rao, Dalpat Rao and Ramchandra and they had good relations with the Mughals. There is a fort palace at Datia, the architecture of which is chiefly Indo-Islamic which partly inspired the chief architect Edward Lutyens, while designing New Delhi. The state was administered as part of the Bundelkhand agency of Central India. It lay in the extreme north-west of Bundelkhand, near Gwalior, and was surrounded on all sides by other princely states of Central India, except on the east where it bordered upon the United Provinces.^[1] It was second highest in the rank of all the Bundela states after Orchha, with a 15-gun salute, and its Maharajas bore the hereditary title of Second of the Princes of Bundelkhand. The land area of the state was 2130 km² and its population in 1901 was 173,759.

Datia, together with the rest of the Bundelkhand agency, became part of the new state of Vindhya Pradesh in 1950. In 1956, Vindhya Pradesh state was merged with certain other areas to form the state of Madhya Pradesh within the Union of India.