Born in Vinga in the Austrian Empire (today in Romania) to a Roman Catholic Bulgarian farming family, Dunjov graduated in law and started working as a lawyer in Arad. Having adopted the ideas of Hungarian revolutionaries Lajos Kossuth and Sándor Petőfi, he joined their 1848 insurrectionist forces and was elected a member of the regional and city committee in Arad, later serving as a private in the Hungarian Army and a military judge. He participated in a number of battles defending the revolution and was promoted initially to the rank of Captain and then to that of Colonel. Following the revolution's defeat, he was captured and sentenced to death by the Austrian authorities, but his sentence was later reduced to ten years in dungeon. Dunjov was released in 1857 and interned by the authorit