Book IV. Annals of Mewār (part 1)

Chapter 1

We now proceed to the history of the States of Rajputana, and shall commence with the Annals of Mewar, and its princes.

Titles of Mewār Chiefs: descent from the Sun.

—These are styled Ranas, and are the elder branch of the Suryavansi, or ‘children of the sun.’ Another patronymic is Raghuvansi, derived from a predecessor of Rama, the focal point of each scion of the solar race. To him, the conqueror of Lanka, the genealogists endeavour to trace the solar lines. The titles of many of these claimants are disputed; but the Hindu tribes yield unanimous suffrage to the prince of Mewar as the legitimate heir to the throne of Rama, and style him Hindua Suraj, or ‘Sun of the Hindus.’ He is universally allowed to be the first of the ‘thirty-six royal tribes’; nor has a doubt ever been raised respecting his purity of descent. Many of these tribes have been swept away by time; and the genealogist, who abhors a vacuum in his mystic page, fills up their place with others, mere scions of some ancient but forgotten stem.

Stability of Mewār State.

—With the exception of Jaisalmer, Mewar is the only dynasty of these races which has outlived eight centuries of foreign domination, in the same lands where conquest placed them. The Rana still possesses nearly the same extent of territory which his ancestors held when the conqueror from Ghazni first crossed the ‘blue waters’ of the Indus to invade India; while the other families now ruling in the northwest of Rajasthan are the relics of ancient dynasties driven from their pristine seats of power, or their junior branches, who have erected their own fortunes. This circumstance adds to the dignity of the Ranas, and is the cause of the general homage which they receive, notwithstanding the diminution of their power. Though we cannot give the princes of Mewar an ancestor in the Persian Nushirwan, nor assert so confidently as Sir Thomas Roe his claims to descent from the celebrated Porus, the opponent of Alexander, we can carry him into the regions of antiquity more remote than the Persian, and which would satisfy the most fastidious in respect to ancestry.

Origin of the Rājputs.

—In every age and clime we observe the same eager desire after distinguished pedigree, proceeding from a feeling which, though often derided, is extremely natural. The Rajaputras are, however, scarcely satisfied with discriminating their ancestors from the herd of mankind. Some plume themselves on a celestial origin, whilst others are content to be demi-celestial; and those who cannot advance such lofty claims, rather than acknowledge the race to have originated in the ordinary course of nature, make their primeval parent of demoniac extraction; accordingly, several of the dynasties who cannot obtain a niche amongst the children of the sun or moon, or trace their descent from some royal saint, are satisfied to be considered the offspring of some Titan (Daitya). These puerilities are of modern fabrication, in cases where family documents have been lost, or emigration has severed branches from the parent stock; who, increasing in power, but ignorant of their birth, have had recourse to fable to supply the void. Various authors, borrowing from the same source, have assigned the seat of Porus to the Rana’s family; and coincidence of name has been the cause of the family being alternately elevated and depressed. Thus the incidental circumstance of the word Rhamnae being found in Ptolemy’s geography, in countries bordering on Mewar, furnishes our ablest geographers with a reason for planting the family there in the second century; while the commentators on the geography of the Arabian travellers of the ninth and tenth centuries discover sufficient evidence in “the kingdom of Rahmi, always at war with the Balhara sovereign,” to consider him (notwithstanding Rahmi is expressly stated “not to be much considered for his birth or the antiquity of his kingdom”) as the prince of Chitor, celebrated in both these points.

The translator of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, following D’Anville, makes Ozene (Ujjain) the capital of a Porus, who sent an embassy to Augustus to regulate their commercial intercourse, and whom he asserts to be the ancestor of the Rana. But to show how guarded we should be in admitting verbal resemblance to decide such points, the title of Rana is of modern adoption, even so late as the twelfth century; and was assumed in consequence of the victorious issue of a contest with the Parihara prince of Mandor, who bore the title of Rana, and who surrendered it with his life and capital to the prince of Mewar. The latter substituted it for the more ancient appellation of Rawal; but it was not till the thirteenth century that the novel distinction was generally recognized by neighbouring powers. Although we cannot for a moment admit the Rahmi, or even the Rhamnae of Ozene, to be connected with this family, yet Ptolemy appears to have given the real ancestor in his Baleokouroi, the Balhara monarchs of the Arabian travellers, the Valabhiraes of Saurashtra, who were the ancestors of the princes of Mewar.

Before we proceed, it is necessary to specify the sources whence materials were obtained for the Annals of Mewar, and to give some idea of the character they merit as historical data .

Sources of the History.

—For many years previous to sojourning at the court of Udaipur, sketches were obtained of the genealogy of the family from the rolls of the bards. To these was added a chronological sketch, drawn up under the eye of Raja Jai Singh of Amber, with comments of some value by him, and which served as a ground-work. Free access was also granted to the Rana’s library, and permission obtained to make copies of such MSS. as related to his history. The most important of these was the Khuman Raesa, which is evidently a modern work founded upon ancient materials, tracing the genealogy to Rama, and halting at conspicuous beacons in this long line of crowned heads, particularly about the period of the Muhammadan irruption in the tenth century, the sack of Chitor by Alau-d-din in the thirteenth century, and the wars of Rana Partap with Akbar, during whose reign the work appears to have been recast.

The next in importance were the Rajvilas, in the Vraj Bhakha, by Man Kabeswara; and the Rajratnakar, by Sudasheo Bhat: both written in the reign of Rana Raj Singh, the opponent of Aurangzeb: also the Jaivilas, written in the reign of Jai Singh, son of Raj Singh. They all commence with the genealogies of the family, introductory to the military exploits of the princes whose names they bear.

The Mamadevi Prasistha is a copy of the inscriptions in the temple of ‘the Mother of the Gods’ at Kumbhalmer. Genealogical rolls of some antiquity were obtained from the widow of an ancient family bard, who had left neither children nor kindred to follow his profession. Another roll was procured from a priest of the Jains residing in Sandrai, in Marwar, whose ancestry had enjoyed from time immemorial the title of Guru, which they held at the period of the sack of Valabhipura in the fifth century, whence they emigrated simultaneously with the Rana’s ancestors. Others were obtained from Jain priests at Jawad in Malwa. Historical documents possessed by several chiefs were readily furnished, and extracts were made from works, both Sanskrit and Persian, which incidentally mention the family. To these were added traditions or biographical anecdotes furnished in conversation by the Rana, or men of intellect amongst his chiefs , ministers, or bards, and inscriptions calculated to reconcile dates; in short, every corroborating circumstance was treasured up which could be obtained by incessant research during sixteen years. The Commentaries of Babur and Jahangir, the Institutes of Akbar, original grants, public and autograph letters of the emperors of Delhi and their ministers, were made to contribute more or less; yet, numerous as are the authorities cited, the result may afford but little gratification to the general reader, partly owing to the unpopularity of the subject, partly to the inartificial mode of treating it.

Kanaksen.

—At least ten genealogical lists, derived from the most opposite sources, agree in making Kanaksen the founder of this dynasty; and assign his emigration from the most northern of the provinces of India to the peninsula of Saurashtra in S. 201, or A.D. 145. We shall, therefore, make this the point of outset; though it may be premised that Jai Singh, the royal historian and astronomer of Amber, connects the line with Sumitra (the fifty-sixth descendant from the deified Rama), who appears to have been the contemporary of Vikramaditya, B.C.B.C. 56.

The country of which Ayodhya (now Oudh) was the capital, and Rama monarch, is termed, in the geographical writings of the Hindus, Kosala; doubtless from the mother of Rama, whose name was Kausalya. The first royal emigrant from the north is styled, in the Rana’s archives, Kosala-putra, ‘son of Kosala.’

Titles of the Chiefs.

—Rama had two sons, Lava and Kusa: from the former the Rana’s family claim descent. He is stated to have built Lahore, the ancient Lohkot; and the branch from which the princes of Mewar are descended resided there until Kanaksen emigrated to Dwarka. The difficulty of tracing these races through a long period of years is greatly increased by the custom of changing the appellation of the tribe, from conquest, locality, or personal celebrity. Sen seems to have been the martial termination for many generations: this was followed by Dit, or Aditya, a term for the ‘sun.’ The first change in the name of the tribe was on their expulsion from Saurashtra, when for the generic term of Suryavansi was substituted the particular appellation of Guhilot. This name was maintained till another event dispersed the family, and when they settled in Ahar, Aharya became the appellative of the branch. This continued till loss of territory and new acquisitions once more transferred the dynasty to Sesoda, a temporary capital in the western mountains. The title of Ranawat, borne by all descendants of the blood royal since the eventful change which removed the seat of government from Chitor to Udaipur, might in time have superseded that of Sesodia, if continued warfare had not checked the increase of population; but the Guhilot branch of the Suryavansi still retain the name of Sesodia.

Having premised thus much, we must retrograde to the darker ages, through which we shall endeavour to conduct this celebrated dynasty, though the clue sometimes nearly escapes from our hands in these labyrinths of antiquity. When it is recollected to what violence this family has been subjected during the last eight centuries, often dispossessed of all but their native hills and compelled to live on their spontaneous produce, we could scarcely expect that historical records should be preserved. Chitor was thrice sacked and destroyed, and the existing records are formed from fragments, registers of births and marriages, or from the oral relations of the bards.

Legend of Kanaksen.

—By what route Kanaksen, the first emigrant of the solar race, found his way into Saurashtra from Lohkot, is uncertain: he, however, wrested dominion from a prince of the Pramara race, and founded Birnagara in the second century (A.D. 144). Four generations afterwards, Vijayasen, whom the prince of Amber calls Nushirwan, founded Vijayapur, supposed to be where Dholka now stands, at the head of the Saurashtra peninsula. Vidarba was also founded by him, the name of which was afterwards changed to Sihor. But the most celebrated was the capital, Valabhipura, which for years baffled all search, till it was revealed in its now humbled condition as Walai, ten miles west of Bhaunagar. The existence of this city was confirmed by a celebrated Jain work, the Satrunjaya Mahatma. The want of satisfactory proof of the Rana’s emigration from thence was obviated by the most unexpected discovery of an inscription of the twelfth century, in a ruined temple on the tableland forming the eastern boundary of the Rana’s present territory, which appeals to the ‘walls of Valabhi’ for the truth of the action it records. And a work written to commemorate the reign of Rana Raj Singh opens with these words: “In the west is Sorathdes, a country well known: the barbarians invaded it, and conquered Bal-ka-nath; all fell in the sack of Valabhipura, except the daughter of the Pramara.” And the Sandrai roll thus commences: “When the city of Valabhi was sacked, the inhabitants fled and founded Bali, Sandrai, and Nadol in Mordar des.” These are towns yet of consequence, and in all the Jain religion is still maintained, which was the chief worship of Valabhipura when sacked by the ‘barbarian.’ The records preserved by the Jains give S.B. 205 (A.D. 524) as the date of this event.

The tract about Valabhipura and northward is termed Bal, probably from the tribe of Bala, which might have been the designation of the Rana’s tribe prior to that of Grahilot; and most probably Multan, and all these regions of the Kathi, Bala, etc., were dependent on Lohkot, whence emigrated Kanaksen; thus strengthening the surmise of the Scythic descent of the Ranas, though now installed in the seat of Rama. The sun was the deity of this northern tribe, as of the Rana’s ancestry, and the remains of numerous temples to this grand object of Scythic homage are still to be found scattered over the peninsula; whence its name, Saurashtra, the country of the Sauras, or Sun-worshippers; the Surastrene or Syrastrene of ancient geographers; its inhabitants, the Suros (Σύρων) of Strabo.

Besides these cities, the MSS. give Gayni as the last refuge of the family when expelled Saurashtra. One of the poetic chronicles thus commences: “The barbarians had captured Gajni. The house of Siladitya was left desolate. In its defence his heroes fell; of his seed but the name remained.”

Invaders of Saurāshtra.

—These invaders were Scythic, and in all probability a colony from the Parthian kingdom, which was established in sovereignty on the Indus in the second century, having their capital at Saminagara, where the ancient Yadu ruled for ages: the Minnagara of Arrian, and the Mankir of the Arabian geographers. It was by this route, through the eastern portion of the valley of the Indus, that the various hordes of Getae or Jats, Huns, Kamari, Kathi, Makwahana, Bala and Aswaria, had peopled this peninsula, leaving traces still visible. The period is also remarkable when these and other Scythic hordes were simultaneously abandoning higher Asia for the cold regions of Europe and the warm plains of Hindustan. From the first to the sixth century of the Christian era, various records exist of these irruptions from the north. Gibbon, quoting De Guignes, mentions one in the second century, which fixed permanently in the Saurashtra peninsula; and the latter, from original authorities, describes another of the Getae or Jats, styled by the Chinese Yueh-chi, in the north of India. But the authority directly in point is that of Cosmas, surnamed Indikopleustes, who was in India during the reign of Justinian, and that of the first monarch of the Chinese dynasty of Leam. Cosmas had visited Kalyan, included in the Balhara kingdom; and he mentions the Ephthalites, or White Huns, under their king Golas, as being established on the Indus at the very period of the invasion of Valabhipura.

Arrian, who resided in the second century at Barugaza (Broach), describes a Parthian sovereignty as extending from the Indus to the Nerbudda. Their capital has already been mentioned, Minnagara. Whether these, the Abtelites of Cosmas, were the Parthian dynasty of Arrian, or whether the Parthians were supplanted by the Huns, we must remain in ignorance, but to one or the other we must attribute the sack of Valabhipura.

The legend of this event affords scope for speculation, both as regards the conquerors and the conquered, and gives at least a colour of truth to the reputed Persian ancestry of the Rana: a subject which will be distinctly considered. The solar orb, and its type, fire, were the chief objects of adoration of Siladitya of Valabhipura. Whether to these was added that of the lingam, the symbol of Balnath (the sun), the primary object of worship with his descendants, may be doubted. It was certainly confined to these, and the adoption of ‘strange gods’ by the Suryavansi Guhilot is comparatively of modern invention.

The Fountain of the Sun.

—There was a fountain (Suryakunda) ‘sacred to the sun’ at Valabhipura, from which arose, at the summons of Siladitya (according to the legend) the seven-headed horse Saptasva, which draws the car of Surya, to bear him to battle. With such an auxiliary no foe could prevail; but a wicked minister revealed to the enemy the secret of annulling this aid, by polluting the sacred fountain with blood. This accomplished, in vain did the prince call on Saptasva to save him from the strange and barbarous foe: the charm was broken, and with it sunk the dynasty of Valabhi. Who the ‘barbarian’ was that defiled with blood of kine the fountain of the sun, whether Getae, Parthian, or Hun, we are left to conjecture. The Persian, though he venerated the bull, yet sacrificed him on the altar of Mithras; and though the ancient Guebre purifies with the urine of the cow, he will not refuse to eat beef; and the iniquity of Cambyses, who thrust his lance into the flank of the Egyptian Apis, is a proof that the bull was abstractedly no object of worship. It would be indulging a legitimate curiosity, could we by any means discover how these ‘strange’ tribes obtained a footing amongst the Hindu races; for so late as seven centuries ago we find Getae, Huns, Kathi, Ariaspas, Dahae, definitively settled, and enumerated amongst the Chhattis rajkula. How much earlier the admission, no authority states; but mention is made of several of them aiding in the defence of Chitor, on the first appearance of the faith of Islam upwards of eleven hundred years ago.

Chapter 2

The Refugee Queen.

—Of the prince’s family, the queen Pushpavati alone escaped the sack of Valabhi, as well as the funeral pyre, upon which, on the death of Siladitya, his other wives were sacrificed. She was a daughter of the Pramara prince of Chandravati , and had visited the shrine of the universal mother, Amba-Bhavani, in her native land, to deposit upon the altar of the goddess a votive offering consequent to her expectation of offspring. She was on her return, when the intelligence arrived which blasted all her future hopes, by depriving her of her lord, and robbing him, whom the goddess had just granted to her prayers, of a crown. Excessive grief closed her pilgrimage. Taking refuge in a cave in the mountains of Malia, she was delivered of a son. Having confided the infant to a Brahmani of Birnagar named Kamlavati, enjoining her to educate the young prince as a Brahman, but to marry him to a Rajputni, she mounted the funeral pile to join her lord. Kamlavati, the daughter of the priest of the temple, was herself a mother, and she performed the tender offices of one to the orphan prince, whom she designated Goha, or ‘cave-born.’ The child was a source of perpetual uneasiness to its protectors: he associated with Rajput children, killing birds, hunting wild animals, and at the age of eleven was totally unmanageable: to use the words of the legend, “How should they hide the ray of the sun?”

The Legend of Goha.

—At this period Idar was governed by a chief of the savage race of Bhil; his name, Mandalika. The young Goha frequented the forests in company with the Bhils, whose habits better assimilated with his daring nature than those of the Brahmans. He became a favourite with the Vanaputras, or ‘children of the forest,’ who resigned to him Idar with its woods and mountains. The fact is mentioned by Abu-l Fazl, and is still repeated by the bards, with a characteristic version of the incident, of which doubtless there were many. The Bhils having determined in sport to elect a king, the choice fell on Goha; and one of the young savages, cutting his finger, applied the blood as the tīka of sovereignty to his forehead. What was done in sport was confirmed by the old forest chief. The sequel fixes on Goha the stain of ingratitude, for he slew his benefactor, and no motive is assigned in the legend for the deed. Goha’s name became the patronymic of his descendants, who were styled Guhilot, classically Grahilot, in time softened to Gehlot.

We know very little concerning these early princes but that they dwelt in this mountainous region for eight generations; when the Bhils, tired of a foreign rule, assailed Nagaditya, the eighth prince, while hunting, and deprived him of life and Idar. The descendants of Kamlavati (the Birnagar Brahmani), who retained the office of priest in the family, were again the preservers of the line of Valabhi. The infant Bappa, son of Nagaditya , then only three years old, was conveyed to the fortress of Bhander, where he was protected by a Bhil of Yadu descent. Thence he was removed for greater security to the wilds of Parasar. Within its impervious recesses rose the three-peaked (trikuta) mountain, at whose base was the town of Nagindra, the abode of Brahmans, who performed the rites of the ‘great god.’ In this retreat passed the early years of Bappa, wandering through these Alpine valleys, amidst the groves of Bal and the shrines of the brazen calf.

The most antique temples are to be seen in these spots—within the dark gorge of the mountain, or on its rugged summit—in the depths of the forest, and at the sources of streams, where sites of seclusion, beauty, and sublimity alternately exalt the mind’s devotion. In these regions the creative power appears to have been the earliest, and at one time the sole, object of adoration, whose symbols, the serpent-wreathed phallus (lingam), and its companion, the bull, were held sacred even by the ‘children of the forest.’ In these silent retreats Mahadeva continued to rule triumphant, and the most brilliant festivities of Udaipur were those where his rites are celebrated in the nine days sacred to him, when the Jains and Vaishnavas mix with the most zealous of his votaries; but the strange gods from the plains of the Yamuna and Ganges have withdrawn a portion of the zeal of the Guhilots from their patron divinity Eklinga, whose diwan, or viceregent, is the Rana. The temple of Eklinga, situated in one of the narrow defiles leading to the capital, is an immense structure, though more sumptuous than elegant. It is built entirely of white marble, most elaborately carved and embellished; but lying in the route of a bigoted foe, it has undergone many dilapidations. The brazen bull, placed under his own dome, facing the sanctuary of the phallus, is nearly of the natural size, in a recumbent posture. It is cast (hollow) of good shape, highly polished and without flaw, except where the hammer of the Tatar had opened a passage in the hollow flank in search of treasure .

The Marriage of Bappa.

—Tradition has preserved numerous details of Bappa’s infancy, which resembles the adventures of every hero or founder of a race. The young prince attended the sacred kine, an occupation which was honourable even to the ‘children of the sun,’ and which they still pursue: possibly a remnant of their primitive Scythic habits. The pranks of the royal shepherd are the theme of many a tale. On the Jhal Jhulni, when swinging is the amusement of the youth of both sexes, the daughter of the Solanki chief of Nagda and the village maidens had gone to the groves to enjoy this festivity, but they were unprovided with ropes. Bappa happened to be at hand, and was called by the Rajput damsels to forward their sport. He promised to procure a rope if they would first have a game at marriage. One frolic was as good as another, and the scarf of the Solankini was united to the garment of Bappa, the whole of the village lasses joining hands with his as the connecting link; and thus they performed the mystical number of revolutions round an aged tree. This frolic caused his flight from Nagda, and originated his greatness, but at the same time burthened him with all these damsels; and hence a heterogeneous issue, whose descendants still ascribe their origin to the prank of Bappa round the old mango-tree of Nagda. A suitable offer being shortly after made for the young Solankini’s hand, the family priests of the bridegroom, whose duty it was, by his knowledge of palmistry, to investigate the fortunes of the bride, discovered that she was already married: intelligence which threw the family into the greatest consternation. Though Bappa’s power over his brother shepherds was too strong to create any dread of disclosure as to his being the principal in this affair, yet was it too much to expect that a secret, in which no less than six hundred of the daughters of Eve were concerned, could long remain such? Bappa’s mode of swearing his companions to secrecy is preserved. Digging a small pit, and taking a pebble in his hand, “Swear,” cried he, “secrecy and obedience to me in good and in evil; that you will reveal to me all that you hear, and failing, desire that the good deeds of your forefathers may, like this pebble (dropping it into the pit) fall into the Washerman’s well.” They took the oath. The Solanki chief, however, heard that Bappa was the offender, who, receiving from his faithful scouts intimation of his danger, sought refuge in one of the retreats which abound in these mountains, and which in after-times proved the preservation of his race. The companions of his flight were two Bhils: one of Undri, in the valley of the present capital; the other of Solanki descent, from Oghna Panarwa, in the western wilds. Their names, Baleo and Dewa, have been handed down with Bappa’s; and the former had the honour of drawing the tika of sovereignty with his own blood on the forehead of the prince, on the occasion of his taking the crown from the Mori. It is pleasing to trace, through a series of ages, the knowledge of a custom still ‘honoured in the observance.’ The descendants of Baleo of Oghna and the Undri Bhil still claim the privilege of performing the tika on the inauguration of the descendants of Bappa.

Oghna Panarwa.

—Oghna Panarwa is the sole spot in India which enjoys a state of natural freedom. Attached to no State, having no foreign communications, living under its own patriarchal head, its chief, with the title of Rana, whom one thousand hamlets scattered over the forest-crowned valleys obey, can, if requisite, appear at ‘the head of five thousand bows.’ He is a Bhumia Bhil of mixed blood, from the Solanki Rajput, on the old stock of pure (ujla) Bhils, the autochthones (if such there be of any country) of Mewar. Besides making the tika of blood from an incision in the thumb, the Oghna chief takes the prince by the arm and seats him on the throne, while the Undri Bhil holds the salver of spices and sacred grains of rice used in making the tika.

But the solemnity of being seated on the throne of Mewar is so expensive, that many of these rites have fallen into disuse. Jagat Singh was the last prince whose coronation was conducted with the ancient magnificence of this princely house. It cost the sum of ninety lakhs of rupees (£1,125,000), nearly one entire year’s revenue of the State in the days of its prosperity, and which, taking into consideration the comparative value of money, would amount to upwards of four millions sterling .

To resume the narrative: though the flight of Bappa and its cause are perfectly natural, we have another episode; when the bard assuming a higher strain has recourse to celestial machinery for the dénouement of this simple incident: but “an illustrious race must always be crowned with its proper mythology.” Bappa who was the founder of a line of a ‘hundred kings,’ feared as a monarch, adored as more than mortal, and, according to the legend, ‘still living’ (charanjiva), deserves to have the source of his pre-eminent fortune disclosed, which, in Mewar, it were sacrilege to doubt. While he pastured the sacred kine in the valleys of Nagindra, the princely shepherd was suspected of appropriating the milk of a favourite cow to his own use. He was distrusted and watched, and although indignant, the youth admitted that they had reason to suspect him, from the habitual dryness of the brown cow when she entered the pens at even. He watched, and traced her to a narrow dell, when he beheld the udder spontaneously pouring its stores amidst the shrubs. Under a thicket of cane a hermit was reposing in a state of abstraction, from which the impetuosity of the shepherd soon roused him. The mystery was revealed in the phallic symbol of the ‘great God,’ which daily received the lacteal shower, and raised such doubts of the veracity of Bappa.

No eye had hitherto penetrated into this natural sanctuary of the rites of the Hindu Creator, except the sages and hermits of ancient days (of whom this was the celebrated Harita), whom this bounteous cow also fed.

Bappa related to the sage all he knew of himself, received his blessing, and retired; but he went daily to visit him, to wash his feet, carry milk to him, and gather such wild flowers as were acceptable offerings to the deity. In return he received lessons of morality, and was initiated into the mysterious rites of Siva: and at length he was invested with the triple cordon of faith (tin parwa zunnar) by the hands of the sage, who became his spiritual guide, and bestowed on his pupil the title of ‘Regent (Diwan) of Eklinga.’ Bappa had proofs that his attentions to the saint and his devotions to Eklinga were acceptable, by a visit from his consort, ‘the lion-born goddess.’ From her hand he received the panoply of celestial fabrication, the work of Viswakarma (the Vulcan of Eastern mythology), which outvies all the arms ever forged for Greek or Trojan. The lance, bow, quiver, and arrows; a shield and sword (more famed than Balisarda) which the goddess girded on him with her own hand: the oath of fidelity and devotion was the ‘relief’ of this celestial investiture. Thus initiated into the mysteries of ‘the first’ (adi), admitted under the banners of Bhavani, Harita resolved to leave his pupil to his fortunes, and to quit the worship of the symbol for the presence of the deity in the mansions above. He informed Bappa of his design, and commanded him to be at the sacred spot early on the following morn; but Bappa showed his materiality by oversleeping himself, and on reaching the spot the sage had already made some progress in his car, borne by the Apsaras, or celestial messengers. He checked his aerial ascent to give a last token of affection to his pupil; and desiring him to reach up to receive his blessing, Bappa’s stature was extended to twenty cubits; but as he did not reach the car, he was commanded to open his mouth, when the sage did what was recorded as performed, about the same period, by Muhammad, who spat into the mouth of his favourite nephew, Husain, the son of Ali. Bappa showed his disgust and aversion by blinking, and the projected blessing fell on his foot, by which squeamishness he obtained only invulnerability by weapons instead of immortality. The saint was soon lost in the cerulean space. Thus marked as the favourite of heaven, and having learned from his mother that he was nephew to the Mori prince of Chitor, he ‘disdained a shepherd’s slothful life,’ and with some companions from these wilds quitted his retreat, and for the first time emerged into the plains. But, as if the brand of Bhavani was insufficient, he met with another hermit in the forest of the Tiger Mount, the famed Gorakhnath, who presented to him the double-edged sword, which, with the proper incantation, could ‘sever rocks.’ With this he opened the road to fortune leading to the throne of Chitor .

Chitor was at this period held by the Mori prince of the Pramar race, the ancient lords of Malwa, then paramount sovereigns of Hindustan: but whether this city was then the chief seat of power is not known. Various public works, reservoirs, and bastions, yet retain the name of this race.

Bappa’s connexion with the Mori obtained him a good reception; he was enrolled amongst the sawants or leaders, and a suitable estate conferred upon him. The inscription of the Mori prince’s reign, so often alluded to, affords a good idea of his power, and of the feudal manners of his court. He was surrounded by a numerous nobility, holding estates on the tenure of military service, but whom he had disgusted by his neglect, and whose jealousy he had provoked by the superior regard shown to Bappa. A foreign foe appearing at this time, instead of obeying the summons to attend, they threw up their grants, and tauntingly desired him to call on his favourite.

Bappa undertook the conduct of the war, and the chiefs, though dispossessed of their estates, accompanied him from a feeling of shame. The foe was defeated and driven out of the country; but instead of returning to Chitor, Bappa continued his course to the ancient seat of his family, Gajni, expelled the ‘barbarian’ called Salim, placed on the throne a chief of the Chaura tribe, and returned with the discontented nobles. Bappa, on this occasion, is said to have married the daughter of his enemy. The nobles quitted Chitor, leaving their defiance with their prince. In vain were the spiritual preceptor (Guru) and foster-brother (Dhabhai) sent as ambassadors: their only reply was, that as they had ‘eaten his salt,’ they would forbear their vengeance for twelve months. The noble deportment of Bappa won their esteem, and they transferred to him their service and homage. With the temptation of a crown, the gratitude of the Grahilot was given to the winds. On return they assaulted and carried Chitor, and, in the words of the chronicle, “Bappa took Chitor from the Mori and became himself the mor (crown) of the land”: he obtained by universal consent the title of ‘sun of the Hindus (Hindua suraj), preceptor of princes (Raj Guru), and universal lord (Chakravartin)’ .

He had a numerous progeny, some of whom returned to their ancient seats in Saurashtra, whose descendants were powerful chieftains in that tract so late as Akbar’s reign. Five sons went to Marwar, and the ancient Gohils ‘of the land of Kher,’ expelled and driven to Gohilwal, have lost sight of their ancestry, and by a singular fatality are in possession of the wreck of Valabhipura, ignorant of its history and their connexion with it, mixing with Arabs and following marine and mercantile pursuits; and the office of the bard having fallen into disrepute, they cannot trace their forefathers beyond Kherdhar.

The close of Bappa’s career is the strangest part of the legend, and which it might be expected they would be solicitous to suppress. Advanced in years, he abandoned his children and his country, carried his arms west to Khorasan, and there established himself, and married new wives from among the ‘barbarians,’ by whom he had a numerous offspring.

Bappa had reached the patriarchal age of one hundred when he died. An old volume of historical anecdotes, belonging to the chief of Delwara, states that he became an ascetic at the foot of Meru, where he was buried alive after having overcome all the kings of the west, as in Ispahan, Kandahar, Kashmir, Irak, Iran, Turan, and Kafiristan; all of whose daughters he married, and by whom he had one hundred and thirty sons, called the Nausshahra Pathans. Each of these founded a tribe, bearing the name of the mother. His Hindu children were ninety-eight in number, and were called Agni-upasi Suryavansi, or ‘sunborn fire-worshippers.’ The chronicles also record that (in like manner as did the subjects of the Bactrian king Menander, though from a different motive) the subjects of Bappa quarrelled for the disposal of his remains. The Hindu wished the fire to consume them; the ‘barbarian’ to commit them to earth; but on raising the pall while the dispute was raging, innumerable flowers of the lotus were found in the place of the remains of mortality: these were conveyed and planted in the lake. This is precisely what is related of the end of the Persian Nushirwan .

The Question of Dates.

—Having thus briefly sketched the history of the founder of the Guhilot dynasty in Mewar, we must now endeavour to establish the epoch of this important event in its annals. Although Bappa Rawal was nine generations after the sack of Valabhipura, the domestic annals give S. 191 (A.D. 135) for his birth; which the bards implicitly following, have vitiated the whole chronology. An important inscription in a character little known, establishes the fact of the Mori dynasty being in possession of Chitor in S. 770 (A.D. 714). Now the annals of the Rana’s house expressly state Bappa Rawal to be the nephew of the Mori prince of Chitor; that at the age of fifteen he was enrolled amongst the chieftains of his uncle, and that the vassals (before alluded to), in revenge for the resumption of their grants by the Mori, dethroned him and elevated as their sovereign the youthful Bappa. Notwithstanding this apparently irreconcilable anachronism, the family traditions accord with the inscription, except in date. Amidst such contradictions the development of the truth seemed impossible. Another valuable inscription of S. 1024 (A.D. 968), though giving the genealogy from Bappa to Sakti Kumar and corroborating that from Chitor, and which furnished convincing evidence, was not sanctioned by the prince or his chroniclers, who would admit nothing as valid that militated against their established era 191 for the birth of their founder. After six years’ residence and unremitting search amid ruins, archives, inscriptions, traditions, and whatever could throw light upon this point, the author quitted Udaipur with all these doubts in his mind, for Saurashtra, to prosecute his inquiries in the pristine abodes of the race. Then it was that he was rewarded, beyond his most sanguine expectations, by the discovery of an inscription which reconciled these conflicting authorities and removed every difficulty. This marble, found in the celebrated temple of Somnath, made mention of a distinct era, viz. the Valabhi Samvat, as being used in Saurashtra; which era was three hundred and seventy-five years subsequent to Vikramaditya.

On the sack of Valabhi thirty thousand families abandoned this ‘city of a hundred temples,’ and led by their priests found a retreat for themselves and their faith in Mordardes (Marwar), where they erected the towns of Sandrai and Bali, in which latter we recognise the name of the city whence they were expelled. The religion of Valabhi, and consequently of the colonists, was the Jain; and it was by a priest descended from the survivors of this catastrophe, and still with their descendants inhabiting those towns, that these most important documents were furnished to the author. The Sandrai roll assigns the year 305 (Valabhi era) for the destruction of Valabhi: another, also from Jain authority, gives 205; and as there were but nine princes from Vijayasen, the founder, to its fall, we can readily believe the first a numerical error. Therefore 205 + 375 = 580 S. Vikrama (A.D. 524), for the invasion of Saurashtra by ‘the barbarians from the north,’ and sack of Valabhipura.

Now if from 770, the date of the Mori tablet, we deduct 580, there remains 190; justifying the pertinacity with which the chroniclers of Mewar adhered to the date given in their annals for the birth of Bappa, viz. 191: though they were ignorant that this period was dated from the flight from Valabhipura.

Bappa, when he succeeded to the Mori prince, is said to have been fifteen years old; and his birth being one year anterior to the Mori inscription of 770 + 14 = S.V. 784 (A.D. 728), is the period for the foundation of the Guhilot dynasty in Mewar: since which, during a space of eleven hundred years, fifty-nine princes lineally descended from Bappa have sat on the throne of Chitor.

Though the bards and chroniclers will never forgive the temerity which thus curtails the antiquity of their founder, he is yet placed in the dawn of chivalry, when the Carlovingian dynasty was established in the west, and when Walid, whose bands planted ‘the green standard’ on the Ebro, was ‘commander of the faithful.’

From the deserted and now forgotten ‘city of the sun,’ Aitpur, the abode of wild beasts and savage Bhils, another memorial of the princes of Mewar was obtained. It relates to the prince Sakti Kumar. Its date is S. 1024 (A.D. 968), and it contains the names of fourteen of his ancestors in regular succession. Amongst these is Bappa, or Saila. When compared with the chronicles and family archives, it was highly gratifying to find that, with the exception of one superfluous name and the transposition of others, they were in perfect accordance.

Hume says, “Poets, though they disfigure the most certain history by their fictions, and use strange liberties with truth, when they are the sole historians, as among the Britons, have commonly some foundation for their wildest exaggerations.” The remark is applicable here; for the names which had been mouldering for nine centuries, far from the abode of man, are the same they had worked into their poetical legends. It was at this exact epoch that the arms of Islam, for the first time, crossed the Indus. In the ninety-fifth year of the Hegira, Muhammad bin Kasim, the general of the Caliph Walid, conquered Sind, and penetrated (according to early Arabian authors) to the Ganges; and although Elmacin mentions only Sind, yet other Hindu States were at this period convulsed from the same cause: witness the overthrow of Manikrae of Ajmer, in the middle of the eighth century, by a foe ‘coming in ships,’ Anjar specified as the point where they landed. If any doubt existed that it was Kasim who advanced to Chitor and was defeated by Bappa, it was set at rest by finding at this time in Chitor ‘Dahir, the prince of Debil.’ Abu-l Fazl records, from Arabian authorities, that Dahir was lord of Sind, and resided at his capital, Debal, the first place captured by Kasim in 95. His miserable end, and the destruction of his house, are mentioned by the historian, and account for the son being found with the Mori prince of Chitor.

Nine princes intervened between Bappa and Sakti Kumar, in two centuries (twenty-two years to each reign): just the time which should elapse from the founder, who ‘abandoned his country for Iran,’ in S. 820, or A.D. 764. Having thus established four epochs in the earlier history of the family, viz.—Kanaksen’Kanaksen’, A.D. 144; 2, Siladitya, and sack of Valabhi, A.D. 524; 3, Establishment in Chitor and Mewar, A.D. 720; 4, Sakti Kumar, A.D. 1068; we may endeavour to relieve this narrative by the notices which regard their Persian descent .

Chapter 3

Connexion of the Rānas with Persia.

—Historic truth has, in all countries, been sacrificed to national vanity: to its gratification every obstacle is made to give way; fictions become facts, and even religious prejudices vanish in this mirage of the imagination. What but this spurious zeal could for a moment induce any genuine Hindu to believe that, only twelve centuries ago, ‘an eater of beef’ occupied the chair of Rama, and enjoyed by universal acclaim the title of ‘Sun of the Hindus’; or that the most ancient dynasty in the world could owe its existence to the last of the Sassanian kings: that a slip from such a tree could be surreptitiously grafted on that majestic stem, which has flourished from the golden to the iron age, covering the land with its branches? That there existed a marked affinity in religious rites between the Rana’s family and the Guebres, or ancient Persians, is evident. With both, the chief object of adoration was the sun; each bore the image of the orb on their banners. The chief day in the seven was dedicated to the sun; to it is sacred the chief gate of the city, the principal bastion of every fortress. But though the faith of Islam has driven away the fairy inhabitants from the fountains of Mithras, that of Surya has still its devotees on the summit of Chitor, as at Valabhi: and could we trace with accuracy their creeds to a distant age, we might discover them to be of one family, worshipping the sun at the fountains of the Oxus and Jaxartes.

The darkest period of Indian history is during the six centuries following Vikramaditya, which are scarcely enlightened by a ray of knowledge: but India was undergoing great changes, and foreign tribes were pouring in from the north. To this period, the sixth century, the genealogies of the Puranas are brought down, which expressly declare (adopting the prophetic spirit to conceal the alterations and additions they then underwent) that at this time the genuine line of princes would be extinct, and that a mixed race would rule conjointly with foreign barbarians; as the Turushka, the Mauna, the Yavan, the Gorind, and Garddhabin. There is much of truth in this; nor is it to be doubted that many of the Rajput tribes entered India from the north-west regions about this period. Gor and Gardhaba have the same signification; the first is Persian; the second its version in Hindi, meaning the ‘wild ass,’ an appellation of the Persian monarch Bahram, surnamed Gor from his partiality to hunting that animal. Various authorities state Bahramgor being in India in the fifth century, and his having there left progeny by a princess of Kanauj. A passage extracted by the author from an ancient Jain MS. indicates that “in S. 523 Raja Gardhabela, of Kakustha, or Suryavansa, ruled in Valabhipura.” It has been surmised that Gardhabela was the son of Bahramgor, a son of whom is stated to have obtained dominion at Patan; which may be borne in mind when the authorities for the Persian extraction of the Rana’s family are given.

The Hindus, when conquered by the Muhammadans, naturally wished to gild the chains they could not break. To trace a common, though distant, origin with the conquerors was to remove some portion of the taint of dishonour which arose from giving their daughters in marriage to the Tatar emperors of Delhi; and a degree of satisfaction was derived from assuming that the blood thus corrupted once flowed from a common fountain .

Further to develop these claims of Persian descent, we shall commence with an extract from the Upadesa Prasād, a collection of historic fragments in the Magadhi dialect. "In Gujardes (Gujarat) there are eighty-four cities. In one of these, Kaira, resided the Brahman Devaditya, the expounder of the Vedas. He had an only child, Subhaga (of good fortune) by name, at once a maiden and a widow. Having learned from her preceptor the solar incantation, incautiously repeating it, the sun appeared and embraced her, and she thence became pregnant. The affliction of her father was diminished when he discovered the parent; nevertheless [as others might be less charitable] he sent her with a female attendant to Valabhipura, where she was delivered of twins, male and female. When grown up the boy was sent to school; but being eternally plagued about his mysterious birth, whence he received the nickname of Ghaibi (‘concealed’), in a fit of irritation he one day threatened to kill his mother if she refused to disclose the author of his existence. At this moment the sun revealed himself: he gave the youth a pebble, with which it was sufficient to touch his companions in order to overcome them. Being carried before the Balhara prince, who menaced Ghaibi, the latter slew him with the pebble, and became himself sovereign of Saurashtra, taking the name of Siladitya (from sila, ‘a stone or pebble,’ and aditya, ‘the sun’): his sister was married to the Raja of Broach." Such is the literal translation of a fragment totally unconnected with the history of the Rana’s family, though evidently bearing upon it. The father of Siladitya, according to the Sandrai roll and other authorities of that period, is Suraj (the sun) Rao, though two others make a Somaditya intervene .

Let us see what Abu-l Fazl says of the descent of the Ranas from Nushirwan: “The chief of the State was formerly called Rāwal, but for a long time past has been known as Rāna. He is of the Ghelot clan, and pretends to descent from Noshirwān the Just. An ancestor of this family through the vicissitudes of fortune came to Berār and was distinguished as the chief of Narnālah. About eight hundred years previous to the present time Narnālah was taken by the enemy and many were slain. One Bāpa, a child, was carried by his mother from this scene of desolation to Mewār, and found refuge with Rājah Mandalīkh, a Bhīl.”

The work which has furnished all the knowledge which exists on the Persian ancestry of the Mewar princes is the Maasiru-l-Umara, or that (in the author’s possession) founded on it, entitled Bisatu-l-Ghanim, or ‘Display of the Foe,’ written in A.H. 1204 [A.D. 1789]. The writer of this work styles himself Lachhmi Narayan Shafik Aurangabadi, or ‘the rhymer of Aurangabad.’Aurangabad.’ He professes to give an account of Sivaji, the founder of the Mahratta empire; for which purpose he goes deep into the lineage of the Ranas of Mewar, from whom Sivaji was descended, quoting at length the Maasiru-l-Umara, from which the following is a literal translation: "It is well known that the Rajas of Udaipur are exalted over all the princes of Hind. Other Hindu princes, before they can succeed to the throne of their fathers, must receive the khushka, or tilak of regality and investiture, from them. This type of sovereignty is received with humility and veneration. The khushka of these princes is made with human blood: their title is Rana, and they deduce their origin from Noshirwan-i-Adil (i.e. the Just), who conquered the countries of ——, and many parts of Hindustan. During his lifetime his son Noshizad, whose mother was the daughter of Kaiser of Rum, quitted the ancient worship and embraced the ‘faith of the Christians,’ and with numerous followers entered Hindustan. Thence he marched a great army towards Iran, against his father Noshirwan; who despatched his general, Rambarzin, with numerous forces to oppose him. An action ensued, in which Noshizad was slain; but his issue remained in Hindustan, from whom are descended the Ranas of Udaipur. Nushirwan had a wife from the Khakhan of China, by whom he had a son called Hormuz, declared heir to the throne shortly before his death. As according to the faith of the fire-worshippers it is not customary either to bury or to burn the dead, but to leave the corpse exposed to the rays of the sun, so it is said the body of Nushirwan has to this day suffered no decay, but is still fresh."

I now come to the account of Yazd, "the son of Shahriyar, the son of Khusru Parves, the son of Hormuz, the son of Nushirwan.

"Yazd was the last king of Ajam. It is well known he fought many battles with the Muhammadans. In the fifteenth year of the caliphat, Rustam, son of Ferokh, a great chief, was slain in battle by Saad-bin-wakas, who commanded for Omar, which was the death-blow to the fortunes of the house of Sassan: so that a remnant of it did not remain in A.H. 31, when Iran was seized by the Muhammadans. This battle had lasted four days when Rustam Ferokzad was slain by the hand of Hilkal, the son of Al Kumna, at Saad’s command ; though Firdausi asserts by Saad himself. Thirty thousand Muslims were slain, and the same number of the men of Ajam. To count the spoils was a torment. During this year (the thirty-first), the sixteenth of the prophet, the era of the Hegira was introduced. In A.H. 17 Abu Musa of Ashur seized Hormuz, the son of the uncle of Yazdegird, whom he sent with Yazdegird’s daughter to Imam Husain, and another daughter to Abubakr.

"Thus far have I extracted from the history of the fire-worshippers. He who has a mind to examine these, let him do so. The people of the religion of Zardusht have a full knowledge of all these events, with their dates; for the pleasure of their lives is the obtaining accounts of antiquity and astronomical knowledge, and their books contain information of two and three thousand years. It is also told, that when the fortunes of Yazdegird were on the wane, his family dispersed to different regions. The second daughter, Shahr Banu, was married to Imam Husain, who, when he fell a martyr (shahid), an angel carried her to heaven. The third daughter, Banu, was seized by a plundering Arab and carried into the wilds of Chichik, thirty coss from Yazd. Praying to God for deliverance, she instantly disappeared; and the spot is still held sacred by the Parsis, and named ‘the secret abode of perfect purity.’ Hither, on the twenty-sixth of the month Bahman, the Parsis yet repair to pass a month in pilgrimage, living in huts under indigenous vines skirting the rock, out of whose fissures water falls into a fountain below: but if the unclean approach the spring, it ceases to flow.

“Of the eldest daughter of Yazdegird, Maha Banu, the Parsis have no accounts; but the books of Hind give evidence to her arrival in that country, and that from her issue is the tribe Sesodia. But, at all events, this race is either of the seed of Nushishad, the son of Nushirwan, or of that of the daughter of Yazdegird.”

Thus have we adduced, perhaps, all the points of evidence for the supposed Persian origin of the Rana’s family. The period of the invasion of Saurashtra by Nushishad, who mounted the throne A.D. 531, corresponds well with the sack of Valabhi, A.D. 524 . The army he collected in Laristan to depose his father might have been from the Parthians, Getae, Huns, and other Scythic races then on the Indus, though it is unlikely, with such an object in view as the throne of Persia, that he would waste his strength in Saurashtra. Khusru Parvez, grandson of Nushirwan the great, and who assumed this title according to Firdausi, married Marian, the daughter of Maurice, the Greek emperor of Byzantium. She bore him Shirauah (the Siroes of the early Christian writers), who slew his father. It is difficult to separate the actions of the two Nushirwans, and still more to say which of them merited the epithet of adil, or ‘just.’

According to the ‘Tables’ in Moreri, Nushishad, son of Khusru the Great, reigned from A.D. 531 to 591. This is opposed to the Maasiru-l-Umara, which asserts that he was slain during his rebellion. Siroes, son of Khusru (the second Nushirwan) by his wife Marian, alternately called the friend and foe of the Christians, did raise the standard of revolt, and met the fate attributed to Nushishad; on which Yazdegird, his nephew, was proclaimed. The crown was intended for Shirauah’s younger brother, which caused the revolt, during which the elder sought refuge in India.

These revolutions in the Sassanian house were certainly simultaneous with those which occurred in the Rana’s, and no barrier existed to the political intercourse at least between the princely worshippers of Surya and Mithras. It is, therefore, curious to speculate even on the possibility of such a pedigree to a family whose ancestry is lost in the mists of time; and it becomes interesting when, from so many authentic sources, we can raise testimonies which would furnish, to one even untinctured with the love of hypothesis, grounds for giving ancestors to the Ranas in Maurice of Byzantium and Cyrus (Khusru) of Persia . We have a singular support to these historic relics in a geographical fact, that places on the site of the ancient Valabhi a city called Byzantium, which almost affords conclusive proof that it must have been the son of Nushirwan who captured Valabhi and Gajni, and destroyed the family of Siladitya; for it would be a legitimate occasion to name such conquest after the city where his Christian mother had had birth. Whichever of the propositions we adopt at the command of the author of The Annals of Princes, namely, “that the Sesodia race is of the seed of Nushishad, son of Nushirwan, or of that of Mahabanu, daughter of Yazdegird,” we arrive at a singular and startling conclusion, viz. that the ‘Hindua Suraj, descendant of a hundred kings,’ the undisputed possessor of the honours of Rama, the patriarch of the Solar race, is the issue of a Christian princess: that the chief prince amongst the nations of Hind can claim affinity with the emperors of ‘the mistress of the world,’ though at a time when her glory had waned, and her crown had been transferred from the Tiber to the Bosphorus.

But though I deem it morally impossible that the Ranas should have their lineage from any male branch of the Persian house, I would not equally assert that Mahabanu, the fugitive daughter of Yazdegird, may not have found a husband, as well as sanctuary, with the prince of Saurashtra; and she may be the Subhagna (mother of Siladitya), whose mysterious amour with the ‘sun’ compelled her to abandon her native city of Kaira. The son of Marian had been in Saurashtra, and it is therefore not unlikely that her grandchild should there seek protection in the reverses of her family.

The Salic law is here in full force, and honours, though never acquired by the female, may be stained by her; yet a daughter of the noble house of Sassan might be permitted to perpetuate the line of Rama without the reproach of taint.

We shall now abandon this point to the reader, and take leave of Yazdegird, the last of the house of Sassan, in the words of the historian of Rome: “Avec lui, on voit périr pour jamais la gloire et l’empire des Perses. Les rochers du Mazendaran et les sables du Kerman, furent les seuls asiles que les vainqueurs laissèrent aux sectateurs de Zoroastre” .

Chapter 4

Samarsi, Samar Singh.

—Having established Bappa on the throne of Chitor S. 784 (A.D. 728), we will proceed to glean from the annals, from the period of his departure for Iran, S. 820 (A.D. 764) to another halting point—the reign of Samarsi, S. 1249 (A.D. 1193); an important epoch, not only in the history of Mewar, but to the whole Hindu race; when the diadem of sovereignty was torn from the brow of the Hindu to adorn that of the Tatar. We shall not, however, overleap the four intervening centuries, though we may not be able to fill up the reigns of the eighteen princes whose “banner at this time was a golden sun on a crimson field,” and several of whose names yet live recorded “with an iron pen on the rock” of their native abodes.

An intermediate period, from Bappa to Samarsi, that of Sakti Kumar, is fixed by the Aitpur inscription in S. 1024 (A.D. 968); and from the more perishable yet excellent authority of an ancient Jain MS. the era of Allat, the ancestor of Sakti Kumar, was S. 922 (A.D. 866), four generations anterior. From Bappa’s departure for Iran, in A.D. 764, to the subversion of Hindu dominion in the reign of Samarsi, in A.D. 1193, we find recorded an intermediate Islamite invasion. This was during the reign of Khuman, between A.D. 812 and 836, which event forms the chief subject of the Khuman-Raesa, the most ancient of the poetic chronicles of Mewar .

As the history of India at this period is totally dark, we gladly take advantage of the lights thus afforded. By combining these facts with what is received as authentic, though scarcely less obscure or more exact than these native legends, we may furnish materials for the future historian. With this view, let us take a rapid sketch of the irruptions of the Arabians into India, from the rise of Islamism to the foundation of the Ghaznivid empire, which sealed the fate of the Hindus. The materials are but scanty. El-Makin, in his history of the Caliphs, passes over such intercourse almost without notice. Abu-l-Fazl, though not diffuse, is minute in what he does say, and we can confide in his veracity. Ferishta has a chapter devoted to this subject, which merits a better translation than yet exists. We shall, however, in the first place, touch on Bappa’s descendants, till we arrive at the point proper for the introduction of the intended sketch.

Of the twenty-four tribes of Guhilot, several issued from the founder, Bappa. Shortly after the conquest of Chitor, Bappa proceeded to Saurashtra and married the daughter of Yusufgol, prince of the island of Bandardiva. With his bride he conveyed to Chitor the statue of Vyanmata, the tutelary goddess of her race, who still divides with Eklinga the devotion of the Guhilot princes. The temple in which he enshrined this islandic goddess yet stands on the summit of Chitor, with many other monuments assigned by tradition to Bappa. This princess bore him Aparajit, who from being born in Chitor was nominated successor to the throne, to the exclusion of his less fortunate elder brother, Asil (born of the daughter of the Kaba (Pramara) prince of Kalibao near Dwaraka), who, however, obtained possessions in Saurashtra, and founded a race called the Asila Guhilots, whose descendants were so numerous, even in Akbar’s reign, as to be supposed able to bring into the field fifty thousand men at arms. We have nothing important to record of the actions of Aparajit, who had two sons, Kalbhoj and Nandkumar. Kalbhoj succeeded Aparajit, and his warlike qualities are extolled in an inscription discovered by the author in the valley of Nagda. Nandkumar slew Bhimsen Dor (Doda), and possessed himself of Deogarh in the Deccan.

Khumān I.

—Khuman succeeded Kalbhoj. His name is remarkable in the history of Mewar. He came to the throne at the beginning of the ninth century, when Chitor was assailed by another formidable invasion of Muhammadans. The chief object of the Khuman Raesa is to celebrate the defence made on this occasion, and the value of this Raesa consists in the catalogue of the princes who aided in defending this bulwark of the Hindu faith. The bard, in an animated strain, makes his sovereign on this occasion successfully defend the ‘crimson standard’ of Mewar, treat with contempt the demand for tribute, and after a violent assault, in which the ‘barbarian’ is driven back, follow and discomfit him in the plan, carrying back the hostile leader, Mahmud, captive. With this event, which introduces the name of Mahmud two centuries before the conqueror of Ghazni, we will pause, and resume the promised sketch of the intercourse of Arabia and Hindustan at this period.

The Muhammadan Invasion, A.D. 644-55.

—The first intimation of the Moslems attempting the invasion of India is during the caliphat of Omar, who built the port of Bassorah at the mouth of the Tigris, chiefly to secure the trade of Gujarat and Sind; into which latter country a powerful army penetrated under Abul Aas, who was killed in battle at Aror. The Caliph Osman, who succeeded Omar, sent to explore the state of India, while he prepared an army to invade it in person: a design which he never fulfilled. The generals of the Caliph Ali made conquests in Sind, which they abandoned at Ali’s death. While Yazid was governor of Khorasan several attempts were made on India, as also during the caliphat of Abdu-l Malik, but without any lasting results. It was not till the reign of Walid that any successful invasion took place. He not only finally conquered Sind and the adjoining continent of India, but rendered tributary all that part of India on this side the Ganges. What an exalted idea must we not form of the energy and rapidity of such conquests, when we find the arms of Islam at once on the Ganges and the Ebro, and two regal dynasties simultaneously cut off, that of Roderic, the last of the Goths of Andaloos, and Dahir Despati in the valley of the Indus. It was in A.H. 99 (A.D. 712, S. 774) that Muhammad bin Kasim vanquished and slew Dahir, prince of Sind, after numerous conflicts. Amongst the spoils of victory sent to the caliph on this occasion were the daughters of the subjugated monarch, who were the cause of Kasim’s destruction, when he was on the eve of carrying the war against Raja Harchand of Kanauj. Some authorities state that he actually prosecuted it; and as Sind remained a dependency of the caliphat during several successive reigns, the successor of Kasim may have executed his plans. Little is said of India from this period to the reign of Al-Mansur, except in regard to the rebellion of Yazid in Khorasan, and the flight of his son to Sind. The eight sovereigns, who rapidly followed, were too much engaged with the Christians of the west and the Huns on the Caspian to think of India. Their armies were then in the heart of France, which was only saved from the Koran by their overthrow at Tours by Charles Martel.

GUHILOT AND CONTEMPORARY PRINCES

Guhilot
Princes Eras. Caliphs of Baghdad
and
Kings of Ghazni. Eras. Remarks.

Samvat. Christian. A.H. A.D.

Caliphs of Baghdad.

Bappa, born 769 713 Walid (7th Ummaiya Caliph) 86 to 96 705 to 715 Conquered India to the Ganges.

——— obtained Chitor 784 728 Omar II. (9th do.) 99 to 102 718 to 721 Sindi conquered. The Mori prince Chitor attacked by Muhammad (son of Kasim), the General of Omar.

——— governs Mewar Hasham (10th do.) 104 to 125 723 to 742 Battle of Tours, A.D. 732, and defeat of the Caliph’s army, under Abdulrahman, by Charles Martel.

——— abandons Chitor 820 764 Al-Mansur Abbasi (2nd do.) 136 to 158 754 to 775 Final conquest of Sind, and the name of its capital, Aror, changed to Mansura. Bappa, founder of the Guhilot race in Mewar, retires to Iran.

Aparajit, Kalbhoj Harunu-r-rashid (5th do.) 170 to 193 786 to 809 Partition of the caliphat amongst Harun’s sons. The second, Al-Mamun, obtains Zabulistan, Sind, and India, and ruled them till A.D. 813, when he became Caliph.

Khuman 868 to 892 812 to 836 Al-Mamun (7th do.) 198 to 218 813 to 833 Invasion and attack on Chitor from Zabulistan.

Bhartaribhat.

Singhji.

Allat.

Narabahan. Kings of Ghazni.

Salivahan.

Sakti Kumar 1024 968 Alptigin 350 957 Inscription of Sakti-kumar from ruins of Aitpur.

Amba Pasao.

Naravarman Sabuktigin 367 977 Invasion of India.

Jasuvarman [or Kirtivarman] Mahmud 387 to 418 997 to 1027 Invasions of India, destruction of Aitpur.

Al-Mansur, when only the lieutenant of the Caliph Abbas, held the government of Sind and of India, and made the island of Bakhar on the Indus, and the adjacent Aror, the ancient capital, his residence, naming it Mansura; and it was during his government that Bappa Rawal abandoned Chitor for Iran.

The celebrated Harunu-r-rashid, contemporary of Charlemagne, in apportioning his immense empire amongst his sons, gave to the second, Al-Mamun, Khorasan, Zabulistan, Kabulistan, Sind, and Hindustan. Al-Mamun, on the death of Harun, deposed his brother, and became caliph in A.H. 198 or A.D. 813, and ruled to 833, the exact period of the reign of Khuman, prince of Chitor. The domestic history brings the enemy assailant of Chitor from Zabulistan; and as the leader’s name is given Mahmud Khorasan Pat, there can be little doubt that it is an error arising from ignorance of the copyist, and should be Mamun.

Mahmūd’s Invasion.

—Within twenty years after this event, the sword of conquest and conversion was withdrawn from India, and Sind was the only province left to Mutawakkil (A.D. 850 [847-861]), the grandson of Harun, for a century after whom the throne of Baghdad, like that of ancient Rome, was sold by her praetorians to the highest bidder. From this time we find no mention whatever of Hindustan, or even of Sind, until Sabuktigin, governor of Khorasan, hoisted the standard of independent sovereignty at Ghazni. In A.H. 365 (A.D. 974) he carried his arms across the Indus, forcing the inhabitants to abandon the religion of their ancestors, and to read the Koran from the altars of Bal and Krishna. Towards the close of this century he made his last invasion, accompanied by his son, the celebrated Mahmud, destined to be the scourge of the Hindu race, who early imbibed the paternal lesson inculcating the extirpation of infidels. Twelve several visitations did Mahmud make with his Tatar hordes, sweeping India of her riches, destroying her temples and architectural remains, and leaving the country plunged in poverty and ignorance. From the effect of these incursions she never recovered; for though she had a respite of a century between Mahmud and the final conquest, it was too short to repair what it had cost ages to rear: the temples of Somnath, of Chitor, and Girnar are but types of the magnificence of past times. The memorial of Sakti Kumar proves him to have been the contemporary of Sabuktigin, and to one of his son’s visitations is attributed the destruction of the ‘city of the sun’ (Aitpur), his capital.

Attack on Chitor.

—Having thus condensed the little information afforded by Muhammadan historians of the connexion between the caliphs of Baghdad and princes of Hind, from the first to the end of the fourth century of the Hegira, we shall revert to the first recorded attack on the Mori prince of Chitor, which brought Bappa into notice. This was either by Yazid or Muhammad bin Kasim from Sind. Though in the histories of the caliphs we can only expect to find recorded those expeditions which were successful, or had some lasting results, there are inroads of their revolted lieutenants or their frontier deputies, which frequently, though indistinctly, alluded to in Hindu annals, have no place in Muhammadan records. Throughout the period mentioned there was a stir amongst the Hindu nations, in which we find confusion and dethronement from an unknown invader, who is described as coming sometimes by Sind, sometimes by sea, and not unfrequently as a demon and magician; but invariably as mlechchha, or ‘barbarian.’ From S. 750 to S. 780 (A.D. 694 to 724), the annals of the Yadus, the Chauhans, the Chawaras, and the Guhilots, bear evidence to simultaneous convulsions in their respective houses at this period. In S. 750 (A.H. 75) the Yadu Bhatti was driven from his capital Salpura in the Panjab, across the Sutlej into the Indian desert; the invader named Farid. At the same period Manika Rae, the Chauhan prince of Ajmer, was assailed and slain.

The Muster of the Clans.

—The first of the Khichi princes who occupied the Duab of Sindsagar in the Panjab, as well as the ancestor of the Haras established in Golkonda, was expelled at the same time. The invader is treated in the genuine Hindu style as a Danava, or demon, and is named Ghairaram (i.e. restless), from Kujliban, a term geographically given to a portion of the Himalaya mountains about the glaciers of the Ganges. The ancestor of the founder of Patan was expelled from his petty islandic dominion on the coast of Saurashtra at the same time. This is the period when Yazid was the caliph’s lieutenant in Khorasan, and when the arms of Walid conquered to the Ganges; nor is there a doubt that Yazid or Kasim was the author of all these revolutions in the Hindu dynasties. We are supported in this by the names of the princes contained in the catalogue who aided to defend Chitor and the Mori prince on this occasion. It is evident that Chitor was, alternately with Ujjain, the seat of sovereignty of the Pramara at this period, and, as it became the rallying point of the Hindus, that this race was the first in consequence. We find the prince of Ajmer, and the quotas of Saurashtra and Gujarat ; Angatsi, lord of the Huns; Busa, the lord of the North; Sheo, the prince of the Jarejas; the Johya, lord of Jangaldes; the Aswaria, the Sepat, the Kulhar, the Malan, the Ohir, the Hul, and many others, having nothing of the Hindu in name, now extinct. But the most conspicuous is ‘Dahir Despati from Debal.’ This is erroneously written Delhi, the seat of the Tuars; whereas we recognize the name of the prince of Sind, slain by Kasim, whose expatriated son doubtless found refuge in Chitor.

The Defeat of the Enemy.

—This attack on the Mori prince was defeated chiefly through the bravery of the youthful Guhilot. The foe from Kujliban, though stated to have advanced by Mathura, retreated by Saurashtra and Sind, pursued by Bappa. He found the ancient seat of his ancestors, Gajni, still in the possession of the ‘Asur’: a term as well as mlechchha, or ‘barbarian,’ always given to the Islamite at this period. Salim, who held Gajni, was attacked and forced to surrender, and Bappa inducted into this stronghold of his ancestors a nephew of his own. It is no less singular than honourable to their veracity that the annals should record the fact, so contrary to their religion, of Bappa having married the daughter of the conquered Salim; and we have a right to infer that it was from the influence acquired by this union that he ultimately abandoned the sovereignty of Mewar and the title of ‘Hindua Suraj’ to become the founder of the ‘one hundred and thirty tribes of Naushahra Pathans’ of the west. It is fair to conclude from all these notices regarding the founder of the Guhilot race in Chitor that he must have abjured his faith for that of Islam; and it is probable (though the surmise must ever remain unproved) that, under some new title applicable to such change, we may have, in one of the early distinguished leaders of ‘the Faith,’ the ancestor of the Guhilots.

Khumān II.

—Let us now proceed to the next irruption of the Islamite invaders in the reign of Khuman, from A.D. 812 to 836. Though the leader of this attack is styled ‘Mahmud Khorasan Pat,’ it is evident from the catalogue of Hindu princes who came to defend Chitor that this ‘lord of Khorasan’ was at least two centuries before the son of Sabuktigin; and as the period is in perfect accordance with the partition of the caliphat by Harun amongst his sons, we can have no hesitation in assigning such invasion to Mamun, to whose share was allotted Khorasan, Sind, and the Indian dependencies. The records of this period are too scanty to admit of our passing over in silence even a barren catalogue of names, which, as texts, with the aid of collateral information, may prove of some benefit to the future antiquarian and historian.

"From Gajni came the Guhilot; the Tak from Asir; from Narlai the Chauhan; the Chalukya from Rahargarh; from Setubandha the Jarkhera; from Mandor the Khairavi; from Mangrol the Makwahana; from Jethgarh the Joria; from Taragarh the Rewar; the Kachhwaha from Narwar; from Sanchor the Kalam; from Junagarh the Dasanoh; from Ajmer the Gaur; from Lohadargarh the Chandano; from Dasaundi the Dor; from Delhi the Tuar; from Patan the Chawara, preserver of royalty (Rajdhar); from Jalor the Sonigira; from Sirohi the Deora; from Gagraun the Khichi; the Jadon from Junagarh; the Jhala from Patri; from Kanauj the Rathor; from Chotiala the Bala; from Piramgarh the Gohil; from Jaisalgarh the Bhatti; the Busa from Lahore; the Sankhla from Roneja; the Sehat from Kherligarh; from Mandalgarh the Nikumbha; the Bargujar from Rajor; from Karangarh the Chandel; from Sikar the Sikarwal; from Umargarh the Jethwa; from Pali the Bargota; from Khantargarh the Jareja; from Jirga the Kherwar; from Kashmir the Parihara."

Of the Guhilot from Gajni we have said enough; nor shall we comment on the Tak, or his capital, Asir, which now belongs to the British Government. The Chauhan, who came from Narlai, was a celebrated branch of the Ajmer house, and claims the honour of being the parent of the Sonigiras of Jalor and the Deoras of Sirohi. Nadol is mentioned by Ferishta as falling a prey to one of Mahmud’s invasions, who destroyed its ancient temples; but from erroneous punctuation it is lost in the translation as Bazule. Of Rahargarh and the Jarkhera from Setubandha (on the Malabar coast) nothing is known. Of the Khairavi from Mandor we can only say that it appears to be a branch of the Pramaras (who reckoned Mandor one of the nine strongholds, ‘Nau-kot,’ under its dominion), established anterior to the Pariharas, who at this period had sovereignty in Kashmir. Both the Dor and his capital, Dasaundi, are described in ancient books as situated on the Ganges below Kanauj.

It is a subject of regret that the annals do not mention the name of the Tuar prince of Delhi, which city could not have been refounded above a century when this call was made upon its aid. Abu-l Fazl, Ferishta, their translators, and those who have followed them have been corrected by the Edinburgh Review, whose critical judgment on this portion of ancient history is eminently good. I possess the original Hindu record used by Abu-l Fazl, which gives S. 829 for the first Anangpal instead of S. 429; and as there were but nineteen princes who intervened until his dynasty was set aside by the Chauhan, it requires no argument to support the four instead of eight centuries. The former will give the just average of twenty-one years to a reign. The name of Anangpal was titular in the family, and the epithet was applied to the last as to the first of the race.

The name of the Chawara prince of Patan (Anhilwara) being recorded amongst the auxiliaries of Khuman, is another satisfactory proof of the antiquity of this invasion; for this dynasty was extinct, and succeeded by the Solankis, in S. 998 (A.D. 942), fifty years prior to Mahmud of Ghazni, who captured Patan during the reign of Chawand, the second Solanki prince.

The Sonigira, who came from Jalor, is a celebrated branch of the Chauhan race, but we are ignorant of the extent of time that it held this fortress: and as nothing can invalidate the testimonies afforded by the names of the Chawara of Patan, the Kachhwaha of Narwar, the Tuar of Delhi, and the Rathor from Kanauj, there can be no hesitation at pointing out the anachronisms of the chronicle, which states the Deora from Sirohi, the Khichi from Gagraun, or the Bhatti from Jaisalgarh, amongst the levies on this occasion; and which we must affirm to be decided interpolations, the two first being at that period in possession of the Pramara, and the latter not erected for three centuries later. That the Deoras, the Khichis, and the Bhattis came to the aid of Khuman, we cannot doubt; but the copyist, ignorant even of the names of the ancient capitals of these tribes, Chhotan, Sindsagar, and Tanot, substituted those which they subsequently founded.

The Jadon (Yadu) from Junagarh (Girnar) was of the race of Krishna, and appeared long to have held possession of this territory; and the names of the Khengars, of this tribe, will remain as long as the stupendous monuments they reared on this sacred hill. Besides the Jadon, we find Saurashtra sending forth the Jhalas, the Balas, and the Gohils to the aid of the descendant of the lord of Valabhipura, whose paramount authority they once all acknowledged, and who appeared to have long maintained influence in that distant region.

Of the tribe of Busa, who left their capital, Lahore, to succour Chitor, we have no mention, further than the name being enumerated amongst the unassigned tribes of Rajputs. Ferishta frequently notices the princes of Lahore in the early progress of Islamism, though he does not tell us the name of the tribe. In the reign of the caliph Al-Mansur, A.H. 143 (A.D. 761), the Afghans of Kirman and Peshawar, who, according to this authority, were a Coptic colony expelled from Egypt, had increased in such numbers as to abandon their residence about the ‘hill of Sulaiman,’ and crossing the Indus, wrested possessions from the Hindu princes of Lahore. This frontier warfare with a tribe which, though it had certainly not then embraced the faith of Islam, brought to their succour the forces of the caliph in Zabulistan, so that in five months seventy battles were fought with varied success; but the last, in which the Lahore prince carried his arms to Peshawar, produced a peace. Hence arose a union of interests between them and the hill tribe of Gakkhar, and all the Kohistan west of the Indus was ceded to them on the condition of guarding this barrier into Hindustan against invasion. For this purpose the fortress of Khaibar was erected in the chief pass of the Koh-i-Daman. For two centuries after this event Ferishta is silent on this frontier warfare, stating that henceforth Hindustan was only accessible through Sind. When Aliptigin first crossed the Indus, the prince of Lahore and the Afghans still maintained this alliance and united to oppose him. Jaipal was then prince of Lahore; and it is on this event that Ferishta, for the first time, mentions the tribe of Bhatti, “at the advice of whose prince he conferred the command of the united forces on an Afghan chief,” to whom he assigned the provinces of Multan and Lamghan. From this junction of interests the princes of Lahore enjoyed comparative security, until Sabuktigin and Mahmud compelled the Afghans to serve them: then Lahore was captured. The territory dependent upon Lahore, at this period, extended from Sirhind to Lamghan, and from Kashmir to Multan. Bhatinda divided with Lahore the residence of its princes. Their first encounter was at Lingham, on which occasion young Mahmud first distinguished himself, and as the historian says, “the eyes of the heavens were obscured at seeing his deeds.” A tributary engagement was the result, which Jaipal soon broke; and being aided by levies from all the princes of Hindustan, marched an army of one hundred thousand men against Sabuktigin, and was again defeated on the banks of the Indus. He was at length invested and taken in Bhatinda by Mahmud, when he put himself to death. The successors of Jaipal are mentioned merely as fugitives, and always distinct from the princes of Delhi. It is most probable that they were of the tribe termed Busa in the annals of Mewar, possibly a subdivision of another; though Ferishta calls the prince of Lahore a Brahman.

The Sankhla from Roneja. Both tribe and abode are well known: it is a subdivision of the Pramara. Harbuji Sankhla was the Paladin of Marwar, in which Roneja was situated.

The Sehat from Kherligarh was a northern tribe, dwelling about the Indus, and though entirely unknown to the modern genealogists of India, is frequently mentioned in the early history of the Bhattis, when their possessions extended on both sides of the Hyphasis. As intermarriages between the Bhattis and Sehats are often spoken of, it must have been Rajput. It most probably occupied the province of Swat, the Suvat of D’Anville, a division of the province of Ashthanagar, where dwelt the Assakenoi of Alexander; concerning which this celebrated geographer says, “Il est mention de Suvat comme d’un canton du pays d’Ash-nagar dans la même géographie turque” (Ecl. p. 25). The whole of this ground was sacred to the Jadon tribe from the most remote antiquity, from Multan, the hills of Jud, to Aswinikot (the Tshehin-kote of D’Anville), which, built on the point of confluence of the Choaspes of the Greeks with the Indus, marks the spot where dwelt the Assakenoi, corroborated by the Puranas, which mention the partition of all these territories amongst the sons of Bajaswa, the lord of Kampilnagara, the grand subdivision of the Yadu race. In all likelihood the Sehat, who came to the aid of Khuman of Chitor, was a branch of these Assakenoi, the opponents of Alexander. The modern town of Dinkot appears to occupy the site of Aswinikot, though D’Anville feels inclined to carry it into the heart of Bajaur and place it on the rock (silla) Aornos. Such the Sehat; not improbably the Soha, one of the eight subdivisions of the Yadu. When, in S. 785, the Bhatti chief Rao Tanu was driven across the Sutlej, the Sehats are mentioned with other tribes as forming the army of Husain Shah, with the Barahas, the Judis, and Johyas (the Juds and Jinjohyas of Babur), the Butas, and the ‘men of Dud.’

The Chandel, from Karangarh, occupied the tracts now termed Bundelkhand.

We shall pass over the other auxiliary tribes and conclude with the Parihar, who came from Kashmir on this occasion; a circumstance entirely overlooked in the dissertation on this tribe; nor does this isolated fact afford room for further discussion on a race which expelled the Pramaras from Mandor.

Such aids, who preserved Khuman when assailed by the ‘Khorasan Pat,’ fully demonstrate the antiquity of the annals, which is further attested by inscriptions. Khuman fought twenty-four great battles, and his name, like that of Caesar, became a family distinction. At Udaipur, if you make a false step, or even sneeze, you hear the ejaculation of ‘Khuman aid you!’ Khuman, by the advice of the Brahmans, resigned the gaddi to his younger son, Jograj; but again resumed it, slaying his advisers and execrating the name of Brahman, which he almost exterminated in his own dominions. Khuman was at length slain by his own son, Mangal; but the chiefs expelled the parricide, who seized upon Lodorwa in the northern desert, and there established the Mangalia Guhilots.

Bhartribhat III.

—Bhartribhat (familiarly Bhato) succeeded. In his reign, and in that of his successor, the territory dependent on Chitor was greatly increased. All the forest tribes, from the banks of the Mahi to Abu, were subjugated, and strongholds erected, of which Dharangarh and Ujargarh still remain to maintain them. He established no less than thirteen of his sons in independent possessions in Malwa and Gujarat, and these were distinguished as the Bhatera Guhilots.

We shall now leap over fifteen generations; which, though affording a few interesting facts to the antiquary, would not amuse the general reader. We will rest satisfied with stating that the Chauhans of Ajmer and the Guhilots of Chitor were alternately friends and foes; that Durlabh Chauhan was slain by Bersi Rawal in a grand battle fought at Kawaria, of which the Chauhan annals state ‘that their princes were now so powerful as to oppose the chief of Chitor.’ Again, in the next reign, we find the renowned Bisaldeo, son of Durlabh, combining with Rawal Tejsi of Chitor to oppose the progress of Islamite invasion: facts recorded by inscriptions as well as by the annals. We may close these remarks on the fifteen princes, from Khuman to Samarsi, with the words of Gibbon on the dark period of Guelphic annals: “It may be presumed that they were illiterate and valiant; that they plundered in their youth, and reared churches in their old age; that they were fond of arms, horses, and hunting”; and, we may add, continued bickering with their vassals within when left unemployed by the enemy from without .

Chapter 5

Although the whole of this chain of ancestry, from Kanaksen in the second, Vijaya the founder of Valabhi in the fourth, to Samarsi in the thirteenth century, cannot be discriminated with perfect accuracy, we may affirm, to borrow a metaphor, that “the two extremities of it are riveted in truth”: and some links have at intervals been recognized as equally valid. We will now extend the chain to the nineteenth century.

Samar Singh, Samarsi: The Tuars of Delhi.

—Samarsi was born in S. 1206. Though the domestic annals are not silent on his acts, we shall recur chiefly to the bard of Delhi for his character and actions, and the history of the period. Before we proceed, however, a sketch of the political condition of Hindustan during the last of the Tuar sovereigns of Delhi, derived from this authority and in the bard’s own words, may not be unacceptable. "In Patan is Bhola Bhim the Chalukya, of iron frame. On the mountain Abu, Jeth Pramara, in battle immovable as the star of the north. In Mewar is Samar Singh, who takes tribute from the mighty, a wave of iron in the path of Delhi’s foe. In the midst of all, strong in his own strength, Mandor’s prince, the arrogant Nahar Rao, the might of Maru, fearing none. In Delhi the chief of all Ananga, at whose summons attended the princes of Mandor, Nagor, Sind, Jalwat, and others on its confines, Peshawar, Lahore, Kangra, and its mountain chiefs, with Kasi, Prayag, and Garh Deogir. The lords of Simar were in constant danger of his power." The Bhatti, since their expulsion from Zabulistan, had successively occupied as capitals, Salivahanapur in the Panjab, Tanot, Derawar, which last they founded, and the ancient Lodorwa, which they conquered in the desert; and at the period in question were constructing their present residence, Jaisalmer. In this nook they had been fighting for centuries with the lieutenants of the Caliph at Aror, occasionally redeeming their ancient possessions as far as the city of the Tak on the Indus. Their situation gave them little political interest in the affairs of Hindustan until the period of Prithiraj, one of whose principal leaders, Achales, was the brother of the Bhatti prince. Anangpal, from this description, was justly entitled to be termed the paramount sovereign of Hindustan; but he was the last of a dynasty of nineteen princes, who had occupied Delhi nearly four hundred years, from the time of the founder Bilan Deo, who, according to a manuscript in the author’s possession, was only an opulent Thakur when he assumed the ensigns of royalty in the then deserted Indraprastha, taking the name of Anangpal, ever after titular in the family. The Chauhans of Ajmer owed at least homage to Delhi at this time, although Bisaldeo had rendered it almost nominal; and to Someswar, the fourth in descent, Anangpal was indebted for the preservation of this supremacy against the attempts of Kanauj, for which service he obtained the Tuar’s daughter in marriage, the issue of which was Prithiraj, who when only eight years of age was proclaimed successor to the Delhi throne.

Prithiraj.

—Jaichand of Kanauj and Prithiraj bore the same relative situation to Anangpal; Bijaipal, the father of the former, as well as Someswar, having had a daughter of the Tuar to wife. This originated the rivalry between the Chauhans and Rathors, which ended in the destruction of both. When Prithiraj mounted the throne of Delhi, Jaichand not only refused to acknowledge his supremacy, but set forth his own claims to this distinction. In these he was supported by the prince of Patan Anhilwara (the eternal foe of the Chauhans), and likewise by the Parihars of Mandor. But the affront given by the latter, in refusing to fulfil the contract of bestowing his daughter on the young Chauhan, brought on a warfare, in which this first essay was but the presage of his future fame. Kanauj and Patan had recourse to the dangerous expedient of entertaining bands of Tatars, through whom the sovereign of Ghazni was enabled to take advantage of their internal broils.

Samarsi, prince of Chitor, had married the sister of Prithiraj, and their personal characters, as well as this tie, bound them to each other throughout all these commotions, until the last fatal battle on the Ghaggar. From these feuds Hindustan never was free. But unrelenting enmity was not a part of their character: having displayed the valour of the tribe, the bard or Nestor of the day would step in, and a marriage would conciliate and maintain in friendship such foes for two generations. From time immemorial such has been the political state of India, as represented by their own epics, or in Arabian or Persian histories: thus always the prey of foreigners, and destined to remain so. Samarsi had to contend both with the princes of Patan and Kanauj; and although the bard says “he washed his blade in the Jumna,” the domestic annals slur over the circumstance of Siddharaja-Jayasingha having actually made a conquest of Chitor; for it is not only included in the eighteen capitals enumerated as appertaining to this prince, but the author discovered a tablet in Chitor, placed there by his successor, Kumarpal, bearing the date S. 1206, the period of Samarsi’s birth. The first occasion of Samarsi’s aid being called in by the Chauhan emperor was on the discovery of treasure at Nagor, amounting to seven millions of gold, the deposit of ancient days. The princes of Kanauj and Patan, dreading the influence which such sinews of war would afford their antagonist, invited Shihabu-d-din to aid their designs of humiliating the Chauhan, who in this emergency sent an embassy to Samarsi. The envoy was Chand Pundir, the vassal chief of Lahore, and guardian of that frontier. He is conspicuous from this time to the hour “when he planted his lance at the ford of the Ravi,” and fell in opposing the passage of Shihabu-d-din. The presents he carries, the speech with which he greets the Chitor prince, his reception, reply, and dismissal are all preserved by Chand. The style of address and the apparel of Samarsi betoken that he had not laid aside the office and ensigns of a ‘Regent of Mahadeva.’ A simple necklace of the seeds of the lotus adorned his neck; his hair was braided, and he is addressed as Jogindra, or chief of ascetics. Samarsi proceeded to Delhi; and it was arranged, as he was connected by marriage with the prince of Patan, that Prithiraj should march against this prince, while he should oppose the army from Ghazni. He (Samarsi) accordingly fought several indecisive battles, which gave time to the Chauhan to terminate the war in Gujarat and rejoin him. United, they completely discomfited the invaders, making their leader prisoner. Samarsi declined any share of the discovered treasure, but permitted his chiefs to accept the gifts offered by Chauhan. Many years elapsed in such subordinate warfare, when the prince of Chitor was again constrained to use his buckler in defence of Delhi and its prince, whose arrogance and successful ambition, followed by disgraceful inactivity, invited invasion with every presage of success. Jealousy and revenge rendered the princes of Patan, Kanauj, Dhar, and the minor courts indifferent spectators of a contest destined to overthrow them all.

The Death of Samar Singh.

—The bard gives a good description of the preparations for his departure from Chitor, which he was destined never to see again. The charge of the city was entrusted to a favourite and younger son, Karna: which disgusted the elder brother, who went to the Deccan to Bidar, where he was well received by an Abyssinian chief, who had there established himself in sovereignty. Another son, either on this occasion or on the subsequent fall of Chitor, fled to the mountains of Nepal, and there spread the Guhilot line. It is in this, the last of the books of Chand, termed The Great Fight, that we have the character of Samarsi fully delineated. His arrival at Delhi is hailed with songs of joy as a day of deliverance. Prithiraj and his court advance seven miles to meet him, and the description of the greeting of the king of Delhi and his sister, and the chiefs on either side who recognize ancient friendships, is most animated. Samarsi reads his brother-in-law an indignant lecture on his unprincely inactivity, and throughout the book divides attention with him.

In the planning of the campaign, and march towards the Ghaggar to meet the foe , Samarsi is consulted, and his opinions are recorded. The bard represents him as the Ulysses of the host: brave, cool, and skilful in the fight; prudent, wise, and eloquent in council; pious and decorous on all occasions; beloved by his own chiefs, and reverenced by the vassals of the Chauhan. In the line of march no augur or bard could better explain the omens, none in the field better dress the squadrons for battle, none guide his steed or use his lance with more address. His tent is the principal resort of the leaders after the march or in the intervals of battle, who were delighted by his eloquence or instructed by his knowledge. The bard confesses that his precepts of government are chiefly from the lips of Khuman; and of his best episodes and allegories, whether on morals, rules for the guidance of ambassadors, choice of ministers, religious or social duties (but especially those of the Rajput to the sovereign), the wise prince of Chitor is the general organ.

On the last of three days’ desperate fighting Samarsi was slain, together with his son Kalyan, and thirteen thousand of his household troops and most renowned chieftains. His beloved Pirtha, on hearing the fatal issue, her husband slain, her brother captive, the heroes of Delhi and Chitor “asleep on the banks of the Ghaggar, in the wave of the steel,” joined her lord through the flame, nor waited the advance of the Tatar king, when Delhi was carried by storm, and the last stay of the Chauhans, Prince Rainsi, met death in the assault. The capture of Delhi and its monarch, the death of his ally of Chitor, with the bravest and best of their troops, speedily ensured the further and final success of the Tatar arms; and when Kanauj fell, and the traitor to his nation met his fate in the waves of the Ganges, none were left to contend with Shihabu-d-din the possession of the regal seat of the Chauhan. Scenes of devastation, plunder, and massacre commenced, which lasted through ages; during which nearly all that was sacred in religion or celebrated in art was destroyed by these ruthless and barbarous invaders. The noble Rajput, with a spirit of constancy and enduring courage, seized every opportunity to turn upon his oppressor. By his perseverance and valour he wore out entire dynasties of foes, alternately yielding ‘to his fate,’ or restricting the circle of conquest. Every road in Rajasthan was moistened with torrents of blood of the spoiled and the spoiler. But all was of no avail; fresh supplies were ever pouring in, and dynasty succeeded dynasty, heir to the same remorseless feeling which sanctified murder, legalized spoliation, and deified destruction. In these desperate conflicts entire tribes were swept away whose names are the only memento of their former existence and celebrity.

Gallant Resistance of the Rājputs.

—What nation on earth would have maintained the semblance of civilization, the spirit or the customs of their forefathers, during so many centuries of overwhelming depression but one of such singular character as the Rajput? Though ardent and reckless, he can, when required, subside into forbearance and apparent apathy, and reserve himself for the opportunity of revenge. Rajasthan exhibits the sole example in the history of mankind of a people withstanding every outrage barbarity can inflict, or human nature sustain, from a foe whose religion commands annihilation, and bent to the earth, yet rising buoyant from the pressure, and making calamity a whetstone to courage. How did the Britons at once sink under the Romans, and in vain strive to save their groves, their druids, or the altars of Bal from destruction! To the Saxons they alike succumbed; they, again, to the Danes; and this heterogeneous breed to the Normans. Empire was lost and gained by a single battle, and the laws and religion of the conquered merged in those of the conquerors. Contrast with these the Rajputs; not an iota of their religion or customs have they lost, though many a foot of land. Some of their States have been expunged from the map of dominion; and, as a punishment of national infidelity, the pride of the Rathor, and the glory of the Chalukya, the overgrown Kanauj and gorgeous Anhilwara, are forgotten names! Mewar alone, the sacred bulwark of religion, never compromised her honour for her safety, and still survives her ancient limits; and since the brave Samarsi gave up his life, the blood of her princes has flowed in copious streams for the maintenance of this honour, religion, and independence.

Karan Singh I.: Ratan Singh.

—Samarsi had several sons; but Karna was his heir, and during his minority his mother, Kuramdevi, a princess of Patan, nobly maintained what his father left. She headed her Rajputs and gave battle in person to Kutbu-d-din, near Amber, when the viceroy was defeated and wounded. Nine Rajas, and eleven chiefs of inferior dignity with the title of Rawat, followed the mother of their prince.

Karna (the radiant) succeeded in S. 1249 (A.D. 1193); but he was not destined to be the founder of a line in Mewar. The annals are at variance with each other on an event which gave the sovereignty of Chitor to a younger branch, and sent the elder into the inhospitable wilds of the west, to found a city and perpetuate a line. It is stated generally that Karna had two sons, Mahup and Rahup; but this is an error: Samarsi and Surajmall were brothers: Karna was the son of the former and Mahup was his son, whose mother was a Chauhan of Bagar. Surajmall had a son named Bharat, who was driven from Chitor by a conspiracy. He proceeded to Sind, obtained Aror from its prince, a Musalman, and married the daughter of the Bhatti chief of Pugal, by whom he had a son named Rahup. Kama died of grief for the loss of Bharat and the unworthiness of Mahup, who abandoned him to live entirely with his maternal relations, the Chauhans.

The Sonigira chief of Jalor had married the daughter of Karna, by whom he had a child named Randhol, whom by treachery he placed on the throne of Chitor, slaying the chief Guhilots. Mahup being unable to recover his rights, and unwilling to make any exertion, the chair of Bappa Rawal would have passed to the Chauhans but for an ancient bard of the house. He pursued his way to Aror, held by old Bharat as a fief of Kabul. With the levies of Sind he marched to claim the right abandoned by Mahup and at Pali encountered and defeated the Sonigiras. The retainers of Mewar flocked to his standard, and by their aid he enthroned himself in Chitor. He sent for his father and mother, Ranangdevi, whose dwelling on the Indus was made over to a younger brother, who bartered his faith for Aror, and held it as a vassal of Kabul.

Rāhup.

—Rahup obtained Chitor in S. 1257 (A.D. 1201), and shortly after sustained the attack of Shamsu-d-din, whom he met and overcame in a battle at Nagor. Two great changes were introduced by this prince; the first in the title of the tribe, to Sesodia; the other in that of its prince, from Rawal to Rana. The puerile reason for the former has already been noticed; the cause of the latter is deserving of more attention. Amongst the foes of Rahup was the Parihar prince of Mandor: his name Mokal, with the title of Rana. Rahup seized him in his capital and brought him to Sesoda, making him renounce the rich district of Godwar and his title of Rana, which he assumed himself, to denote the completion of his feud. He ruled thirty-eight years in a period of great distraction, and appears to have been well calculated, not only to uphold the fallen fortunes of the State, but to rescue them from utter ruin. His reign is the more remarkable by contrast with his successors, nine of whom are ‘pushed from their stools’ in the same or even a shorter period than that during which he upheld the dignity.

From Rahup to Lakhamsi [Lakshman Singh], in the short space of half a century, nine princes of Chitor were crowned, and at nearly equal intervals of time followed each other to ‘the mansions of the sun.’ Of these nine, six fell in battle. Nor did they meet their fate at home, but in a chivalrous enterprise to redeem the sacred Gaya from the pollution of the barbarian. For this object these princes successively fell, but such devotion inspired fear, if not pity or conviction, and the bigot renounced the impiety which Prithimall purchased with his blood, and until Alau-d-din’s reign, this outrage to their prejudices was renounced. But in this interval they had lost their capital, for it is stated as the only occurrence in Bhonsi’s reign that he “recovered Chitor” and made the name of Rana be acknowledged by all. Two memorials are preserved of the nine princes from Rahup to Lakhamsi, and of the same character: confusion and strife within and without. We will, therefore, pass over these to another grand event in the vicissitudes of this house, which possesses more of romance than of history, though the facts are undoubted.

Chapter 6

Lakhamsi: Lachhman Singh.

—Lakhamsi succeeded his father in S. 1331 (A.D. 1275), a memorable era in the annals, when Chitor, the repository of all that was precious yet untouched of the arts of India, was stormed, sacked, and treated with remorseless barbarity by the Pathan [Khilji] emperor, Alau-d-din. Twice it was attacked by this subjugator of India. In the first siege it escaped spoliation, though at the price of its best defenders: that which followed is the first successful assault and capture of which we have any detailed account.

Bhīm Singh: Padmini.

—Bhimsi was the uncle of the young prince, and protector during his minority. He had espoused the daughter of Hamir Sank (Chauhan) of Ceylon, the cause of woes unnumbered to the Sesodias. Her name was Padmini, a title bestowed only on the superlatively fair, and transmitted with renown to posterity by tradition and the song of the bard. Her beauty, accomplishments, exaltation, and destruction, with other incidental circumstances, constitute the subject of one of the most popular traditions of Rajwara. The Hindu bard recognizes the fair, in preference to fame and love of conquest, as the motive for the attack of Alau-d-din, who limited his demand to the possession of Padmini; though this was after a long and fruitless siege. At length he restricted his desire to a mere sight of this extraordinary beauty, and acceded to the proposal of beholding her through the medium of mirrors. Relying on the faith of the Rajput, he entered Chitor slightly guarded, and having gratified his wish, returned. The Rajput, unwilling to be outdone in confidence, accompanied the king to the foot of the fortress, amidst many complimentary excuses from his guest at the trouble he thus occasioned. It was for this that Ala risked his own safety, relying on the superior faith of the Hindu. Here he had an ambush; Bhimsi was made prisoner, hurried away to the Tatar camp, and his liberty made dependent on the surrender of Padmini.

The Siege of Chitor.

—Despair reigned in Chitor when this fatal event was known, and it was debated whether Padmini should be resigned as a ransom for their defender. Of this she was informed, and expressed her acquiescence. Having provided wherewithal to secure her from dishonour, she communed with two chiefs of her own kin and clan of Ceylon, her uncle Gora, and his nephew Badal, who devised a scheme for the liberation of their prince without hazarding her life or fame. Intimation was dispatched to Ala that on the day he withdrew from his trenches the fair Padmini would be sent, but in a manner befitting her own and his high station, surrounded by her females and handmaids; not only those who would accompany her to Delhi, but many others who desired to pay her this last mark of reverence. Strict commands were to be issued to prevent curiosity from violating the sanctity of female decorum and privacy. No less than seven hundred covered litters proceeded to the royal camp. In each was placed one of the bravest of the defenders of Chitor, borne by six armed soldiers disguised as litter-porters. They reached the camp. The royal tents were enclosed with kanats (walls of cloth); the litters were deposited, and half an hour was granted for a parting interview between the Hindu prince and his bride. They then placed their prince in a litter and returned with him, while the greater number (the supposed damsels) remained to accompany the fair to Delhi. But Ala had no intention to permit Bhimsi’s return, and was becoming jealous of the long interview he enjoyed, when, instead of the prince and Padmini, the devoted band issued from their litters: but Ala was too well guarded. Pursuit was ordered, while these covered the retreat till they perished to a man. A fleet horse was in reserve for Bhimsi, on which he was placed, and in safety ascended the fort, at whose outer gate the host of Ala was encountered. The choicest of the heroes of Chitor met the assault. With Gora and Badal at their head, animated by the noblest sentiments, the deliverance of their chief and the honour of their queen, they devoted themselves to destruction, and few were the survivors of this slaughter of the flower of Mewar. For a time Ala was defeated in his object, and the havoc they had made in his ranks, joined to the dread of their determined resistance, obliged him to desist from the enterprise.

Mention has already been made of the adjuration,“by the sin of the sack of Chitor.” Of these sacks they enumerate three and a half. This is the ‘half’; for though the city was not stormed, the best and bravest were cut off (sakha). It is described with great animation in the Khuman Raesa. Badal was but a stripling of twelve, but the Rajput expects wonders from this early age. He escaped, though wounded, and a dialogue ensues between him and his uncle’s wife, who desires him to relate how her lord conducted himself ere she joins him. The stripling replies: “He was the reaper of the harvest of battle; I followed his steps as the humble gleaner of his sword. On the gory bed of honour he spread a carpet of the slain; a barbarian prince his pillow, he laid him down, and sleeps surrounded by the foe.” Again she said: "Tell me, Badal, how did my love (piyar) behave?" “Oh! mother, how further describe his deeds when he left no foe to dread or admire him?” She smiled farewell to the boy, and adding, “My lord will chide my delay,” sprung into the flame.

Alau-d-din, having recruited his strength, returned to his object, Chitor. The annals state this to have been in S. 1346 (A.D. 1290), but Ferishta gives a date thirteen years later. They had not yet recovered the loss of so many valiant men who had sacrificed themselves for their prince’s safety, and Ala carried on his attacks more closely, and at length obtained the hill at the southern point, where he entrenched himself. They still pretend to point out his trenches; but so many have been formed by subsequent attacks that we cannot credit the assertion. The poet has found in the disastrous issue of this siege admirable materials for his song. He represents the Rana, after an arduous day, stretched on his pallet, and during a night of watchful anxiety, pondering on the means by which he might preserve from the general destruction one at least of his twelve sons; when a voice broke on his solitude, exclaiming, “Main bhukhi ho”; and raising his eyes, he saw, by the dim glare of the chiragh, advancing between the granite columns, the majestic form of the guardian goddess of Chitor. “Not satiated,” exclaimed the Rana, “though eight thousand of my kin were late an offering to thee?” “I must have regal victims; and if twelve who wear the diadem bleed not for Chitor, the land will pass from the line.” This said, she vanished.

On the morn he convened a council of his chiefs, to whom he revealed the vision of the night, which they treated as the dream of a disordered fancy. He commanded their attendance at midnight; when again the form appeared, and repeated the terms on which alone she would remain amongst them. “Though thousands of barbarians strew the earth, what are they to me? On each day enthrone a prince. Let the kirania, the chhatra and the chamara, proclaim his sovereignty, and for three days let his decrees be supreme: on the fourth let him meet the foe and his fate. Then only may I remain.”

Whether we have merely the fiction of the poet, or whether the scene was got up to animate the spirit of resistance, matters but little, it is consistent with the belief of the tribe; and that the goddess should openly manifest her wish to retain as her tiara the battlements of Chitor on conditions so congenial to the warlike and superstitious Rajput was a gage readily taken up and fully answering the end. A generous contention arose amongst the brave brothers who should be the first victim to avert the denunciation. Arsi urged his priority of birth: he was proclaimed, the umbrella waved over his head, and on the fourth day he surrendered his short-lived honours and his life. Ajaisi, the next in birth, demanded to follow; but he was the favourite son of his father, and at his request he consented to let his brothers precede him. Eleven had fallen in turn, and but one victim remained to the salvation of the city, when the Rana, calling his chiefs around him, said, “Now I devote myself for Chitor.”

The Johar.

—But another awful sacrifice was to precede this act of self-devotion in that horrible rite, the Johar, where the females are immolated to preserve them from pollution or captivity. The funeral pyre was lighted within the ‘great subterranean retreat,’ in chambers impervious to the light of day, and the defenders of Chitor beheld in procession the queens, their own wives and daughters, to the number of several thousands. The fair Padmini closed the throng, which was augmented by whatever of female beauty or youth could be tainted by Tatar lust. They were conveyed to the cavern, and the opening closed upon them, leaving them to find security from dishonour in the devouring element.

A contest now arose between the Rana and his surviving son; but the father prevailed, and Ajaisi, in obedience to his commands, with a small band passed through the enemy’s lines, and reached Kelwara in safety. The Rana, satisfied that his line was not extinct, now prepared to follow his brave sons; and calling around him his devoted clans, for whom life had no longer any charms, they threw open the portals and descended to the plains, and with a reckless despair carried death, or met it, in the crowded ranks of Ala. The Tatar conqueror took possession of an inanimate capital, strewed with brave defenders, the smoke yet issuing from the recesses where lay consumed the once fair object of his desire; and since this devoted day the cavern has been sacred: no eye has penetrated its gloom, and superstition has placed as its guardian a huge serpent, whose ‘venomous breath’ extinguishes the light which might guide intruders to ‘the place of sacrifice.’

The Conquests of Alāu-d-dīn.

—Thus fell, in A.D. 1303, this celebrated capital, in the round of conquest of Alau-d-din, one of the most vigorous and warlike sovereigns who have occupied the throne of India. In success, and in one of the means of attainment, a bigoted hypocrisy, he bore a striking resemblance to Aurangzeb; and the title of ‘Sikandaru-s-Sani,’ or the second Alexander, which he assumed and impressed on his coins, was no idle vaunt. The proud Anhilwara, the ancient Dhar and Avanti, Mandor and Deogir, the seats of the Solankis, the Pramaras, the Pariharas and Taks, the entire Agnikula race, were overturned for ever by Ala. Jaisalmer, Gagraun, Bundi, the abodes of the Bhatti, the Khichi, and the Hara, with many of minor importance, suffered all the horrors of assault from this foe of the race, though destined again to raise their heads. The Rathors of Marwar and the Kachhwahas of Amber were yet in a state of insignificance: the former were slowly creeping into notice as the vassals of the Pariharas, while the latter could scarcely withstand the attacks of the original Mina population. Ala remained in Chitor some days, admiring the grandeur of his conquest; and having committed every act of barbarity and wanton dilapidation which a bigoted zeal could suggest, overthrowing the temples and other monuments of art, he delivered the city in charge to Maldeo, the chief of Jalor, whom he had conquered and enrolled amongst his vassals. The palace of Bhim and the fair Padmini alone appears to have escaped the wrath of Ala; it would be pleasing could we suppose any kinder sentiment suggested the exception, which enables the author of these annals to exhibit the abode of the fair of Ceylon.

The Flight of Rāna Ajai Singh.

—The survivor of Chitor, Rana Ajaisi, was now in security at Kelwara, a town situated in the heart of the Aravalli mountains, the western boundary of Mewar, to which its princes had been indebted for twelve centuries of dominion. Kelwara is at the highest part of one of its most extensive valleys, termed the Shero Nala, the richest district of this Alpine region. Guarded by faithful adherents, Ajaisi cherished for future occasion the wrecks of Mewar. It was the last behest of his father that when he attained ‘one hundred years’ (a figurative expression for dying) the son of Arsi, the elder brother, should succeed him. This injunction, from the deficiency of the qualities requisite at such a juncture in his own sons, met a ready compliance. Hamir was this son, destined to redeem the promise of the genius of Chitor and the lost honours of his race, and whose birth and early history fill many a page of their annals. His father, Arsi, being out on a hunting excursion in the forest of Ondua, with some young chiefs of the court, in pursuit of the boar entered a field of maize, when a female offered to drive out the game. Pulling one of the stalks of maize, which grows to the height of ten or twelve feet, she pointed it, and mounting the platform made to watch the corn, impaled the hog, dragged him before the hunters, and departed. Though accustomed to feats of strength and heroism from the nervous arms of their countrywomen, the act surprised them. They descended to the stream at hand, and prepared the repast, as is usual, on the spot. The feast was held, and comments were passing on the fair arm which had transfixed the boar, when a ball of clay from a sling fractured a limb of the prince’s steed. Looking in the direction whence it came, they observed the same damsel, from her elevated stand, preserving her fields from aerial depredators; but seeing the mischief she had occasioned she descended to express her regret and then returned to her pursuit. As they were proceeding homewards after the sports of the day, they again encountered the damsel, with a vessel of milk on her head, and leading in either hand a young buffalo. It was proposed, in frolic, to overturn her milk, and one of the companions of the prince dashed rudely by her; but without being disconcerted, she entangled one of her charges with the horse’s limbs and brought the rider to the ground. On inquiry the prince discovered that she was the daughter of a poor Rajput of the Chandano tribe. He returned the next day to the same quarter and sent for her father, who came and took his seat with perfect independence close to the prince, to the merriment of his companions, which was checked by Arsi asking his daughter to wife. They were yet more surprised by the demand being refused. The Rajput, on going home, told the more prudent mother, who scolded him heartily, made him recall the refusal, and seek the prince. They were married, and Hamir was the son of the Chandano Rajputni. He remained little noticed at the maternal abode till the catastrophe of Chitor. At this period he was twelve years of age, and had led a rustic life, from which the necessity of the times recalled him.

Mewār occupied by the Musalmāns: The Exploit of Hamīr.

—Mewar was now occupied by the garrisons of Delhi, and Ajaisi had besides to contend with the mountain chiefs, amongst whom Munja Balaicha was the most formidable, who had, on a recent occasion, invaded the Shero Nala, and personally encountered the Rana, whom he wounded on the head with a lance. The Rana’s sons, Sajansi and Ajamsi, though fourteen and fifteen, an age at which a Rajput ought to indicate his future character, proved of little aid in the emergency. Hamir was summoned, and accepted the feud against Munja, promising to return successful or not at all. In a few days he was seen entering the pass of Kelwara with Munja’s head at his saddle-bow. Modestly placing the trophy at his uncle’s feet, he exclaimed: “Recognize the head of your foe!” Ajaisi ‘kissed his beard,’ and observing that fate had stamped empire on his forehead, impressed it with a tika of blood from the head of the Balaicha. This decided the fate of the sons of Ajaisi; one of whom died at Kelwara, and the other, Sajansi, who might have excited a civil war, was sent from the country. He departed for the Deccan, where his issue was destined to avenge some of the wrongs the parent country had sustained, and eventually to overturn the monarchy of Hindustan; for Sajansi was the ancestor of Sivaji, the founder of the Satara throne, whose lineage is given in the chronicles of Mewar.

Rāna Hamīr Singh, A.D. 1301-64.

—Hamir succeeded in S. 1357 (A.D. 1301), and had sixty-four years granted to him to redeem his country from the ruins of the past century, which period had elapsed since India ceased to own the paramount sway of her native princes. The day on which he assumed the ensigns of rule he gave, in the tika daur, an earnest of his future energy, which he signalized by a rapid inroad into the heart of the country of the predatory Balaicha, and captured their stronghold Pusalia. We may here explain the nature of this custom of a barbaric chivalry.

The Inaugural Foray.

—The tika daur signifies the foray of inauguration, which obtained from time immemorial on such events, and is yet maintained where any semblance of hostility will allow its execution. On the morning of installation, having previously received the tika of sovereignty, the prince at the head of his retainers makes a foray into the territory of any one with whom he may have a feud, or with whom he may be indifferent as to exciting one; he captures a stronghold or plunders a town, and returns with the trophies. If amity should prevail with all around, which the prince cares not to disturb, they have still a mock representation of the custom. For many reigns after the Jaipur princes united their fortunes to the throne of Delhi their frontier town, Malpura, was the object of the tika daur of the princes of Mewar.

Chitor under a Musalmān Garrison.

—“When Ajmall went another road,” as the bard figuratively describes the demise of Rana Ajaisi, “the son of Arsi unsheathed the sword, thence never stranger to his hand.” Maldeo remained with the royal garrison at Chitor, but Hamir desolated their plains, and left to his enemies only the fortified towns which could safely be inhabited. He commanded all who owned his sovereignty either to quit their abodes, and retire with their families to the shelter of the hills on the eastern and western frontiers, or share the fate of the public enemy. The roads were rendered impassable from his parties, who issued from their retreats in the Aravalli, the security of which baffled pursuit. This destructive policy of laying waste the resources of their own country, and from this asylum attacking their foes as opportunity offered, has obtained from the time of Mahmud of Ghazni in the tenth, to Muhammad, the last who merited the name of Emperor of Delhi, in the eighteenth century.

Resistance of Hamīr Singh.

—Hamir made Kelwara his residence, which soon became the chief retreat of the emigrants from the plains. The situation was admirably chosen, being covered by several ranges, guarded by intricate defiles, and situated at the foot of a pass leading over the mountain into a still more inaccessible retreat (where Kumbhalmer now stands), well watered and wooded, with abundance of pastures and excellent indigenous fruits and roots. This tract, above fifty miles in breadth, is twelve hundred feet above the level of the plains and three thousand above the sea, with a considerable quantity of arable land, and free communication to obtain supplies by the passes of the western declivity from Marwar, Gujarat, or the friendly Bhils, of the west, to whom this house owes a large debt of gratitude. On various occasions the communities of Oghna and Panarwa furnished the princes of Mewar with five thousand bowmen, supplied them with provisions, or guarded the safety of their families when they had to oppose the foe in the field. The elevated plateau of the eastern frontier presented in its forests and dells many places of security; but Ala traversed these in person, destroying as he went: neither did they possess the advantages of climate and natural productions arising from the elevation of the other. Such was the state of Mewar: its places of strength occupied by the foe, cultivation and peaceful objects neglected from the persevering hostility of Hamir, when a proposal of marriage came from the Hindu governor of Chitor, which was immediately accepted, contrary to the wishes of the prince’s advisers.

The Recovery of Chitor.

—Whether this was intended as a snare to entrap him, or merely as an insult, every danger was scouted by Hamir which gave a chance to the recovery of Chitor. He desired that ‘the coco-nut might be retained’ coolly remarking on the dangers pointed out, "My feet shall at least tread in the rocky steps in which my ancestors have moved. A Rajput should always be prepared for reverses; one day to abandon his abode covered with wounds, and the next to reascend with the maur (crown) on his head." It was stipulated that only five hundred horse should form his suite. As he approached Chitor, the five sons of the Chauhan advanced to meet him, but on the portal of the city no toran, or nuptial emblem, was suspended. He, however, accepted the unsatisfactory reply to his remark on this indication of treachery, and ascended for the first time the ramp of Chitor. He was received in the ancient halls of his ancestors by Rao Maldeo, his son Banbir, and other chiefs, with folded hands. The bride was brought forth, and presented by her father without any of the solemnities practised on such occasions; ‘the knot of their garments tied and their hands united,’ and thus they were left. The family priest recommended patience, and Hamir retired with his bride to the apartments allotted for them. Her kindness and vows of fidelity overcame his sadness upon learning that he had married a widow. She had been wedded to a chief of the Bhatti tribe, shortly afterwards slain, and when she was so young as not to recollect even his appearance. He ceased to lament the insult when she herself taught him how it might be avenged, and that it might even lead to the recovery of Chitor. It is a privilege possessed by the bridegroom to have one specific favour complied with as a part of the dower (daeja), and Hamir was instructed by his bride to ask for Jal, one of the civil officers of Chitor, and of the Mehta tribe. With his wife so obtained, and the scribe whose talents remained for trial, he returned in a fortnight to Kelwara. Khetsi was the fruit of this marriage, on which occasion Maldeo made over all the hill tracts to Hamir. Khetsi was a year old when one of the penates (Khetrpal) was found at fault, on which she wrote to her parents to invite her to Chitor, that the infant might be placed before the shrine of the deity. Escorted by a party from Chitor, with her child she entered its walls; and instructed by the Mehta, she gained over the troops who were left, for the Rao had gone with his chief adherents against the Mers of Madri. Hamir was at hand. Notice that all was ready reached him at Bagor. Still he met opposition that had nearly defeated the scheme; but having forced admission, his sword overcame every obstacle, and the oath of allegiance (an) was proclaimed from the palace of his fathers.

The Sonigira on his return was met with ‘a salute of arabas,’ and Maldeo himself carried the account of his loss to the Khilji king Mahmud, who had succeeded Ala. The ‘standard of the sun’ once more shone refulgent from the walls of Chitor, and was the signal for return to their ancient abodes from their hills and hiding-places to the adherents of Hamir. The valleys of Kumbhalmer and the western highlands poured forth their ‘streams of men,’ while every chief of true Hindu blood rejoiced at the prospect of once more throwing off the barbarian yoke. So powerful was this feeling, and with such activity and skill did Hamir follow up this favour of fortune, that he marched to meet Mahmud, who was advancing to recover his lost possessions. The king unwisely directed his march by the eastern plateau, where numbers were rendered useless by the intricacies of the country. Of the three steppes which mark the physiognomy of this tract, from the first ascent from the plain of Mewar to the descent at Chambal, the king had encamped on the central, at Singoli, where he was attacked, defeated, and made prisoner by Hamir, who slew Hari Singh, brother of Banbir, in single combat. The king suffered a confinement of three months in Chitor, nor was liberated till he had surrendered Ajmer, Ranthambor, Nagor, and Sui Sopur, besides paying fifty lakhs of rupees and one hundred elephants. Hamir would exact no promise of cessation from further inroads, but contented himself with assuring him that from such he should be prepared to defend Chitor, not within, but without the walls .

Banbir, the son of Maldeo, offered to serve Hamir, who assigned the districts of Nimach, Jiran, Ratanpur, and the Kerar to maintain the family of his wife in becoming dignity; and as he gave the grant he remarked: “Eat, serve, and be faithful. You were once the servant of a Turk, but now of a Hindu of your own faith; for I have but taken back my own, the rock moistened by the blood of my ancestors, the gift of the deity I adore, and who will maintain me in it; nor shall I endanger it by the worship of a fair face, as did my predecessor.” Banbir shortly after carried Bhainsror by assault, and this ancient possession guarding the Chambal was again added to Mewar. The chieftains of Rajasthan rejoiced once more to see a Hindu take the lead, paid willing homage, and aided him with service when required.

The Power of Rāna Hamīr Singh.

—Hamir was the sole Hindu prince of power now left in India: all the ancient dynasties were crushed, and the ancestors of the present princes of Marwar and Jaipur brought their levies, paid homage, and obeyed the summons of the prince of Chitor, as did the chiefs of Bundi, Gwalior, Chanderi, Raesin, Sikri, Kalpi, Abu, etc.

Extensive as was the power of Mewar before the Tatar occupation of India, it could scarcely have surpassed the solidity of sway which she enjoyed during the two centuries following Hamir’s recovery of the capital. From this event to the next invasion from the same Cimmerian abode, led by Babur, we have a succession of splendid names recorded in her annals, and though destined soon to be surrounded by new Muhammadan dynasties, in Malwa and Gujarat as well as Delhi, yet successfully opposing them all. The distracted state of affairs when the races of Khilji, Lodi, and Sur alternately struggled for and obtained the seat of dominion, Delhi, was favourable to Mewar, whose power was now so consolidated that she not only repelled armies from her territory, but carried war abroad, leaving tokens of victory at Nagor, in Saurashtra, and to the walls of Delhi.

Public Works.

—The subjects of Mewar must have enjoyed not only a long repose, but high prosperity during this period, judging from their magnificent public works, when a triumphal column must have cost the income of a kingdom to erect, and which ten years’ produce of the crown-lands of Mewar could not at this time defray. Only one of the structures prior to the sack of Chitor was left entire by Ala, and is yet existing, and this was raised by private and sectarian hands. It would be curious if the unitarian profession of the Jain creed was the means of preserving this ancient relic from Ala’s wrath. The princes of this house were great patrons of the arts, and especially of architecture; and it is a matter of surprise how their revenues, derived chiefly from the soil, could have enabled them to expend so much on these objects and at the same time maintain such armies as are enumerated. Such could be effected only by long prosperity and a mild, paternal system of government; for the subject had his monuments as well as the prince, the ruins of which may yet be discovered in the more inaccessible or deserted portions of Rajasthan. Hamir died full of years, leaving a name still honoured in Mewar, as one of the wisest and most gallant of her princes, and bequeathing a well-established and extensive power to his son.

Kshetra or Khet Singh, A.D. 1364-82.

—Khetsi succeeded in S. 1421 (A.D. 1365) to the power and to the character of his father. He captured Ajmer and Jahazpur from Lila Pathan, and reannexed Mandalgarh, Dasor, and the whole of Chappan (for the first time) to Mewar. He obtained a victory over the Delhi monarch Humayun at Bakrol; but unhappily his life terminated in a family broil with his vassal, the Hara chief of Bumbaoda, whose daughter he was about to espouse.

Laksh Singh, A.D. 1382-97.

—Lakha Rana, by this assassination, mounted the throne in Chitor in S. 1439 (A.D. 1373). His first act was the entire subjugation of the mountainous region of Merwara, and the destruction of its chief stronghold, Bairatgarh, where he erected Badnor. But an event of much greater importance than settling his frontier, and which most powerfully tended to the prosperity of the country, was the discovery of the tin and silver mines of Jawara, in the tract wrested by Khetsi from the Bhils of Chappan. Lakha Rana has the merit of having first worked them, though their existence is superstitiously alluded to so early as the period of the founder. It is said the ‘seven metals’ (haft-dhat) were formerly abundant; but this appears figurative. We have no evidence for the gold, though silver, tin, copper, lead, and antimony were yielded in abundance (the first two from the same matrix), but the tin that has been extracted for many years past yields but a small portion of silver. Lakha Rana defeated the Sankhla Rajputs of Nagarchal, at Amber. He encountered the emperor Muhammad Shah Lodi, and on one occasion defeated a royal army at Badnor; but he carried the war to Gaya, and in driving the barbarian from this sacred place was slain. Lakha is a name of celebrity, as a patron of the arts and benefactor of his country. He excavated many reservoirs and lakes, raised immense ramparts to dam their waters, besides erecting strongholds. The riches of the mines of Jawara were expended to rebuild the temples and palaces levelled by Ala. A portion of his own palace yet exists, in the same style of architecture as that, more ancient, of Ratna and the fair Padmini; and a minster (mandir) dedicated to the creator (Brahma), an enormous and costly fabric, is yet entire. Being to ‘the One,’ and consequently containing no idol, it may thus have escaped the ruthless fury of the invaders.

Lakha had a numerous progeny, who have left their clans called after them, as the Lunawats and Dulawats, now the sturdy allodial proprietors of the Alpine regions bordering on Oghna, Panarwa, and other tracts in the Aravalli. But a circumstance which set aside the rights of primogeniture, and transferred the crown of Chitor from his eldest son, Chonda, to the younger, Mokal, had nearly carried it to another line. The consequences of making the elder branch a powerful vassal clan with claims to the throne, and which have been the chief cause of its subsequent prostration, we will reserve for another chapter .

Chapter 7

If devotion to the fair sex be admitted as a criterion of civilization, the Rajput must rank high. His susceptibility is extreme, and fires at the slightest offence to female delicacy, which he never forgives. A satirical impromptu, involving the sacrifice of Rajput prejudices, dissolved the coalition of the Rathors and Kachhwahas, and laid each prostrate before the Mahrattas, whom when united they had crushed: and a jest, apparently trivial, compromised the right of primogeniture to the throne of Chitor, and proved more disastrous in its consequences than the arms either of Moguls or Mahrattas.

Chonda renounces his Birthright.

—Lakha Rana was advanced in years, his sons and grandsons established in suitable domains, when ‘the coco-nut came’ from Ranmall, prince of Marwar, to affiance his daughter with Chonda, the heir of Mewar. When the embassy was announced, Chonda was absent, and the old chief was seated in his chair of state surrounded by his court. The messenger of Hymen was courteously received by Lakha, who observed that Chonda would soon return and take the gage; “for,” added he, drawing his fingers over his moustaches, “I don’t suppose you send such playthings to an old greybeard like me.” This little sally was of course applauded and repeated; but Chonda, offended at delicacy being sacrificed to wit, declined accepting the symbol which his father had even in jest supposed might be intended for him: and as it could not be returned without gross insult to Ranmall, the old Rana, incensed at his son’s obstinacy, agreed to accept it himself, provided Chonda would swear to renounce his birthright in the event of his having a son, and be to the child but the ‘first of his Rajputs.’ He swore by Eklinga to fulfil his father’s wishes.

Rāna Mokala, A.D. 1397-1433.

—Mokalji was the issue of this union, and had attained the age of five when the Rana resolved to signalize his finale by a raid against the enemies of their faith , and to expel the ‘barbarian’ from the holy land of Gaya. In ancient times this was by no means uncommon, and we have several instances in the annals of these States of princes resigning ‘the purple’ on the approach of old age, and by a life of austerity and devotion, pilgrimage and charity, seeking to make their peace with heaven “for the sins inevitably committed by all who wield a sceptre.” But when war was made against their religion by the Tatar proselytes to Islam, the Sutlej and the Ghaggar were as the banks of the Jordan—Gaya, their Jerusalem, their holy land; and if there destiny filled his cup, the Hindu chieftain was secure of beatitude, exempted from the troubles of ‘second birth’; and borne from the scene of probation in celestial cars by the Apsaras, was introduced at once into the ‘realm of the sun.’ Ere, however, the Rana of Chitor journeyed to this bourne, he was desirous to leave his throne unexposed to civil strife. The subject of succession had never been renewed; but discussing with Chonda his warlike pilgrimage to Gaya, from which he might not return, he sounded him by asking what estates should be settled on Mokal. “The throne of Chitor,” was the honest reply; and to set suspicion at rest, he desired that the ceremony of installation should be performed previous to Lakha’s departure. Chonda was the first to pay homage and swear obedience and fidelity to his future sovereign: reserving, as the recompense of his renunciation, the first place in the councils, and stipulating that in all grants to the vassals of the crown, his symbol (the lance) should be superadded to the autograph of the prince. In all grants the lance of Salumbar still precedes the monogram of the Rana.

The sacrifice of Chonda to offended delicacy and filial respect was great, for he had all the qualities requisite for command. Brave, frank, and skilful, he conducted all public affairs after his father’s departure and death, to the benefit of the minor and the State. The queen-mother, however, who is admitted as the natural guardian of her infant’s rights on all such occasions, felt umbrage and discontent at her loss of power; forgetting that, but for Chonda, she would never have been mother to the Rana of Mewar. She watched with a jealous eye all his proceedings; but it was only through the medium of suspicion she could accuse the integrity of Chonda, and she artfully asserted that, under colour of directing state affairs, he was exercising absolute sovereignty, and that if he did not assume the title of Rana, he would reduce it to an empty name. Chonda, knowing the purity of his own motives, made liberal allowance for maternal solicitude; but upbraiding the queen with the injustice of her suspicions, and advising a vigilant care to the rights of Sesodias, he retired to the court of Mandu, then rising into notice, where he was received with the highest distinctions, and the district of Halar was assigned to him by the king.

Rāthor Influence in Mewār.

—His departure was the signal for an influx of the kindred of the queen from Mandor. Her brother Jodha (who afterwards gave his name to Jodhpur) was the first, and was soon followed by his father, Rao Ranmall, and numerous adherents, who deemed the arid region of Maru-des, and its rabri, or maize porridge, well exchanged for the fertile plains and wheaten bread of Mewar.

Raghudeva, the Mewār Hero.

—With his grandson on his knee, the old Rao “would sit on the throne of Bappa Rawal, on whose quitting him for play, the regal ensigns of Mewar waved over the head of Mandor.” This was more than the Sesodia nurse (an important personage in all Hindu governments) could bear, and bursting with indignation, she demanded of the queen if her kin was to defraud her own child of his inheritance. The honesty of the nurse was greater than her prudence. The creed of the Rajput is to ‘obtain sovereignty,’ regarding the means as secondary and this avowal of her suspicions only hastened their designs. The queen soon found herself without remedy, and a remonstrance to her father produced a hint which threatened the existence of her offspring. Her fears were soon after augmented by the assassination of Raghudeva, the second brother of Chonda, whose estates were Kelwara and Kawaria. To the former place, where he resided aloof from the court, Rao Ranmall sent a dress of honour, which etiquette requiring him to put on when presented, the prince was assassinated in the act. Raghudeva was so much beloved for his virtues, courage, and manly beauty, that his murder became martyrdom, and obtained for him divine honours, and a place amongst the Di Patres (Pitrideva) of Mewar. His image is on every hearth, and is daily worshipped with the Penates. Twice in the year his altars receive public homage from every Sesodia, from the Rana to the serf.

The Expulsion of the Rāthor Party.

—In this extremity the queen-mother turned her thoughts to Chonda, and it was not difficult to apprise him of the danger which menaced the race, every place of trust being held by her kinsmen, and the principal post of Chitor by a Bhatti Rajput of Jaisalmer.Jaisalmer. Chonda, though at a distance, was not inattentive to the proverbially dangerous situation of a minor amongst the Rajputs. At his departure he was accompanied by two hundred Aherias or huntsmen, whose ancestors had served the princes of Chitor from ancient times. These had left their families behind, a visit to whom was the pretext for their introduction to the fort. They were instructed to get into the service of the keepers of the gates, and, being considered more attached to the place than to the family, their object was effected. The queen-mother was counselled to cause the young prince to descend daily with a numerous retinue to give feasts to the surrounding villages, and gradually to increase the distance, but not to fail on the ‘festival of lamps’ to hold the feast (got) at Gosunda.

These injunctions were carefully attended to. The day arrived, the feast was held at Gosunda; but the night was closing in, and no Chonda appeared. With heavy hearts the nurse, the Purohit, and those in the secret moved homeward, and had reached the eminence called Chitori, when forty horsemen passed them at the gallop, and at their head Chonda in disguise, who by a secret sign paid homage as he passed to his younger brother and sovereign. Chonda and his band had reached the Rampol, or upper gate, unchecked. Here, when challenged, they said they were neighbouring chieftains, who, hearing of the feast at Gosunda, had the honour to escort the prince home. The story obtained credit; but the main body, of which this was but the advance, presently coming up, the treachery was apparent. Chonda unsheathed his sword, and at his well-known shout the hunters were speedily in action. The Bhatti chief, taken by surprise, and unable to reach Chonda, launched his dagger at and wounded him, but was himself slain; the guards at the gates were cut to pieces, and the Rathors hunted out and killed without mercy.

Death of Rāo Ranmall.

—The end of Rāo Ranmall was more ludicrous than tragical. Smitten with the charms of a Sesodia handmaid of the queen, who was compelled to his embrace, the old chief was in her arms, intoxicated with love, wine, and opium, and heard nothing of the tumult without. A woman’s wit and revenge combined to make his end afford some compensation for her loss of honour. Gently rising, she bound him to his bed with his own Marwari turban: nor did this disturb him, and the messengers of fate had entered ere the opiate allowed his eyes to open to a sense of his danger. Enraged, he in vain endeavoured to extricate himself; and by some tortuosity of movement he got upon his legs, his pallet at his back like a shell or shield of defence. With no arms but a brass vessel of ablution, he levelled to the earth several of his assailants, when a ball from a matchlock extended him on the floor of the palace. His son Jodha was in the lower town, and was indebted to the fleetness of his steed for escaping the fate of his father and kindred, whose bodies strewed the terre-pleine of Chitor, the merited reward of their usurpation and treachery.

The Revenge of Chonda.

—But Chonda’s revenge was not yet satisfied. He pursued Rao Jodha, who, unable to oppose him, took refuge with Harbuji Sankhla, leaving Mandor to its fate. This city Chonda entered by surprise, and holding it till his sons Kantatji and Manjaji arrived with reinforcements, the Rathor treachery was repaid by their keeping possession of the capital during twelve years. We might here leave the future founder of Jodhpur, had not this feud led to the junction of the rich province of Godwar to Mewar, held for three centuries and again lost by treachery. It may yet involve a struggle between the Sesodias and Rathors.

“Sweet are the uses of adversity.” To Jodha it was the first step in the ladder of his eventual elevation. A century and a half had scarcely elapsed since a colony, the wreck of Kanauj, found an asylum, and at length a kingdom, taking possession of one capital and founding another, abandoning Mandor and erecting Jodhpur. But even Jodha could never have hoped that his issue would have extended their sway from the valley of the Indus to within one hundred miles of the Jumna, and from the desert bordering on the Sutlej to the Aravalli mountains: that one hundred thousand swords should at once be in the hands of Rathors, ‘the sons of one father’ (ek Bap ke Betan).

If we slightly encroach upon the annals of Marwar, it is owing to its history and that of Mewar being here so interwoven, and the incidents these events gave birth so illustrative of the national character of each, that it is, perhaps, more expedient to advert to the period when Jodha was shut out from Mandor, and the means by which he regained that city, previous to relating the events of the reign of Mokal.

Harbuji Sānkhla.

—Harbuji Sankhla, at once a soldier and a devotee, was one of those Rajput cavaliers ‘sans peur et sans reproche,’ whose life of celibacy and perilous adventure was mingled with the austere devotion of an ascetic; by turns aiding with his lance the cause which he deemed worthy, or exercising an unbounded hospitality towards the stranger. This generosity had much reduced his resources when Jodha sought his protection. It was the eve of the Sada-bart, one of those hospitable rites which, in former times, characterized Rajwara. This ‘perpetual charity’ supplies food to the stranger and traveller, and is distributed not only by individual chiefs and by the government, but by subscriptions of communities. Even in Mewar, in her present impoverished condition, the offerings to the gods in support of their shrines and the establishment of the Sada-bart were simultaneous. Hospitality is a virtue pronounced to belong more peculiarly to a semi-barbarous condition. Alas! for refinement and ultra-civilization, strangers to the happiness enjoyed by Harbuji Sankhla. Jodha, with one hundred and twenty followers, came to solicit the ‘stranger’s fare’: but unfortunately it was too late, the Sada-bart had been distributed. In this exigence, Harbuji recollected that there was a wood called mujd, used in dyeing, which among other things in the desert regions is resorted to in scarcity. A portion of this was bruised, and boiled with some flour, sugar, and spices, making altogether a palatable pottage; and with a promise of better fare on the morrow, it was set before the young Rao and his followers, who, after making a good repast, soon forgot Chitor in sleep. On waking, each stared at his fellow, for their mustachios were dyed with their evening’s meal; but the old chief, who was not disposed to reveal his expedient, made it minister to their hopes by giving it a miraculous character, and saying “that as the grey of age was thus metamorphosed into the tint of morn and hope, so would their fortunes become young, and Mandor again be theirs.”

Elevated by this prospect, they enlisted Harbuji on their side. He accompanied them to the chieftain of Mewa, “whose stables contained one hundred chosen steeds.” Pabuji, a third independent of the same stamp, with his ‘coal-black steed,’ was gained to the cause, and Jodha soon found himself strong enough to attempt the recovery of his capital. The sons of Chonda were taken by surprise: but despising the numbers of the foe, and ignorant who were their auxiliaries, they descended sword in hand to meet the assailants. The elder son of Chonda with many adherents was slain; and the younger, deserted by the subjects of Mandor, trusted to the swiftness of his horse for escape; but being pursued, was overtaken and killed on the boundary of Godwar. Thus Jodha, in his turn, was revenged, but the ‘feud was not balanced.’ Two sons of Chitor had fallen for one chief of Mandor. But wisely reflecting on the original aggression, and the superior power of Mewar, as well as his being indebted for his present success to foreign aid, Jodha sued for peace, and offered as the mundkati, or ‘price of blood,’ and ‘to quench the feud,’ that the spot where Manja fell should be the future barrier of the two States. The entire province of Godwar was comprehended in the cession, which for three centuries withstood every contention, till the internal dissensions of the last half century, which grew out of the cause by which it was obtained, and the change of succession in Mewar severed this most valuable acquisition.

Who would imagine, after such deadly feuds between these rival States, that in the very next succession these hostile frays were not only buried in oblivion, but that the prince of Marwar abjured ‘his turban and his bed’ till he had revenged the assassination of the prince of Chitor, and restored his infant heir to his rights? The annals of these States afford numerous instances of the same hasty, overbearing temperament governing all; easily moved to strife, impatient of revenge, and steadfast in its gratification. But this satisfied, resentment subsides. A daughter of the offender given to wife banishes its remembrance, and when the bard joins the lately rival names in the couplet, each will complacently curl his mustachio over his lip as he hears his ‘renown expand like the lotus,’ and thus ‘the feud is extinguished.’ Thus have they gone on from time immemorial, and will continue, till what we may fear to contemplate. They have now neither friend nor foe but the British. The Tatar invader sleeps in his tomb, and the Mahratta depredator is muzzled and enchained. To return.

Mokal, A.D. 1397-1433.

—Mokal, who obtained the throne by Chonda’s surrender of his birthright, was not destined long to enjoy the distinction, though he evinced qualities worthy of heading the Sesodias. He ascended the throne in S. 1454 (A.D. 1398), at an important era in the history of India; when Timur, who had already established the race of Chagatai in the kingdoms of Central Asia, and laid prostrate the throne of Byzantium, turned his arms towards India. But it was not a field for his ambition; and the event is not even noticed in the annals of Mewar: a proof that it did not affect their repose. But they record an attempted invasion by the king of Delhi, which is erroneously stated to have been by Firoz Shah. A grandson of this prince had indeed been set up, and compelled to flee from the arms of Timur, and as the direction of his flight was Gujarat, it is not unlikely that the recorded attempt to penetrate by the passes of Mewar may have been his . Be this as it may, the Rana Mokal anticipated and met him beyond the passes of the Aravalli, in the field of Raepur, and compelled him to abandon his enterprise. Pursuing his success, he took possession of Sambhar and its salt lakes, and otherwise extended and strengthened his territory, which the distracted state of the empire consequent to Timur’s invasion rendered a matter of little difficulty. Mokal finished the palace commenced by Lakha, now a mass of ruins; and erected the shrine of Chaturbhuja, ‘the four-armed deity,’ in the western hills.

Lāl Bāi.

—Besides three sons, Rana Mokal had a daughter, celebrated for her beauty, called Lal Bai, or ‘the ruby.’ She was betrothed to the Khichi chieftain of Gagraun, who at the Hathleva demanded the pledge of succour on foreign invasion. Dhiraj, the son of the Khichi, had come to solicit the stipulated aid against Hoshang of Malwa, who had invested their capital. The Rana’s headquarters were then at Madri, and he was employed in quelling a revolt of the mountaineers, when Dhiraj arrived and obtained the necessary aid. Madri was destined to be the scene of the termination of Mokal’s career: he was assassinated by his uncles, the natural brothers of his father, from an unintentional offence, which tradition has handed down in all its details.

Assassination of Rāna Mokal.

—Chacha and Mera were the natural sons of Khetsi Rana (the predecessor of Lakha); their mother a fair handmaid of low descent, generally allowed to be a carpenter’s daughter. ‘The fifth sons of Mewar’ (as the natural children are figuratively termed) possess no rank, and though treated with kindness, and entrusted with confidential employments, the sons of the chiefs of the second class take precedence of them, and ‘sit higher on the carpet.’ These brothers had the charge of seven hundred horse in the train of Rana Mokal at Madri. Some chiefs at enmity with them, conceiving that they had overstepped their privileges, wished to see them humiliated. Chance procured them the opportunity: which, however, cost their prince his life. Seated in a grove with his chiefs around him, he inquired the name of a particular tree. The Chauhan chief, feigning ignorance, whispered him to ask either of the brothers; and not perceiving their scope, he artlessly did so. “Uncle, what tree is this?” The sarcasm thus prompted they considered as reflecting on their birth (being sons of the carpenter’s daughter), and the same day, while Mokal was at his devotions, and in the act of counting his rosary, one blow severed his arm from his body, while another stretched him lifeless. The brothers, quickly mounting their steeds, had the audacity to hope to surprise Chitor, but the gates were closed upon them.

Rāna Kūmbha, A.D. 1433-68.

—Though the murder of Mokal is related to have no other cause than the sarcasm alluded to, the precautions taken by the young prince Kumbha, his successor, would induce a belief that this was but the opening of a deep-laid conspiracy. The traitors returned to the stronghold near Madri, and Kumbha trusted to the friendship and good feeling of the prince of Marwar in this emergency. His confidence was well repaid. The prince put his son at the head of a force, and the retreat of the assassins being near his own frontier, they were encountered and dislodged. From Madri they fled to Pai, where they strengthened a fortress in the mountains named Ratakot; a lofty peak of the compound chain which encircles Udaipur, visible from the surrounding country, as are the remains of this stronghold of the assassins. It would appear that their lives were dissolute, for they had carried off the virgin daughter of a Chauhan, which led to their eventual detection and punishment. Her father, Suja, had traced the route of the ravishers, and, mixing with the workmen, found that the approaches to the place of their concealment were capable of being scaled. He was about to lay his complaint before his prince, when he met the cavalcade of Kumbha and the Rathor. The distressed father, ‘covering his face,’ disclosed the story of his own and daughter’s dishonour. They encamped till night at Delwara, when, led by the Chandana, they issued forth to surprise the authors of so many evils.

Suja and the Tiger.

—Arrived at the base of the rock, where the parapet was yet low, they commenced the escalade, aided by the thick foliage. The path was steep and rugged, and in the darkness of the night each had grasped his neighbour’s skirt for security. Animated by a just revenge, the Chauhan (Suja) led the way, when on reaching a ledge of the rock the glaring eyeballs of a tigress flashed upon him. Undismayed, he squeezed the hand of the Rathor prince who followed him, and who on perceiving the object of terror instantly buried his poignard in her heart. This omen was superb. They soon reached the summit. Some had ascended the parapet; others were scrambling over, when the minstrel slipping, fell, and his drum, which was to have accompanied his voice in singing the conquest, awoke by its crash the daughter of Chacha. Her father quieted her fears by saying it was only “the thunder and the rains of Bhadon”: to fear God only and go to sleep, for their enemies were safe at Kelwa. At this moment the Rao and his party rushed in. Chacha and Mera had no time to avoid their fate. Chacha was cleft in two by the Chandana, while the Rathor prince laid Mera at his feet, and the spoils of Ratakot were divided among the assailants.

Chapter 8

Rāna Kūmbha, A.D. 1433-68.

—Kumbha succeeded his father in S. 1475 (A.D. 1419); nor did any symptom of dissatisfaction appear to usher in his reign, which was one of great success amidst no common difficulties. The bardic historians do as much honour to the Marwar prince, who had made common cause with their sovereign in revenging the death of his father, as if it had involved the security of his crown; but this was a precautionary measure of the prince, who was induced thus to act from several motives, and, above all, in accordance with usage, which stigmatizes the refusal of aid when demanded: besides ‘Kumbha was the nephew of Marwar.’

It has rarely occurred in any country to have possessed successively so many energetic princes as ruled Mewar through several centuries. She was now in the middle path of her glory, and enjoying the legitimate triumph of seeing the foes of her religion captives on the rock of her power. A century had elapsed since the bigot Ala had wreaked his vengeance on the different monuments of art. Chitor had recovered the sack, and new defenders had sprung up in the place of those who had fallen in their ‘saffron robes,’ a sacrifice for her preservation. All that was wanting to augment her resources against the storms which were collecting on the brows of Caucasus and the shores of the Oxus, and were destined to burst on the head of his grandson Sanga, was effected by Kumbha; who with Hamir’s energy, Lakha’s taste for the arts, and a genius comprehensive as either and more fortunate, succeeded in all his undertakings, and once more raised the ‘crimson banner’ of Mewar upon the banks of the Ghaggar, the scene of Samarsi’s defeat. Let us contrast the patriarchal Hindu governments of this period with the despotism of the Tatar invader.

From the age of Shihabu-d-din, the conqueror of India, and his contemporary Samarsi, to the time we have now reached, two entire dynasties, numbering twenty-four emperors and one empress, through assassination, rebellion, and dethronement, had followed in rapid succession, yielding a result of only nine years to a reign. Of Mewar, though several fell in defending their altars at home or their religion abroad, eleven princes suffice to fill the same period.

It was towards the close of the Khilji dynasty that the satraps of Delhi shook off its authority and established subordinate kingdoms: Bijapur and Golkonda in the Deccan; Malwa, Gujarat, Jaunpur in the east; and even Kalpi had its king. Malwa and Gujarat had attained considerable power when Kumbha ascended the throne. In the midst of his prosperity these two States formed a league against him, and in S. 1496 (A.D. 1440) both kings, at the head of powerful armies, invaded Mewar. Kumbha met them on the plains of Malwa bordering on his own State, and at the head of one hundred thousand horse and foot and fourteen hundred elephants, gave them an entire defeat, carrying captive to Chitor Mahmud the Khilji sovereign of Malwa.

Abu-l Fazl relates this victory, and dilates on Kumbha’s greatness of soul in setting his enemy at liberty, not only without ransom but with gifts. Such is the character of the Hindu: a mixture of arrogance, political blindness, pride, and generosity. To spare a prostrate foe is the creed of the Hindu cavalier, and he carries all such maxims to excess. The annals, however, state that Mahmud was confined six months in Chitor; and that the trophies of conquest were retained we have evidence from Babur, who mentions receiving from the son of his opponent, Sanga, the crown of the Malwa king.

The Tower of Victory.

—But there is a more durable monument than this written record of victory: the triumphal pillar in Chitor, whose inscriptions detail the event, “when, shaking the earth, the lords of Gujarkhand and Malwa, with armies overwhelming as the ocean, invaded Medpat.” Eleven years after this event Kumbha laid the foundations of this column, which was completed in ten more: a period apparently too short to place “this ringlet on the brow of Chitor, which makes her look down upon Meru with derision.” We will leave it, with the aspiration that it may long continue a monument of the fortune of its founders.

It would appear that the Malwa king afterwards united his arms with Kumbha, as, in a victory gained over the imperial forces at Jhunjhunu, when ‘he planted his standard in Hissar,’ the Malwa troops were combined with those of Mewar. The imperial power had at this period greatly declined: the Khutba was read in the mosques in the name of Timur, and the Malwa king had defeated, single-handed, the last Ghorian sultan of Delhi.

The Fortresses of Mewār.

—Of eighty-four fortresses for the defence of Mewar, thirty-two were erected by Kumbha. Inferior only to Chitor is that stupendous work called after him Kumbhalmer, ‘the hill of Kumbha,’ from its natural position, and the works he raised, impregnable to a native army. These works were on the site of a more ancient fortress, of which the mountaineers long held possession. Tradition ascribes it to Samprati Raja, a Jain prince in the second century, and a descendant of Chandragupta; and the ancient Jain temples appear to confirm the tradition. When Kumbha captured Nagor he brought away the gates, with the statue of the god Hanuman, who gives his name to the gate which he still guards. He also erected a citadel on a peak of Abu, within the fortress of the ancient Pramara, where he often resided. Its magazine and alarm-tower still bear Kumbha’s name; and in a rude temple the bronze effigies of Kumbha and his father still receive divine honours. Centuries have passed since the princes of Mewar had influence here, but the incident marks the vivid remembrance of their condition. He fortified the passes between the western frontier and Abu, and erected the fort Vasanti near the present Sirohi, and that of Machin, to defend the Shero Nala and Deogarh against the Mers of Aravalli. He re-established Ahor and other smaller forts to overawe the Bhumia Bhil of Jharol and Panarwa, and defined the boundaries of Marwar and Mewar.

Temples.

—Besides these monuments of his genius, two consecrated to religion have survived: that of Kumbha Sham, on Abu, which, though worthy to attract notice elsewhere, is here eclipsed by a crowd of more interesting objects; the other, one of the largest edifices existing, cost upwards of a million sterling, towards which Kumbha contributed eighty thousand pounds. It is erected in the Sadri pass leading from the western descent of the highlands of Mewar, and is dedicated to Rishabhadeva. Its secluded position has preserved it from bigoted fury, and its only visitants now are the wild beasts who take shelter in its sanctuary. Kumbha Rana was also a poet: but in a far more elevated strain than the troubadour princes, his neighbours, who contented themselves with rehearsing their own prowess or celebrating their lady’s beauty. He composed a tika, or appendix to the ‘Divine Melodies,’ in praise of Krishna. We can pass no judgment on these inspirations of the royal bard, as we are ignorant whether any are preserved in the records of the house: a point his descendant, who is deeply skilled in such lore, might probably answer.

Mīra Bāi.

—Kumbha married a daughter of the Rathor of Merta, the first of the clans of Marwar. Mira Bai was the most celebrated princess of her time for beauty and romantic piety. Her compositions were numerous, though better known to the worshippers of the Hindu Apollo than to the ribald bards. Some of her odes and hymns to the deity are preserved and admired. Whether she imbibed her poetic piety from her husband, or whether from her he caught the sympathy which produced the ‘sequel to the songs of Govinda,’ we cannot determine. Her history is a romance, and her excess of devotion at every shrine of the favourite deity with the fair of Hind, from the Yamuna to ‘the world’s end,’ gave rise to many tales of scandal. Kumbha mixed gallantry with his warlike pursuits. He carried off the daughter of the chief of Jhalawar, who had been betrothed to the prince of Mandor: this renewed the old feud, and the Rathor made many attempts to redeem his affianced bride. His humiliation was insupportable, when through the purified atmosphere of the periodical rains “the towers of Kumbhalmer became visible from the castle of Mandor, and the light radiated from the chamber of the fair through the gloom of a night in Bhadon, to the hall where he brooded o’er his sorrows.” It was surmised that this night-lamp was an understood signal of the Jhalani, who pined at the decree which ambition had dictated to her father, in consigning her to the more powerful rival of her affianced lord. The Rathor exhausted every resource to gain access to the fair, and had once nearly succeeded in a surprise by escalade, having cut his way in the night through the forest in the western and least guarded acclivity: but, as the bard equivocally remarks, "though he cut his way through the jhal (brushwood), he could not reach the Jhalani."

The Assassination of Rāna Kūmbha, A.D. 1468.

—Kumbha had occupied the throne half a century; he had triumphed over the enemies of his race, fortified his country with strongholds, embellished it with temples, and with the superstructure of her fame had laid the foundation of his own—when, the year which should have been a jubilee was disgraced by the foulest blot in the annals; and his life, which nature was about to close, terminated by the poignard of an assassin—that assassin, his son!

Rāna Uda, A.D. 1468-73.

—This happened in S. 1525 (A.D. 1469). Uda was the name of the parricide, whose unnatural ambition, and impatience to enjoy a short lustre of sovereignty, bereft of life the author of his existence. But such is the detestation which marks this unusual crime that, like that of the Venetian traitor, his name is left a blank in the annals, nor is Uda known but by the epithet Hatyara, ‘the murderer.’ Shunned by his kin, and compelled to look abroad for succour to maintain him on the throne polluted by his crime, Mewar in five years of illegitimate rule lost half the consequence which had cost so many to acquire. He made the Deora prince independent in Abu, and bestowed Sambhar, Ajmer, and adjacent districts on the prince of Jodhpur as the price of his friendship. But, a prey to remorse, he felt that he could neither claim regard from, nor place any dependence upon, these princes, though he bribed them with provinces. He humbled himself before the king of Delhi, offering him a daughter in marriage to obtain his sanction to his authority; “but heaven manifested its vengeance to prevent this additional iniquity, and preserve the house of Bappa Rawal from dishonour.” He had scarcely quitted the divan (diwankhana), on taking leave of the king, when a flash of lightning struck the Hatyara to the earth, whence he never arose. The bards pass over this period cursorily, as one of their race was the instrument of Uda’s crime.

Banishment of the Chārans.

—There has always been a jealousy between the Mangtas, as they term all classes ‘who extend the palm,’ whether Brahmans, Yatis, Charans, or Bhats; but since Hamir, the Charan influence had far eclipsed the rest. A Brahman astrologer predicted Kumbha’s death through a Charan, and as the class had given other cause of offence, Kumbha banished the fraternity his dominions, resuming all their lands: a strong measure in those days, and which few would have had nerve to attempt or firmness to execute. The heir-apparent, Raemall, who was exiled to Idar for what his father deemed an impertinent curiosity, had attached one of these bards to his suite, whose ingenuity got the edict set aside, and his race restored to their lands and the prince’s favour. Had they taken off the Brahman’s head, they might have falsified the prediction which unhappily was too soon fulfilled.

Rāna Rāemall, A.D. 1473-1508.

—Raemall succeeded in S. 1530 (A.D. 1474) by his own valour to the seat of Kumbha. He had fought and defeated the usurper, who on this occasion fled to the king of Delhi and offered him a daughter of Mewar. After his death in the manner described, the Delhi monarch, with Sahasmall and Surajmall, sons of the parricide, invaded Mewar, encamping at Siarh, now Nathdwara. The chiefs were faithful to their legitimate prince, Raemall, and aided by his allies of Abu and Girnar, at the head of fifty-eight thousand horse and eleven thousand foot, he gave battle to the pretender and his imperial ally at Ghasa. The conflict was ferocious. ‘The streams ran blood,’ for the sons of the usurper were brave as lions; but the king was so completely routed that he never again entered Mewar.

Raemall bestowed one daughter on Surji (Yadu), the chief of Girnar; and another on the Deora, Jaimall of Sirohi, confirming his title to Abu as her dower. He sustained the warlike reputation of his predecessors, and carried on interminable strife with Ghiyasu-d-din of Malwa, whom he defeated in several pitched battles, to the success of which the valour of his nephews, whom he had pardoned, mainly contributed. In the last of these encounters the Khilji king sued for peace, renouncing the pretensions he had formerly urged. The dynasty of Lodi next enjoyed the imperial bauble, and with it Mewar had to contest her northern boundary.

The Sons of Rāna Rāemall.

—Raemall had three sons, celebrated in the annals of Rajasthan: Sanga, the competitor of Babur, Prithiraj, the Rolando of his age, and Jaimall. Unhappily for the country and their father’s repose, fraternal affection was discarded for deadly hate, and their feuds and dissensions were a source of constant alarm. Had discord not disunited them, the reign of Raemall would have equalled any of his predecessors. As it was, it presented a striking contrast to them: his two elder sons banished; the first, Sanga, self-exiled from perpetual fear of his life, and Prithiraj, the second, from his turbulence; while the youngest, Jaimall, was slain through his intemperance. A sketch of these feuds will present a good picture of the Rajput character, and their mode of life when their arms were not required against their country’s foes.

Sanga and Prithiraj were the offspring of the Jhali queen; Jaimall was by another mother. What moral influence the name he bore had on Prithiraj we can surmise only from his actions, which would stand comparison with those of his prototype the Chauhan of Delhi, and are yet the delight of the Sesodia. When they assemble at the feast after a day’s sport, or in a sultry evening spread the carpet on the terrace to inhale the leaf or take a cup of kusumbha, a tale of Prithiraj recited by the bard is the highest treat they can enjoy. Sanga, the heir-apparent, was a contrast to his brother. Equally brave, his courage was tempered by reflection; while Prithiraj burned with a perpetual thirst for action, and often observed “that fate must have intended him to rule Mewar.” The three brothers, with their uncle, Surajmall, were one day discussing these topics, when Sanga observed that, though heir to ‘the ten thousand towns’ of Mewar, he would waive his claims, and trust them, as did the Roman brothers, to the omen which should be given by the priestess of Charani Devi at Nahra Magra, the ‘Tiger’s Mount.’ They repaired to her abode. Prithiraj and Jaimall entered first, and seated themselves on a pallet: Sanga followed and took possession of the panther hide of the prophetess; his uncle, Surajmall, with one knee resting thereon. Scarcely had Prithiraj disclosed their errand, when the sibyl pointed to the panther-hide as the decisive omen of sovereignty to Sanga, with a portion to his uncle. They received the decree as did the twins of Rome. Prithiraj drew his sword and would have falsified the omen, had not Surajmall stepped in and received the blow destined for Sanga, while the prophetess fled from their fury. Surajmall and Prithiraj were exhausted with wounds, and Sanga fled with five sword-cuts and an arrow in his eye, which destroyed the sight for ever. He made for the sanctuary of Chaturbhuja, and passing Sivanti, took refuge with Bida (Udawat), who was accoutred for a journey, his steed standing by him. Scarcely had he assisted the wounded heir of Mewar to alight when Jaimall galloped up in pursuit. The Rathor guarded the sanctuary, and gave up his life in defence of his guest, who meanwhile escaped.

Retirement of Sanga.

—Prithiraj recovered from his wounds; and Sanga, aware of his implacable enmity, had recourse to many expedients to avoid discovery. He, who at a future period leagued a hundred thousand men against the descendant of Timur, was compelled to associate with goat-herds, expelled the peasant’s abode as too stupid to tend his cattle, and, precisely like our Alfred the Great, having in charge some cakes of flour, was reproached with being more desirous of eating than tending them. A few faithful Rajputs found him in this state, and, providing him with arms and a horse, they took service with Rao Karamchand, Pramar, chief of Srinagar, and with him ‘ran the country.’ After one of these raids, Sanga one day alighted under a banian tree, and placing his dagger under his head, reposed, while two of his faithful Rajputs, whose names are preserved, prepared his repast, their steeds grazing by them. A ray of the sun penetrating the foliage, fell on Sanga’s face, and discovered a snake, which, feeling the warmth, had uncoiled itself and was rearing its crest over the head of the exile: a bird of omen had perched itself on the crested serpent, and was chattering aloud. A goat-herd named Maru, ‘versed in the language of birds,’ passed at the moment Sanga awoke. The prince repelled the proffered homage of the goat-herd, who, however, had intimated to the Pramara chief that he was served by ‘royalty.’ The Pramara kept the secret, and gave Sanga a daughter to wife, and protection till the tragical end of his brother called him to the throne.

The Adventures of Prithirāj.

—When the Rana heard of the quarrel which had nearly deprived him of his heir, he banished Prithiraj, telling him that he might live on his bravery and maintain himself with strife. With but five horse Prithiraj quitted the paternal abode, and made for Bali in Godwar. These dissensions following the disastrous conclusion of the last reign, paralysed the country, and the wild tribes of the west and the mountaineers of the Aravalli so little respected the garrison of Nadol (the chief town of Godwar), that they carried their depredations to the plains. Prithiraj halted at Nadol, and having to procure some necessaries pledged a ring to the merchant who had sold it to him; the merchant recognized the prince, and learning the cause of his disguise, proffered his services in the scheme which the prince had in view for the restoration of order in Godwar, being determined to evince to his father that he had resources independent of birth. The Minas were the aboriginal proprietors of all these regions; the Rajputs were interlopers and conquerors. A Rawat of this tribe had regained their ancient haunts, and held his petty court at the town of Narlai in the plains, and was even served by Rajputs. By the advice of Ojha, the merchant, Prithiraj enlisted himself and his band among the adherents of the Mina. On the Aheria, or ‘hunter’s festival,’ the vassals have leave to rejoin their families. Prithiraj, who had also obtained leave, rapidly retraced his steps, and despatching his Rajputs to dislodge the Mina, awaited the result in ambush at the gate of the town. In a short time the Mina appeared on horseback, and in full flight to the mountains for security, Prithiraj pursued, overtook, and transfixed him with his lance to a kesula tree, and setting fire to the village, he slew the Minas as they sought to escape the flames. Other towns shared the same fate, and all the province of Godwar, with the exception of Desuri, a stronghold of the Madrecha Chauhans, fell into his power. At this time Sada Solanki, whose ancestor had escaped the destruction of Patan and found refuge in these mountainous tracts, held Sodhgarh. He had espoused a daughter of the Madrecha, but the grant of Desuri and its lands in perpetuity easily gained him to the cause of Prithiraj.

Prithiraj having thus restored order in Godwar, and appointed Ojha and the Solanki to the government thereof, regained the confidence of his father; and his brother Jaimall being slain at this time, accelerated his forgiveness and recall. Ere he rejoins Raemall we will relate the manner of this event. Jaimall was desirous to obtain the hand of Tara Bai, daughter of Rao Surthan, who had been expelled Toda by the Pathans. The price of her hand was the recovery of this domain: but Jaimall, willing to anticipate the reward, and rudely attempting access to the fair, was slain by the indignant father. The quibbling remark of the bard upon this event is that "Tara was not the star (tara) of his destiny." At the period of this occurrence Sanga was in concealment, Prithiraj banished, and Jaimall consequently looked to as the heir of Mewar. The Rana, when incited to revenge, replied with a magnanimity which deserves to be recorded, "that he who had thus dared to insult the honour of a father, and that father in distress, richly merited his fate"; and in proof of his disavowal of such a son he conferred on the Solanki the district of Badnor.

Prithirāj recalled.

—This event led to the recall of Prithiraj, who eagerly took up the gage disgraced by his brother. The adventure was akin to his taste. The exploit which won the hand of the fair Amazon, who, equipped with bow and quiver, subsequently accompanied him in many perilous enterprises, will be elsewhere related.

Surajmall (the uncle), who had fomented these quarrels, resolved not to belie the prophetess if a crown lay in his path. The claims acquired from his parricidal parent were revived when Mewar had no sons to look to. Prithiraj on his return renewed the feud with Surajmall, whose ‘vaulting ambition’ persuaded him that the crown was his destiny, and he plunged deep into treason to obtain it. He joined as partner in his schemes Sarangdeo, another descendant of Lakha Rana, and both repaired to Muzaffar, the sultan of Malwa. With his aid they assailed the southern frontier, and rapidly possessed themselves of Sadri, Bataro, and a wide tract extending from Nai to Nimach, attempting even Chitor. With the few troops at hand Raemall descended to punish the rebels, who met the attack on the river Gambhir. The Rana, fighting like a common soldier, had received two-and-twenty wounds, and was nearly falling through faintness, when Prithiraj joined him with one thousand fresh horse, and reanimated the battle. He selected his uncle Surajmall, whom he soon covered with wounds. Many had fallen on both sides, but neither party would yield; when worn out they mutually retired from the field, and bivouacked in sight of each other.

Interview between Prithirāj and Sūrajmall.

—It will show the manners and feelings so peculiar to the Rajput, to describe the meeting between the rival uncle and nephew,—unique in the details of strife, perhaps, since the origin of man. It is taken from a MS. of the Jhala chief who succeeded Surajmall in Sadri. Prithiraj visited his uncle, whom he found in a small tent reclining on a pallet, having just had ‘the barber’ (nai) to sew up his wounds. He rose, and met his nephew with the customary respect, as if nothing unusual had occurred; but the exertion caused some of the wounds to open afresh, when the following dialogue ensued:

Prithiraj.—“Well, uncle, how are your wounds?”

Surajmall.—“Quite healed, my child, since I have the pleasure of seeing you” .

Prithiraj.—"But, uncle (kaka), I have not yet seen the Diwanji. I first ran to see you, and I am very hungry; have you anything to eat?"

Dinner was soon served, and the extraordinary pair sat down and ‘ate off the same platter’; nor did Prithiraj hesitate to eat the pan, presented on his taking leave.

Prithiraj.—“You and I will end our battle in the morning, uncle.”

Surajmall.—“Very well, child; come early!”

They met; but Sarangdeo bore the brunt of the conflict, receiving thirty-five wounds. During “four gharis swords and lances were plied, and every tribe of Rajput lost numbers that day”; but the rebels were defeated and fled to Sadri, and Prithiraj returned in triumph, though with seven wounds, to Chitor. The rebels, however, did not relinquish their designs, and many personal encounters took place between the uncle and nephew: the latter saying he would not let him retain “as much land of Mewar as would cover a needle’s point”; and Suja retorting, that he would allow his nephew to redeem only as much “as would suffice to lie upon.” But Prithiraj gave them no rest, pursuing them from place to place. In the wilds of Batara they formed a stockaded retreat of the dhao tree, which abounds in these forests. Within this shelter, horses and men were intermingled: Suja and his coadjutor communing by the night-fire in their desperate plight, when their cogitations were checked by the rush and neigh of horses. Scarcely had the pretender exclaimed “This must be my nephew!” when Prithiraj dashed his steed through the barricade and entered with his troops. All was confusion, and the sword showered its blows indiscriminately. The young prince reached his uncle, and dealt him a blow which would have levelled him, but for the support of Sarangdeo, who upbraided him, adding that “a buffet now was more than a score of wounds in former days”: to which Suja rejoined, “only when dealt by my nephew’s hand.” Suja demanded a parley; and calling on the prince to stop the combat, he continued: "If I am killed, it matters not—my children are Rajputs, they will run the country to find support; but if you are slain, what will become of Chitor? My face will be blackened, and my name everlastingly reprobated."

The sword was sheathed, and as the uncle and nephew embraced, the latter asked the former, "What were you about, uncle, when I came?"—“Only talking nonsense, child, after dinner.” "But with me over your head, uncle, as a foe how could you be so negligent?"—“What could I do? you had left me no resource, and I must have some place to rest my head!” There was a small temple near the stockade, to which in the morning Prithiraj requested his uncle to accompany him to sacrifice to Kali, but the blow of the preceding night prevented him. Sarangdeo was his proxy. One buffalo had fallen, and a goat was about to follow, when the prince turned his sword on Sarangdeo. The combat was desperate; but Prithiraj was the victor, and the head of the traitor was placed as an offering on the altar of Time. The Gaunda was plundered, the town of Batara recovered, and Surajmall fled to Sadri, where he only stopped to fulfil his threat, “that if he could not retain its lands he would make them over to those stronger than the king”; and having distributed them amongst Brahmans and bards, he finally abandoned Mewar. Passing through the wilds of Kanthal, he had an omen which recalled the Charani’s prediction: “a wolf endeavouring in vain to carry off a kid defended by maternal affection.” This was interpreted as ‘strong ground for a dwelling.’ He halted, subdued the aboriginal tribes, and on this spot erected the town and stronghold of Deolia, becoming lord of a thousand villages, which have descended to his offspring, who now enjoy them under British protection. Such was the origin of Partabgarh Deolia.

Prithirāj poisoned: Death of Rāna Rāemall.

—Prithiraj was poisoned by his brother-in-law, of Abu, whom he had punished for maltreating his sister, and afterwards confided in. His death was soon followed by that of Rana Raemall, who, though not equal to his predecessors, was greatly respected, and maintained the dignity of his station amidst no ordinary calamities .

Chapter 9

Rāna Sanga or Sangrām Singh; A.D. 1508-27.—Sangram, better known in the annals of Mewar as Sanga (called Sanka by the Mogul historians), succeeded in S. 1565 (A.D. 1509). With this prince Mewar reached the summit of her prosperity. To use their own metaphor, “he was the kalas on the pinnacle of her glory.” From him we shall witness this glory on the wane; and though many rays of splendour illuminated her declining career, they served but to gild the ruin.

The imperial chair, since occupied by the Tuar descendant of the Pandus, and the first and last of the Chauhans, and which had been filled successively by the dynasties of Ghazni and Ghor, the Khilji and Lodi, was now shivered to pieces, and numerous petty thrones were constructed of its fragments. Mewar little dreaded these imperial puppets, “when Amurath to Amurath succeeded,” and when four kings reigned simultaneously between Delhi and Benares. The kings of Malwa, though leagued with those of Gujarat, conjoined to the rebels, could make no impression on Mewar when Sanga led her heroes. Eighty thousand horse, seven Rajas of the highest rank, nine Raos, and one hundred and four chieftains bearing the titles of Rawal and Rawat, with five hundred war elephants, followed him into the field. The princes of Marwar and Amber did him homage, and the Raos of Gwalior Ajmer, Sikri, Raesen, Kalpi, Chanderi , Bundi, Gagraun, Rampura, and Abu, served him as tributaries or held of him in chief.

Sanga did not forget those who sheltered him in his reverses. Karamchand of Srinagar had a grant of Ajmer and the title of Rao for his son Jagmall, the reward of his services in the reduction of Chanderi.

The Administration and Wars of Rāna Sanga.

—In a short space of time, Sanga entirely allayed the disorders occasioned by the intestine feuds of his family; and were it permitted to speculate on the cause which prompted a temporary cession of his rights and his dignities to his more impetuous brother, it might be discerned in a spirit of forecast, and of fraternal and patriotic forbearance, a deviation from which would have endangered the country as well as the safety of his family. We may assume this, in order to account for an otherwise pusillanimous surrender of his birthright, and being in contrast to all the subsequent heroism of his life, which, when he resigned, was contained within the wreck of a form. Sanga organized his forces, with which he always kept the field, and ere called to contend with the descendant of Timur, he had gained eighteen pitched battles against the kings of Delhi and Malwa. In two of these he was opposed by Ibrahim Lodi in person, at Bakrol and Ghatoli, in which last battle the imperial forces were defeated with great slaughter, leaving a prisoner of the blood royal to grace the triumph of Chitor. The Pilakhal (yellow rivulet) near Bayana became the northern boundary of Mewar, with the Sind River to the east,—touching Malwa to the south, while his native hills were an impenetrable barrier to the west. Thus swaying, directly or by control, the greater part of Rajasthan, and adored by the Rajputs for the possession of those qualities they hold in estimation, Sanga was ascending to the pinnacle of distinction; and had not fresh hordes of Usbeks and Tatars from the prolific shores of the Oxus and Jaxartes again poured down on the devoted plains of Hindustan, the crown of the Chakravartin might again have encircled the brow of a Hindu, and the banner of supremacy been transferred from Indraprastha to the battlements of Chitor. But Babur arrived at a critical time to rally the dejected followers of the Koran, and to collect them around his own victorious standard.

Invasions from Central Asia.

—From the earliest recorded periods of her history, India has been the prey of the more hardy population from the central regions of Asia. From this fact we may infer another, namely, that its internal form of government was the same as at the present day, partitioned into numerous petty kingdoms, of tribes and clans, of a feudal federation, a prey to all the jealousies inseparable from such a condition. The historians of Alexander bear ample testimony to such form of government, when the Panjab alone possessed many sovereigns, besides the democracies of cities. The Persians overran it, and Darius the Mede accounted India the richest of his satrapies. The Greeks, the Parthians have left in their medals the best proofs of their power; the Getae or Yuti followed; and from the Ghori Shihabu-d-din to the Chagatai Babur, in less than three centuries, five invasions are recorded, each originating a dynasty. Sanga’s opponent was the last, and will continue so until the rays of knowledge renovate the ancient nursery of the human race,—then may end the anomaly in the history of power, of a handful of Britons holding the succession to the Mede, the Parthian, and the Tatar. But, however surprise may be excited at witnessing such rapidity of change, from the physical superiority of man over man, it is immeasurably heightened at the little moral consequence which in every other region of the world has always attended such concussions. Creeds have changed, races have mingled, and names have been effaced from the page of history; but in this corner of civilization we have no such result, and the Rajput remains the same singular being, concentrated in his prejudices, political and moral, as in the days of Alexander, desiring no change himself, and still less to cause any in others. Whatever be the conservative principle, it merits a philosophic analysis; but more, a proper application and direction, by those to whom the destinies of this portion of the globe are confided; for in this remote spot there is a nucleus of energy, on which may accumulate a mass for our support or our destruction.

To return: a descendant of the Turushka of the Jaxartes, the ancient foe of the children of Surya and Chandra, was destined to fulfil the prophetic Purana which foretold dominion “to the Turushka, the Yavan,” and other foreign races in Hind; and the conquered made a right application of the term Turk, both as regards its ancient and modern signification, when applied to the conquerors from Turkistan. Babur, the opponent of Sanga, was king of Ferghana, and of Turki race. His dominions were on both sides the Jaxartes, a portion of ancient Sakatai, or Sakadwipa (Scythia), where dwelt Tomyris the Getic queen immortalized by Herodotus, and where her opponent erected Cyropolis, as did in after-times the Macedonian his most remote Alexandria. From this region did the same Getae, Jat, or Yuti, issue, to the destruction of Bactria, two centuries before the Christian era, and also five subsequent thereto to found a kingdom in Northern India. Again, one thousand years later, Babur issued with his bands to the final subjugation of India. As affecting India alone, this portion of the globe merits deep attention; but as the officina gentium, whence issued those hordes of Asii, Jats, or Yeuts (of whom the Angles were a branch), who peopled the shores of the Baltic, and the precursors of those Goths who, under Attila and Alaric, altered the condition of Europe, its importance is vastly enhanced. But on this occasion it was not redundant population which made the descendant of Timur and Jenghiz abandon the Jaxartes for the Ganges, but unsuccessful ambition: for Babur quitted the delights of Samarkand as a fugitive, and commenced his enterprise, which gave him the throne of the Pandus, with less than two thousand adherents.

Character of Bābur.

—The Rajput prince had a worthy antagonist in the king of Ferghana. Like Sanga, he was trained in the school of adversity, and like him, though his acts of personal heroism were even romantic, he tempered it with that discretion which looks to its results. In A.D. 1494, at the tender age of twelve, he succeeded to a kingdom; ere he was sixteen he defeated several confederacies and conquered Samarkand, and in two short years again lost and regained it. His life was a tissue of successes and reverses; at one moment hailed lord of the chief kingdoms of Transoxiana; at another flying, unattended, or putting all to hazard in desperate single combats, in one of which he slew five champions of his enemies. Driven at length from Ferghana, in despair he crossed the Hindu-Kush, and in 1519 the Indus. Between the Panjab and Kabul he lingered seven years, ere he advanced to measure his sword with Ibrahim of Delhi. Fortune returned to his standard; Ibrahim was slain, his army routed and dispersed, and Delhi and Agra opened their gates to the fugitive king of Ferghana. His reflections on success evince it was his due: “Not to me, O God! but to thee, be the victory!” says the chivalrous Babur. A year had elapsed in possession of Delhi, ere he ventured against the most powerful of his antagonists, Rana Sanga of Chitor.

With all Babur’s qualities as a soldier, supported by the hardy clans of the ‘cloud mountains’ (Belut Tagh) of Karateghin, the chances were many that he and they terminated their career on the ‘yellow rivulet’ of Bayana. Neither bravery nor skill saved him from this fate, which he appears to have expected. What better proof can be desired than Babur’s own testimony to the fact, that a horde of invaders from the Jaxartes, without support or retreat, were obliged to entrench themselves to the teeth in the face of their Rajput foe, alike brave and overpowering in numbers? To ancient jealousies he was indebted for not losing his life instead of gaining a crown, and for being extricated from a condition so desperate that even the frenzy of religion, which made death martyrdom in “this holy war,” scarcely availed to expel the despair which so infected his followers, that in the bitterness of his heart he says “there was not a single person who uttered a manly word, nor an individual who delivered a courageous opinion.”

The Battle of Khānua, March 16, 1527.

—Babur advanced from Agra and Sikri to oppose Rana Sanga, in full march to attack him at the head of almost all the princes of Rajasthan. Although the annals state some points which the imperial historian has not recorded, yet both accounts of the conflict correspond in all the essential details. On the 5th of Kartik, S. 1584 (A.D. 1528), according to the annals, the Rana raised the siege of Bayana, and at Khanua encountered the advanced guard of the Tatars, amounting to fifteen hundred men, which was entirely destroyed; the fugitives carrying to the main body the accounts of the disaster, which paralysed their energies, and made them entrench for security, instead of advancing with the confidence of victory. Reinforcements met the same fate, and were pursued to the camp. Accustomed to reverses, Babur met the check without dismay, and adopted every precaution that a mind fertile in expedients could suggest to reassure the drooping spirits of his troops. He threw up entrenchments, in which he placed his artillery, connecting his guns by chains, and in the more exposed parts chevaux de frise, united by leather ropes: a precaution continued in every subsequent change of position. Everything seemed to aid the Hindu cause: even the Tatar astrologer asserted that as Mars was in the west, whoever should engage coming from the opposite quarter should be defeated. In this state of total inactivity, blockaded in his encampment, Babur remained near a fortnight, when he determined to renounce his besetting sin, and merit superior aid to extricate himself from his peril: the naïveté of his vow must be given in his own words. But the destruction of the wine flasks would appear only to have added to the existing consternation, and made him, as a last resort, appeal to their faith. Having addressed them in a speech of manly courage, though bordering on despair, he seized the happy moment that his exhortation elicited, to swear them on the Koran to conquer or perish. Profiting by this excitement, he broke up his camp, to which he had been confined nearly a month, and marched in order of battle to a position two miles in advance, the Rajputs skirmishing up to his guns. Without a regular circumvallation, his movable pallisadoes and guns chained, he felt no security. The inactivity of Sanga can scarcely escape censure, however we may incline to palliate it by supposing that he deemed his enemy in the toils, and that every day’s delay brought with it increased danger to him. Such reasoning would be valid, if the heterogeneous mass by which the prince of Mewar was surrounded had owned the same patriotic sentiments as himself: but he ought to have known his countrymen, nor overlooked the regulating maxim of their ambition, get land. Delay was fatal to this last coalition against the foes of his race. Babur is silent on the point to which the annals ascribe their discomfiture, a negotiation pending his blockade at Khanua; but these have preserved it, with the name of the traitor who sold the cause of his country. The negotiation had reached this point, that on condition of Babur being left Delhi and its dependencies, the Pilakhal at Bayana should be the boundary of their respective dominions, and even an annual tribute was offered to the Rana . We can believe that in the position Babur then was, he would not scruple to promise anything. The chief of Raesen, by name Salehdi, of the Tuar tribe, was the medium of communication, and though the arrangement was negatived, treason had effected the salvation of Babur.

On March 16 the attack commenced by a furious onset on the centre and right wing of the Tatars, and for several hours the conflict was tremendous. Devotion was never more manifest on the side of the Rajput, attested by the long list of noble names amongst the slain as well as the bulletin of their foe, whose artillery made dreadful havoc in the close ranks of the Rajput cavalry, which could not force the entrenchments, nor reach the infantry which defended them. While the battle was still doubtful, the Tuar traitor who led the van (harawal) went over to Babur, and Sanga was obliged to retreat from the field, which in the onset promised a glorious victory, himself severely wounded and the choicest of his chieftains slain: Rawal Udai Singh of Dungarpur, with two hundred of his clan; Ratna of Salumbar, with three hundred of his Chondawat kin; Raemall Rathor, son of the prince of Marwar, with the brave Mertia leaders Khetsi and Ratna; Ramdas the Sonigira Rao; Uja the Jhala; Gokuldas Pramara; Manikchand and Chandrbhan, Chauhan chiefs of the first rank in Mewar; besides a host of inferior names. Hasan Khan of Mewat, and a son of the last Lodi king of Delhi, who coalesced with Sanga, were amongst the killed. Triumphal pyramids were raised of the heads of the slain, and on a hillock which overlooked the field of battle a tower of skulls was erected; and the conqueror assumed the title of Ghazi, which has ever since been retained by his descendants.

The Death of Rāna Sanga.

—Sanga retreated towards the hills of Mewat, having announced his fixed determination never to re-enter Chitor but with victory. Had his life been spared to his country, he might have redeemed the pledge; but the year of his defeat was the last of his existence, and he died at Baswa, on the frontier of Mewat, not without suspicion of poison. It is painful to record the surmise that his ministers prompted the deed, and the cause is one which would fix a deep stain on the country; namely, the purchase by regicide of inglorious ease and stipulated safety, in preference to privations and dangers, and to emulating the manly constancy of their prince, who resolved to make the heavens his canopy till his foe was crushed—a determination which was pursued with the most resolute perseverance by some of his gallant successors.

Evils resulting from Polygamy.

—Polygamy is the fertile source of evil, moral as well as physical, in the East. It is a relic of barbarism and primeval necessity, affording a proof that ancient Asia is still young in knowledge. The desire of each wife, that her offspring should wear a crown, is natural; but they do not always wait the course of nature for the attainment of their wishes, and the love of power too often furnishes instruments for any deed, however base. When we see, shortly after the death of Sanga, the mother of his second son intriguing with Babur, and bribing him with the surrender of Ranthambhor and the trophy of victory, the crown of the Malwa king, to supplant the lawful heir, we can easily suppose she would not have scrupled to remove any other bar. On this occasion, however, the suspicion rests on the ministers alone. That Babur respected and dreaded his foe we have the best proof in his not risking another battle with him; and the blame which he bestows on himself for the slackness of his pursuit after victory is honourable to Sanga, who is always mentioned with respect in the commentaries of the conqueror: and although he generally styles him the Pagan, and dignifies the contest with the title of “the holy war,” yet he freely acknowledges his merit when he says, “Rana Sanga attained his present high eminence by his own valour and his sword.”

Appearance of Rāna Sanga.

—Sanga Rana was of the middle stature, but of great muscular strength; fair in complexion, with unusually large eyes, which appear to be peculiar to his descendants. He exhibited at his death but the fragments of a warrior: one eye was lost in the broil with his brother; an arm in an action with the Lodi king of Delhi, and he was a cripple owing to a limb being broken by a cannon-ball in another ; while he counted eighty wounds from the sword or the lance on various parts of his body. He was celebrated for energetic enterprise, of which his capture of Muzaffar, king of Malwa, in his own capital, is a celebrated instance; and his successful storm of the almost impregnable Ranthambhor, though ably defended by the imperial general Ali, gained him great renown. He erected a small palace at Khanua, on the line which he determined should be the northern limit of Mewar; and had he been succeeded by a prince possessed of his foresight and judgment, Babur’s descendants might not have retained the sovereignty of India. A cenotaph long marked the spot where the fire consumed the remains of this celebrated prince. Sanga had seven sons, of whom the two elder died in non-age. He was succeeded by the third son,

Rāna Ratan Singh II., A.D. 1527-31.

—Ratna (S. 1586, A.D. 1530) possessed all the arrogance and martial virtue of his race. Like his father, he determined to make the field his capital, and commanded that the gates of Chitor never should be closed, boasting that “its portals were Delhi and Mandu.” Had he been spared to temper by experience the exuberance of youthful impetuosity, he would have well seconded the resolution of his father, and the league against the enemies of his country and faith. But he was not destined to pass the age always dangerous to the turbulent and impatient Rajput, ever courting strife if it would not find him. He had married by stealth the daughter of Prithiraj of Amber, probably before the death of his elder brothers made him heir to Chitor. His double-edged sword, the proxy of the Rajput cavalier, represented Ratna on this occasion. Unfortunately it was kept but too secret; for the Hara prince of Bundi, in ignorance of the fact, demanded and obtained her to wife, and carried her to his capital. The consequences are attributable to the Rana alone, for he ought, on coming to the throne, to have espoused her; but his vanity was flattered at the mysterious transaction, which he deemed would prevent all application for the hand of his ‘affianced’ (manga). The bards of Bundi are rather pleased to record the power of their princes, who dared to solicit and obtain the hand of the ‘bride’ of Chitor. The princes of Bundi had long been attached to the Sesodia house: and from the period when their common ancestors fought together on the banks of the Ghaggar against Shihabu-d-din, they had silently grown to power under the wing of Mewar, and often proved a strong plume in her pinion. The Hara inhabited the hilly tract on her eastern frontier, and though not actually incorporated with Mewar, they yet paid homage to her princes, bore her ensigns and titles, and in return often poured forth their blood. But at the tribunal of Ananga, the Rajput scattered all other homage and allegiance to the winds. The maiden of Amber saw no necessity for disclosing her secret or refusing the brave Hara, of whom fame spoke loudly, when Ratna delayed to redeem his proxy.

Death of Rāna Ratan Singh.

—The unintentional offence sank deep into the heart of the Rana, and though he was closely connected with the Hara, having married his sister, he brooded on the means of revenge, in the attainment of which he sacrificed his own life as well as that of his rival. The festival of the Aheria (the spring hunt), which has thrice been fatal to the princes of Mewar, gave the occasion, when they fell by each other’s weapons. Though Ratna enjoyed the dignity only five years, he had the satisfaction to see the ex-king of Ferghana, now founder of the Mogul dynasty of India, leave the scene before him, and without the diminution of an acre of land to Mewar since the fatal day of Bayana. Rana Ratna was succeeded by his brother,

Rāna Bikramajīt, A.D. 1531-35.

—Bikramajit, in S. 1591 (A.D. 1535). This prince had all the turbulence, without the redeeming qualities of character, which endeared his brother to his subjects; he was insolent, passionate, and vindictive, and utterly regardless of that respect which his proud nobles rigidly exacted. Instead of appearing at their head, he passed his time amongst wrestlers and prize-fighters, on whom and a multitude of ‘paiks,’ or foot soldiers, he lavished those gifts and that approbation, to which the aristocratic Rajput, the equestrian order of Rajasthan, arrogated exclusive right. In this innovation he probably imitated his foes, who had learned the superiority of infantry, despised by the Rajput, who, except in sieges, or when ‘they spread the carpet and hamstrung their steeds,’ held the foot-soldier very cheap. The use of artillery was now becoming general, and the Muslims soon perceived the necessity of foot for their protection: but prejudice operated longer upon the Rajput, who still curses ‘those vile guns,’ which render of comparatively little value the lance of many a gallant soldier; and he still prefers falling with dignity from his steed to descending to an equality with his mercenary antagonist.

An open rupture was the consequence of such innovation, and (to use the figurative expression for misrule) ‘Papa Bai ka Raj’ was triumphant; the police were despised; the cattle carried off by the mountaineers from under the walls of Chitor; and when his cavaliers were ordered in pursuit, the Rana was tauntingly told to send his paiks.

The Attack by Bahādur, Sultān of Gujarāt.

—Bahadur, sultan of Gujarat, determined to take advantage of the Rajput divisions, to revenge the disgrace of the defeat and captivity of his predecessor Muzaffar. Reinforced by the troops of Mandu, he marched against the Rana, then encamped at Loicha, in the Bundi territory. Though the force was overwhelming, yet with the high courage which belonged to his house, Bikramajit did not hesitate to give battle; but he found weak defenders in his mercenary paiks, while his vassals and kin not only kept aloof, but marched off in a body to defend Chitor, and the posthumous son of Sanga Rana, still an infant.

There is a sanctity in the very name of Chitor, which from the earliest times secured her defenders; and now, when threatened again by ‘the barbarian,’ such the inexplicable character of the Rajput, we find the heir of Surajmall abandoning his new capital of Deolia, to pour out the few drops which yet circulated in his veins in defence of the abode of his fathers.

‘The son of Bundi,’ with a brave band of five hundred Haras, also came; as did the Sonigira and Deora Raos of Jalor and Abu, with many auxiliaries from all parts of Rajwara. This was the most powerful effort hitherto made by the sultans of Central India, and European artillerists are recorded in these annals as brought to the subjugation of Chitor. The engineer is styled ‘Labri Khan of Fringan,’ and to his skill Bahadur was indebted for the successful storm which ensued. He sprung a mine at the ‘Bika rock,’ which blew up forty-five cubits of the rampart, with the bastion where the brave Haras were posted. The Bundi bards dwell on this incident, which destroyed their prince and five hundred of his kin. Rao Durga, with the Chondawat chieftains Sata and Dudu and their vassals, bravely defended the breach and repelled many assaults; and, to set an example of courageous devotion, the queen-mother Jawahir Bai, of Rathor race, clad in armour, headed a sally in which she was slain. Still the besiegers gained ground, and the last council convened was to concert means to save the infant son of Sanga from this imminent peril.

Crowning of a New Rāna.

—But Chitor can only be defended by royalty, and again they had recourse to the expedient of crowning a king, as a sacrifice to the dignity of the protecting deity of Chitor. Baghji, prince of Deolia, courted the insignia of destruction; the banner of Mewar floated over him, and the golden sun from its sable field never shone more refulgent than when the changi was raised amidst the shouts of her defenders over the head of the son of Surajmall.

The Johar.

—The infant, Udai Singh, was placed in safety with Surthan, prince of Bundi, the garrison put on their saffron robes, while materials for the johar were preparing. There was little time for the pyre. The bravest had fallen in defending the breach, now completely exposed. Combustibles were quickly heaped up in reservoirs and magazines excavated in the rock, under which gunpowder was strewed. Karnavati, mother of the prince, and sister to the gallant Arjun Hara, led the procession of willing victims to their doom, and thirteen thousand females were thus swept at once from the record of life. The gates were thrown open, and the Deolia chief, at the head of the survivors, with a blind and impotent despair, rushed on his fate .

Bahadur must have been appalled at the horrid sight on viewing his conquest; the mangled bodies of the slain, with hundreds in the last agonies from the poniard or poison, awaiting death as less dreadful than dishonour and captivity. To use the emphatic words of the annalist, “the last day of Chitor had arrived.” Every clan lost its chief, and the choicest of their retainers; during the siege and in the storm thirty-two thousand Rajputs were slain. This is the second sakha of Chitor.

Bahadur had remained but a fortnight, when the tardy advance of Humayun with his succours warned him to retire. According to the annals, he left Bengal at the solicitation of the queen Karnavati; but instead of following up the spoil-encumbered foe, he commenced a pedantic war of words with Bahadur, punning on the word ‘Chitor.’ Had Humayun not been so distant, this catastrophe would have been averted, for he was bound by the laws of chivalry, the claims of which he had acknowledged, to defend the queen’s cause, whose knight he had become. The relation of the peculiarity of a custom analogous to the taste of the chivalrous age of Europe may amuse. When her Amazonian sister the Rathor queen was slain, the mother of the infant prince took a surer method to shield him in demanding the fulfilment of the pledge given by Humayun when she sent the Rakhi to that monarch.

The Rākhi.

—‘The festival of the bracelet’ (Rakhi) is in spring, and whatever its origin, it is one of the few when an intercourse of gallantry of the most delicate nature is established between the fair sex and the cavaliers of Rajasthan. Though the bracelet may be sent by maidens, it is only on occasions of urgent necessity or danger. The Rajput dame bestows with the Rakhi the title of adopted brother; and while its acceptance secures to her all the protection of a cavalière servente, scandal itself never suggests any other tie to his devotion. He may hazard his life in her cause, and yet never receive a smile in reward, for he cannot even see the fair object who, as brother of her adoption, has constituted him her defender. But there is a charm in the mystery of such connexion, never endangered by close observation, and the loyal to the fair may well attach a value to the public recognition of being the Rakhi-band Bhai, the ‘bracelet-bound brother’ of a princess. The intrinsic value of such pledge is never looked to, nor is it requisite it should be costly, though it varies with the means and rank of the donor, and may be of flock silk and spangles, or gold chains and gems. The acceptance of the pledge and its return is by the kachhli, or corset, of simple silk or satin, of gold brocade and pearls. In shape or application there is nothing similar in Europe, and as defending the most delicate part of the structure of the fair, it is peculiarly appropriate as an emblem of devotion. A whole province has often accompanied the Kachhli, and the monarch of India was so pleased with this courteous delicacy in the customs of Rajasthan, on receiving the bracelet of the princess Karnavati, which invested him with the title of her brother, and uncle and protector to her infant Udai Singh, that he pledged himself to her service, “even if the demand were the castle of Ranthambhor.” Humayun proved himself a true knight, and even abandoned his conquests in Bengal when called on to redeem his pledge and succour Chitor, and the widows and minor sons of Sanga Rana. Humayun had the highest proofs of the worth of those courting his protection; he was with his father Babur in all his wars in India, and at the battle of Bayana his prowess was conspicuous, and is recorded by Babur’s own pen. He amply fulfilled his pledge, expelled the foe from Chitor, took Mandu by assault, and, as some revenge for her king’s aiding the king of Gujarat, he sent for the Rana Bikramajit, whom, following their own notions of investiture, he girt with a sword in the captured citadel of his foe.

The Muhammadan historians, strangers to their customs, or the secret motives which caused the emperor to abandon Bengal, ascribe it to the Rana’s solicitation; but we may credit the annals, which are in unison with the chivalrous notions of the Rajputs, into which succeeding monarchs, the great Akbar, his son Jahangir, and Shah Jahan, entered with delight; and even Aurangzeb, two of whose original letters to the queen-mother of Udaipur are now in the author’s possession, and are remarkable for their elegance and purity of diction, and couched in terms perfectly accordant with Rajput delicacy.

Restoration of Bikramajīt.

—Bikramajit, thus restored to his capital, had gained nothing by adversity; or, to employ the words of the annalist, “experience had yielded no wisdom.” He renewed all his former insolence to his chiefs, and so entirely threw aside his own dignity, and, what is of still greater consequence, the reverence universally shown to old age, as to strike in open court Karamchand of Ajmer, the protector of his father Sanga in his misfortunes. The assembly rose with one accord at this indignity to their order; and as they retired, the Chondawat leader Kanji, the first of the nobles, exclaimed, “Hitherto, brother chiefs, we have had but a smell of the blossom, but now we shall be obliged to eat the fruit”; to which the insulted Pramara added, as he hastily retired, “To-morrow its flavour will be known.”

Though the Rajput looks up to his sovereign as to a divinity, and is enjoined implicit obedience by his religion, which rewards him accordingly hereafter, yet this doctrine has its limits, and precedents are abundant for deposal, when the acts of the prince may endanger the realm. But there is a bond of love as well as of awe which restrains them, and softens its severity in the paternity of sway; for these princes are at once the father and king of their people: not in fiction, but reality—for he is the representative of the common ancestor of the aristocracy—the sole lawgiver of Rajasthan.

Death of Rāna Bikramajīt.

—Sick of these minors (and they had now a third in prospect), which in a few years had laid prostrate the throne of Mewar, her nobles on leaving their unworthy prince repaired to Banbir, the natural son of the heroic Prithiraj, and offered “to seat him on the throne of Chitor.” He had the virtue to resist the solicitation; and it was only on painting the dangers which threatened the country, if its chief at such a period had not their confidence, that he gave his consent. The step between the deposal and death of a king is necessarily short , and the cries of the females, which announced the end of Bikramajit, were drowned in the acclamations raised on the elevation of the changi over the head of the bastard Banbir.

Chapter 10

Rāna Banbīr Singh, A.D. 1535-37.

—A few hours of sovereignty sufficed to check those ‘compunctious visitings’ which assailed Banbir ere he assumed its trappings, with which he found himself so little encumbered that he was content to wear them for life. Whether this was the intention of the nobles who set aside the unworthy son of Sanga, there is abundant reason to doubt; and as he is subsequently branded with the epithet of ‘usurper’ it was probably limited, though unexpressed, to investing him with the executive authority during the minority of Udai Singh. Banbir, however, only awaited the approach of night to remove with his own hands the obstacle to his ambition.

The Escape of Udai Singh, the Heir.

—Udai Singh was about six years of age. “He had gone to sleep after his rice and milk,” when his nurse was alarmed by screams from the rawala, and the Bari coming in to take away the remains of the dinner, informed her of the cause, the assassination of the Rana. Aware that one murder was the precursor of another, the faithful nurse put her charge into a fruit basket and, covering it with leaves, she delivered it to the Bari, enjoining him to escape with it from the fort. Scarcely had she time to substitute her own infant in the room of the prince, when Banbir, entering, inquired for him. Her lips refused their office; she pointed to the cradle, and beheld the murderous steel buried in the heart of her babe . The little victim to fidelity was burnt amidst the tears of the rawala, the inconsolable household of their late sovereign, who supposed that their grief was given to the last pledge of the illustrious Sanga. The nurse (Dhai) was a Rajputni of the Khichi tribe, her name Panna, or ‘the Diamond.’ Having consecrated with her tears the ashes of her child, she hastened after that she had preserved. But well had it been for Mewar had the poniard fulfilled its intention, and had the annals never recorded the name of Udai Singh in the catalogue of her princes.

The faithful barber was awaiting the nurse in the bed of the Berach River, some miles west of Chitor, and fortunately the infant had not awoke until he descended the city. They departed for Deolia, and sought refuge with Singh Rao, the successor to Baghji, who fell for Chitor; who dreading the consequence of detection, they proceeded to Dungarpur. Rawal Askaran then ruled this principality, which, as well as Deolia, was not only a branch, but the elder branch, of Chitor. With every wish to afford a shelter, he pleaded the danger which threatened himself and the child in such a feeble sanctuary. Pursuing a circuitous route through Idar, and the intricate valleys of the Aravalli, by the help and with the protection of its wild inmates, the Bhils, she gained Kumbhalmer. The resolution she had formed was bold as it was judicious. She demanded an interview with the governor, Asa Sah his name, of the mercantile tribe of Depra, and a follower of the theistical tenets of the Jains. The interview being granted, she placed the infant in his lap, and bid him “guard the life of his sovereign.” He felt perplexed and alarmed: but his mother, who was present, upbraided him for his scruples. “Fidelity,” said she, “never looks at dangers or difficulties. He is your master, the son of Sanga, and by God’s blessing the result will be glorious.” Having thus fulfilled her trust, the faithful Panna withdrew from Kumbhalmer to avoid the suspicion which a Rajputni about a Srawak’s child would have occasioned, as the heir of Chitor was declared to be the nephew of the Depra.

The Boyhood of Udai Singh.

—Suspicions were often excited regarding Asa’s nephew; once, especially, on the anniversary (samvatsara) of the governor’s father, when “the Rajput guests being in one rank, and the men of wealth in another, young Udai seized a vessel of curds, which no intreaty could prevail on him to relinquish, deriding their threats” . Seven years elapsed before the secret transpired; at length self-revealed, from the same independent bearing. On occasion of a visit from the Sonigira chief, Udai was sent to receive him, and the dignified manner in which he performed the duty convinced the chief ‘he was no nephew to the Sah.’ Rumour spread the tale, and brought not only the nobles of Mewar, but adjacent chiefs, to hail the son of Sanga Rana. Sahidas of Salumbar, the representative of Chonda, Jaga of Kelwa, Sanga of Bagor, all chiefs of the clans of Chondawat; the Chauhans of Kotharia and Bedla, the Pramar of Bijolia Akhiraj (Sonigira), Prithiraj of Sanchor, and Lunkaran Jethawat, repaired to Kumbhalmer, when all doubt was removed by the testimony of the nurse, and of her coadjutor in the preservation of the child.

Installation of Rāna Udai Singh, A.D. 1537-72.

—A court was formed, when the faithful Asa Sah resigned his trust and placed the prince of Chitor ‘in the lap of the Kotharia Chauhan,’ as the ‘great ancient’ among the nobles of Mewar, who was throughout acquainted with the secret, and who, to dissipate the remaining scruples which attached to the infant’s preservation, ‘ate off the same platter with him.’ The Sonigira Rao did not hesitate to affiance to him his daughter, and it was accepted by his advisers, notwithstanding the interdict of Hamir to any intermarriage with the Sonigira, since the insult of giving the widow to his bed. Udai received the tika of Chitor in the castle of Kumbha, and the homage of nearly all the chiefs of Mewar.

The tidings soon reached the usurper, who had not borne his faculties meekly since his advancement; but having seized on the dignity, he wished to ape all the customs of the legitimate monarchs of Chitor, and even had the effrontery to punish as an insult the refusal of one of the proud sons of Chonda to take the dauna from his bastard hand.

The Dauna, a Recognition of Legitimacy.

—The dauna, or daua, is a portion of the dish of which the prince partakes, sent by his own hand to whomsoever he honours at the banquet. At the rasora, or refectory, the chiefs who are admitted to dine in the presence of their sovereign are seated according to their rank. The repast is one of those occasions when an easy familiarity is permitted, which, though unrestrained, never exceeds the bounds of etiquette, and the habitual reverence due to their father and prince. When he sends, by the steward of the kitchen, a portion of the dish before him, or a little from his own kansa, or plate, all eyes are guided to the favoured mortal, whose good fortune is the subject of subsequent conversation. Though, with the diminished lustre of this house, the dauna may have lost its former estimation, it is yet received with reverence; but the extent of this feeling, even so late as the reign of Arsi Rana, the father of the reigning prince, the following anecdote will testify. In the rebellion during this prince’s reign, amongst the ancient customs which became relaxed, that of bestowing the dauna was included; and the Rana conferring it on the Rathor prince of Kishangarh, the Bijolia chief, one of the sixteen superior nobles of Mewar, rose and left the presence, observing, “Neither the Kachhwaha nor the Rathor has a right to this honour, nor can we, who regard as sanctified even the leavings of your repast, witness this degradation; for the Thakur of Kishangarh is far beneath me.” To such extent is this privilege even yet carried, and such importance is attached from habit to the personal character of the princes of Mewar, that the test of regal legitimacy in Rajasthan is admission to eat from the same plate (kansa) with the Rana: and to the refusal of this honour to the great Man Singh of Amber may be indirectly ascribed the ruin of Mewar.

It may therefore be conceived with what contempt the haughty nobility of Chitor received the mockery of honour from the hand of this ‘fifth son of Mewar’; and the Chondawat chief had the boldness to add to his refusal, “that an honour from the hand of a true son of Bappa Rawal became a disgrace when proffered by the offspring of the handmaid Sitalseni.” The defection soon became general, and all repaired to the valley of Kumbhalmer to hail the legitimate son of Mewar. A caravan of five hundred horses and ten thousand oxen, laden with merchandise from Cutch, the dower of Banbir’s daughter, guarded by one thousand Gaharwar Rajputs, was plundered in the passes: a signal intimation of the decay of his authority, and a timely supply to the celebration of the nuptials of Udai Rana with the daughter of the Rao of Jalor. Though the interdict of Hamir was not forgotten, it was deemed that the insult given by Banbir Sonigira was amply effaced by his successor’s redemption of the usurpation of Banbir Sesodia. The marriage was solemnized at Bali, within the limits of Jalor, and the customary offerings were sent or given by all the princes of Rajasthan. Two chiefs only, of any consequence, abstained from attending on their lawful prince on this occasion, the Solanki of Maholi and Maloji of Tana. In attacking them, the bastard was brought into conflict; but Maloji was slain and the Solanki surrendered.

Deposition of Rāna Banbīr Singh.

—Deserted by all, Banbir held out in the capital; but his minister admitted, under the garb of a reinforcement with supplies, a thousand resolute adherents of the prince: the keepers of the gates were surprised and slain, and the an of Udai Singh was proclaimed. Banbir was even permitted to retire with his family and his wealth. He sought refuge in the Deccan, and the Bhonslas of Nagpur are said to derive their origin from this spurious branch of Chitor.

Rāna Udai Singh, A.D. 1537-72.

—Rana Udai Singh ascended the throne in S. 1597 (A.D. 1541-2). Great were the rejoicings on the restoration of this prince. ‘The song of joy,’ which was composed on the occasion, is yet a favourite at Udaipur, and on the festival of Isani (the Ceres of Rajasthan), the females still chant in chorus the ‘farewell to Kumbhalmer.’ But the evil days of Mewar which set in with Sanga’s death, and were accelerated by the fiery valour of Ratna and the capricious conduct of Bikramajit, were completed by an anomaly in her annals: a coward succeeding a bastard to guide the destinies of the Sesodias. The vices of Ratna and his brother were virtues compared to this physical defect, the consequences of which destroyed a great national feeling, the opinion of its invincibility.

His Character.

—“Woe to the land where a minor rules or a woman bears sway!” exclaims the last of the great bards of Rajasthan; but where both were united, as in Mewar, the measure of her griefs was full. Udai Singh had not one quality of a sovereign; and wanting martial virtue, the common heritage of his race, he was destitute of all. Yet he might have slumbered life away in inglorious repose during the reign of Humayun, or the contentions of the Pathan usurpation; but, unhappily for Rajasthan, a prince was then rearing who forged fetters for the Hindu race which enthralled them for ages; and though the corroding hand of time left but their fragments, yet even now, though emancipated, they bear the indelible marks of the manacle; not like the galley slave’s, physical and exterior, but deep mental scars, never to be effaced. Can a nation which has run its long career of glory be regenerated? Can the soul of the Greek or the Rajput be reanimated with the spark divine which defended the kunguras of Chitor or the pass of Thermopylae? Let history answer the question.

Birth of Akbar.

—In the same year that the song of joy was raised in the cloud-capped palace of Kumbhalmer for the deliverance of Udai Singh, the note of woe was pealed through the walls of Umarkot, and given to the winds of the desert, to proclaim the birth of an infant destined to be the greatest monarch who ever swayed the sceptre of Hindustan. In an oasis of the Indian desert, amidst the descendants of the ancient Sogdoi of Alexander, Akbar first saw the light; his father a fugitive, the diadem torn from his brows, its recovery more improbable than was its acquisition by Babur. The ten years which had elapsed since Humayun’s accession were passed in perpetual strife with his brothers, placed according to custom in subordinate governments. Their selfish ambition met its reward; for with the fall of Humayun their own was ensured, when Sher Shah displaced the dynasty of Chagatai for his own, the Pathan (or Sur).

Defeat and Flight of Humāyūn, A.D. 1540.

—From the field of battle at Kanauj, where Humayun left his crown, his energetic opponent gave him no respite, driving him before him from Agra to Lahore. Thence, with his family and a small band of adherents, alternately protected and repelled by Hindu chieftains, he reached the valley of Sind, where he struggled to maintain himself amidst the greatest privations, attempting in succession each stronghold on the Indus, from Multan to the ocean. Foiled in every object, his associates made rebels by distress, he abandoned them for the more dubious shelter of the foes of his race. Vain were his solicitations to Jaisalmer and Jodhpur; and though it cannot be matter of wonder that he found no commiseration from either Bhatti or Rathor, we must reprobate the unnational conduct of Maldeo, who, the Mogul historian says, attempted to make him captive. From such inhospitable treatment the royal exile escaped by again plunging into the desert, where he encountered, along with the tender objects of his solicitude, hardships of the most appalling description, until sheltered by the Sodha prince of Umarkot. The high courage and the virtues of this monarch increase that interest in his sufferings which royalty in distress never fails to awaken by its irresistible influence upon our sympathies; and they form an affecting episode in the history of Ferishta. Humayun, though more deeply skilled in the mysteries of astrology than any professed seer of his empire, appears never to have enjoyed that prescience which, according to the initiated in the science, is to be obtained from accurate observation:

And coming events cast their shadows before;

for, could he, by any prophetic power, have foreseen that the cloud which then shaded his fortunes, was but the precursor of glory to his race, he would have continued his retreat from the sheltering sand-hills of Umarkot with very different sentiments from those which accompanied his flight into Persia .

Early Years of Akbar.

—Humayun educated the young Akbar in the same school of adversity in which he had studied under Babur. Between the Persian court and his ancient patrimony in Transoxiana, Kandahar, and Kashmir, twelve years were passed in every trial of fortune. During this short period, India, always the prize of valour, had witnessed in succession six kings descended from the Pathan ‘Lion’ (sher), of whom the last, Sikandar, was involved in the same civil broils which brought the crown to his family. Humayun, then near Kashmir, no sooner observed the tide of events set counter to his foe, than he crossed the Indus and advanced upon Sirhind, where the Pathan soon appeared with a tumultuous array. The impetuosity of young Akbar brought on a general engagement, which the veterans deemed madness. Not so Humayun, who gave the command to his boy, whose heroism so excited all ranks, that they despised the numbers of the enemy, and gained a glorious victory. This was the presage of his future fame; for Akbar was then but twelve years of age, the same period of life at which his grandfather, Babur, maintained himself on the throne of Farghana. Humayun, worthy of such a son and such a sire, entered Delhi in triumph; but he did not long enjoy his recovered crown. His death will appear extraordinary, according to the erroneous estimate formed of Eastern princes: its cause was a fall from the terrace of his library; for, like every individual of his race, he was not merely a patron of literature, but himself a scholar. Were we to contrast the literary acquirements of the Chagatai princes with those of their contemporaries of Europe, the balance of lore would be found on the side of the Asiatics, even though Elizabeth and Henry IV. of France were in the scale. Amongst the princes from the Jaxartes are historians, poets, astronomers, founders of systems of government and religion, warriors, and great captains, who claim our respect and admiration.

Akbar’s Struggle for the Empire.

—Scarcely had Akbar been seated on the throne, when Delhi and Agra were wrested from him, and a nook of the Panjab constituted all his empire: but by the energetic valour of the great Bairam Khan, his lost sovereignty was regained with equal rapidity, and established by the wisdom of this Sully of Hindustan on a rock. Kalpi, Chanderi, Kalanjar, all Bundelkhand and Malwa, were soon attached to the empire, and at the early age of eighteen Akbar assumed the uncontrolled direction of the State. He soon turned his attention towards the Rajputs; and whether it was to revenge the inhospitality of Maldeo towards his father, he advanced against the Rathors, and stormed and took Merta, the second city in Marwar. Raja Biharimall [or Bahar Mall] of Amber anticipated the king, enrolled himself and son Bhagwandas amongst his vassals, gave the Chagatai a daughter to wife, and held his country as a fief of the empire. But the rebellions of the Usbek nobles, and the attempts of former princes to regain their lost power, checked for a time his designs upon Rajasthan. These matters adjusted, and the petty sovereigns in the East (to whom the present monarch of Oudh is as Alexander) subjected to authority, he readily seized upon the provocation which the sanctuary given to Baz Bahadur of Malwa and the ex-prince of Narwar afforded, to turn his arms against Chitor.

Comparison of Akbar with Rāna Udai Singh.

—Happy the country where the sovereignty is in the laws, and where the monarch is but the chief magistrate of the State, unsubjected to those vicissitudes which make the sceptre in Asia unstable as a pendulum, kept in perpetual oscillation by the individual passions of her princes; where the virtues of one will exalt her to the summit of prosperity, as the vices of a successor will plunge her into the abyss of degradation. Akbar and Udai Singh furnish the corollary to this self-evident truth.

The Rana was old enough to philosophize on ‘the uses of adversity’; and though the best of the ‘great ancients’ had fallen in defence of Chitor, there were not wanting individuals capable of instilling just and noble sentiments into his mind: but it was of that common character which is formed to be controlled by others; and an artful and daring concubine stepped in, to govern Udai Singh and Mewar.

Akbar was not older when he came to the throne of Delhi than Udai Singh when he ascended that of Mewar. Nor were his hopes much brighter; but the star which beamed upon his cradle in the desert, conducted to his aid such counsellors as the magnanimous Bairam, and the wise and virtuous Abu-l Fazl. Yet it may be deemed hardly fair to contrast the Rajput with the Mogul: the one disciplined into an accurate knowledge of human nature, by experience of the mutability of fortune; the other cooped up from infancy in a valley of his native hills, his birth concealed, and his education restricted.

Akbar was the real founder of the empire of the Moguls, the first successful conqueror of Rajput independence: to this end his virtues were powerful auxiliaries, as by his skill in the analysis of the mind and its readiest stimulant to action, he was enabled to gild the chains with which he bound them. To these they became familiarized by habit, especially when the throne exerted its power in acts gratifying to national vanity, or even in ministering to the more ignoble passions. But generations of the martial races were cut off by his sword, and lustres rolled away ere his conquests were sufficiently confirmed to permit him to exercise the beneficence of his nature, and obtain by the universal acclaim of the conquered, the proud epithet of Jagad Guru, or ‘guardian of mankind.’ He was long ranked with Shihabu-d-din, Ala, and other instruments of destruction, and with every just claim; and, like these, he constructed a Mimbar for the Koran from the altars of Eklinga. Yet he finally succeeded in healing the wounds his ambition had inflicted, and received from millions that meed of praise which no other of his race ever obtained.

The absence of the kingly virtues in the sovereign of Mewar filled to the brim the bitter cup of her destiny. The guardian goddess of the Sesodias had promised never to abandon the rock of her pride while a descendant of Bappa Rawal devoted himself to her service. In the first assault by Ala, twelve crowned heads defended the ‘crimson banner’ to the death. In the second, when conquest led by Bajazet came from the south, the chieftain of Deolia, a noble scion of Mewar, “though severed from her stem,” claimed the crown of glory and of martyrdom. But on this, the third and grandest struggle, no regal victim appeared to appease the Cybele of Chitor, and win her to retain its ‘kunguras’ as her coronet. She fell! the charm was broken; the mysterious tie was severed for ever which connected Chitor with perpetuity of sway to the race of Guhilot. With Udai Singh fled the “fair face” which in the dead of night unsealed the eyes of Samarsi, and told him “the glory of the Hindu was departing”: with him, that opinion, which for ages esteemed her walls the sanctuary of the race, which encircled her with a halo of glory, as the palladium of the religion and the liberties of the Rajputs.

To traditions such as these, history is indebted for the noblest deeds recorded in her page; and in Mewar they were the covert impulse to national glory and independence. For this the philosopher will value the relation; and the philanthropist as being the germs or nucleus of resistance against tyrannical domination. Enveloped in a wild fable, we see the springs of their prejudices and their action: batter down these adamantine walls of national opinion, and all others are but glass. The once invincible Chitor is now pronounced indefensible. “The abode of regality, which for a thousand years reared her head above all the cities of Hindustan,” is become the refuge of wild beasts, which seek cover in her temples; and this erst sanctified capital is now desecrated as the dwelling of evil fortune, into which the entrance of her princes is solemnly interdicted.

Akbar besieges Chitor, September, A.D. 1567.

—Ferishta mentions but one enterprise against Chitor, that of its capture; but the annals record another, when Akbar was compelled to relinquish the undertaking. The successful defence is attributed to the masculine courage of the Rana’s concubine queen, who headed the sallies into the heart of the Mogul camp, and on one occasion to the emperor’s headquarters. The imbecile Rana proclaimed that he owed his deliverance to her; when the chiefs, indignant at this imputation on their courage, conspired and put her to death. Internal discord invited Akbar to reinvest Chitor; he had just attained his twenty-fifth year, and was desirous of the renown of capturing it. The site of the royal Urdu, or camp, is still pointed out. It extended from the village of Pandauli along the high road to Basai, a distance of ten miles. The headquarters of Akbar are yet marked by a pyramidal column of marble, to which tradition has assigned the title of Akbar ka diwa, or ‘Akbar’s lamp.’ Scarcely had Akbar sat down before Chitor, when the Rana was compelled (say the annals) to quit it; but the necessity and his wishes were in unison. It lacked not, however, brave defenders. Sahidas, at the head of a numerous band of the descendants of Chonda, was at his post, ‘the gate of the sun’; there he fell resisting the entrance of the foe, and there his altar stands, on the brow of the rock which was moistened with his blood. Rawat Duda of Madri led ‘the sons of Sanga.’ The feudatory chiefs of Bedla and Kotharia, descended from Prithiraj of Delhi—the Pramar of Bijolia—the Jhala of Sadri—inspired their contingents with their brave example: these were all home chieftains. Another son of Deolia again combated for Chitor, with the Sonigira Rao of Jalor—Isaridas Rathor, Karamchand Kachhwaha, with Duda Sadani, and the Tuar prince of Gwalior, were distinguished amongst the foreign auxiliaries on this occasion.

Jaimall and Patta.

—But the names which shine brightest in this gloomy page of the annals of Mewar, which are still held sacred by the bard and the true Rajput, and immortalized by Akbar’s own pen, are Jaimall of Badnor and Patta of Kelwa, both of the sixteen superior vassals of Mewar. The first was a Rathor of the Mertia house, the bravest of the brave clans of Marwar; the other was head of the Jagawats, another grand shoot from Chonda. The names of Jaimall and Patta are ‘as household words,’ inseparable in Mewar, and will be honoured while the Rajput retains a shred of his inheritance or a spark of his ancient recollections. Though deprived of the stimulus which would have been given had their prince been a witness of their deeds, heroic achievements such as those already recorded were conspicuous on this occasion; and many a fair form threw the buckler over the scarf, and led the most desperate sorties .

When Salumbar fell at the gate of the sun, the command devolved on Patta of Kelwa. He was only sixteen: his father had fallen in the last shock, and his mother had survived but to rear this the sole heir of their house. Like the Spartan mother of old, she commanded him to put on the ‘saffron robe,’ and to die for Chitor: but surpassing the Grecian dame, she illustrated her precept by example; and lest any soft ‘compunctious visitings’ for one dearer than herself might dim the lustre of Kelwa, she armed the young bride with a lance, with her descended the rock, and the defenders of Chitor saw her fall, fighting by the side of her Amazonian mother. When their wives and daughters performed such deeds, the Rajputs became reckless of life. They had maintained a protracted defence, but had no thoughts of surrender, when a ball struck Jaimall, who took the lead on the fall of the kin of Mewar. His soul revolted at the idea of ingloriously perishing by a distant blow. He saw there was no ultimate hope of salvation, the northern defences being entirely destroyed, and he resolved to signalize the end of his career. The fatal Johar was commanded, while eight thousand Rajputs ate the last ‘bira’ together, and put on their saffron robes; the gates were thrown open, the work of destruction commenced, and few survived ‘to stain the yellow mantle’ by inglorious surrender. Akbar entered Chitor, when thirty thousand of its inhabitants became victims to the ambitious thirst of conquest of this ‘guardian of mankind.’ All the heads of clans, both home and foreign, fell, and seventeen hundred of the immediate kin of the prince sealed their duty to their country with their lives. The Tuar chief of Gwalior appears to have been the only one of note who was reserved for another day of glory. Nine queens, five princesses (their daughters), with two infant sons, and the families of all the chieftains not at their estates, perished in the flames or in the assault of this ever memorable day. Their divinity had indeed deserted them; for it was on Adityawar, the day of the sun, he shed for the last time a ray of glory on Chitor. The rock of their strength was despoiled; the temples, the palaces dilapidated: and, to complete her humiliation and his triumph, Akbar bereft her of all the symbols of regality: the nakkaras, whose reverberations proclaimed, for miles around, the entrance and exit of her princes; the candelabras from the shrine of the ‘great mother,’ who girt Bappa Rawal with the sword with which he conquered Chitor; and, in mockery of her misery, her portals, to adorn his projected capital, Akbarabad.

Akbar claimed the honour of the death of Jaimall by his own hand: the fact is recorded by Abu-l Fazl, and by the emperor Jahangir, who conferred on the matchlock which aided him to this distinction the title of Sangram. But the conqueror of Chitor evinced a more exalted sense, not only of the value of his conquest, but of the merits of his foes, in erecting statues to the names of Jaimall and Patta at the most conspicuous entrance of his palace at Delhi; and they retained that distinction even when Bernier was in India.

The Sin of the Capture of Chitor.

—When the Carthaginian gained the battle of Cannae, he measured his success by the bushels of rings taken from the fingers of the equestrian Romans who fell in that memorable field. Akbar estimated his, by the quantity of cordons (zunnar) of distinction taken from the necks of the Rajputs, and seventy-four mans and a half are the recorded amount. To eternize the memory of this disaster, the numerals ‘74½’ are talak, or accursed. Marked on the banker’s letter in Rajasthan it is the strongest of seals, for ‘the sin of the slaughter of Chitor’ is thereby invoked on all who violate a letter under the safeguard of this mysterious number. He would be a fastidious critic who stopped to calculate the weight of these cordons of the Rajput cavaliers, probably as much over-rated as the trophies of the Roman rings, which are stated at three and a half bushels. It is for the moral impression that history deigns to note such anecdotes, in themselves of trivial import. So long as ‘74½’ shall remain recorded, some good will result from the calamity, and may survive when the event which caused it is buried in oblivion.

Escape of Rāna Udai Singh: Foundation of Udaipur.

—When Udai Singh abandoned Chitor, he found refuge with the Gohil in the forests of Rajpipli. Thence he passed to the valley of the Giro in the Aravalli, in the vicinity of the retreat of his great ancestor Bappa, ere he conquered Chitor. At the entrance of this valley, several years previous to this catastrophe, he had formed the lake, still called after him Udai Sagar, and he now raised a dyke between the mountains which dammed up another mountain stream. On the cluster of hills adjoining he raised the small palace called Nauchauki, around which edifices soon arose, and formed a city to which he gave his own name, Udaipur, henceforth the capital of Mewar.

Death of Rāna Udai Singh.

—Four years had Udai Singh survived the loss of Chitor, when he expired at Gogunda, at the early age of forty-two; yet far too long for his country’s honour and welfare. He left a numerous issue of twenty-five legitimate sons, whose descendants, all styled Ranawat, pushed aside the more ancient stock, and form that extensive clan distinctively termed the Babas, or ‘infants,’ of Mewar, whether Ranawats, Purawats, or Kanawats. His last act was to entail with a barren sceptre contention upon his children; for, setting aside the established laws of primogeniture, he proclaimed his favourite son Jagmall his successor.

Jagmall proclaimed Rāna.

—In Mewar there is no interregnum: even the ceremony of matam (mourning) is held at the house of the family priest while the palace is decked out for rejoicing. On the full moon of the spring month of Phalgun, while his brothers and the nobles attended the funeral pyre, Jagmall took possession of the throne in the infant capital, Udaipur: but even while the trumpets sounded, and the heralds called aloud “May the king live for ever!” a cabal was formed round the bier of his father.

Jagmall deposed in favour of Rāna Partāp Singh.

—It will be borne in mind that Udai Singh espoused the Sonigira princess; and the Jalor Rao, desirous to see his sister’s son have his right, demanded of Kistna, the ‘great ancient’ of Mewar and the leader of the Chondawats, how such injustice was sanctioned by him. “When a sick man has reached the last extreme and asks for milk to drink, why refuse it?” was the reply; with the addition: “The Sonigira’s nephew is my choice, and my stand by Partap.” Jagmall had just entered the Rasora, and Partap was saddling for his departure, when Rawat Kistna entered, accompanied by the ex-prince of Gwalior. Each chief took an arm of Jagmall, and with gentle violence removed him to a seat in front of the ‘cushion’ he had occupied; the hereditary premier remarking, “You had made a mistake, Maharaj; that place belongs to your brother”: and girding Partap with the sword (the privilege of this house), thrice touching the ground, hailed him king of Mewar. All followed the example of Salumbar. Scarcely was the ceremony over, when the young prince remarked, it was the festival of the Aheria, nor must ancient customs be forgotten: “Therefore to horse, and slay a boar to Gauri, and take the omen for the ensuing year.” They slew abundance of game, and in the mimic field of war, the nobles who surrounded the gallant Partap anticipated happier days for Mewar .

Chapter 11

Rāna Partāp Singh, A.D. 1572-97.

—Partap succeeded to the titles and renown of an illustrious house, but without a capital, without resources, his kindred and clans dispirited by reverses: yet possessed of the noble spirit of his race, he meditated the recovery of Chitor, the vindication of the honour of his house, and the restoration of its power. Elevated with this design, he hurried into conflict with his powerful antagonist, nor stooped to calculate the means which were opposed to him. Accustomed to read in his country’s annals the splendid deeds of his forefathers, and that Chitor had more than once been the prison of their foes, he trusted that the revolutions of fortune might co-operate with his own efforts to overturn the unstable throne of Delhi. The reasoning was as just as it was noble; but whilst he gave loose to those lofty aspirations which meditated liberty to Mewar, his crafty opponent was counteracting his views by a scheme of policy which, when disclosed, filled his heart with anguish. The wily Mogul arrayed against Partap his kindred in faith as well as blood. The princes of Marwar, Amber, Bikaner, and even Bundi, late his firm ally, took part with Akbar and upheld despotism. Nay, even his own brother, Sagarji, deserted him, and received, as the price of his treachery, the ancient capital of his race, and the title which that possession conferred .

Rāna Partāp Singh resists the Moguls.

—But the magnitude of the peril confirmed the fortitude of Partap, who vowed, in the words of the bard, “to make his mother’s milk resplendent”; and he amply redeemed his pledge. Single-handed, for a quarter of a century did he withstand the combined efforts of the empire; at one time carrying destruction into the plains, at another flying from rock to rock, feeding his family from the fruits of his native hills, and rearing the nursling hero Amra, amidst savage beasts and scarce less savage men, a fit heir to his prowess and revenge. The bare idea that “the son of Bappa Rawal should bow the head to mortal man,” was insupportable; and he spurned every overture which had submission for its basis, or the degradation of uniting his family by marriage with the Tatar, though lord of countless multitudes.

The brilliant acts he achieved during that period live in every valley; they are enshrined in the heart of every true Rajput, and many are recorded in the annals of the conquerors. To recount them all, or relate the hardships he sustained, would be to pen what they would pronounce a romance who had not traversed the country where tradition is yet eloquent with his exploits, or conversed with the descendants of his chiefs, who cherish a recollection of the deeds of their forefathers, and melt, as they recite them, into manly tears.

Partap was nobly supported; and though wealth and fortune tempted the fidelity of his chiefs, not one was found base enough to abandon him. The sons of Jaimall shed their blood in his cause, along with the successors of Patta—the house of Salumbar redoubled the claims of Chonda to fidelity; and these five lustres of adversity are the brightest in the chequered page of the history of Mewar. Nay, some chiefs, attracted by the very desperation of his fortunes, pressed to his standard, to combat and die with Partap. Amongst these was the Delwara chief, whose devotion gained him the prince’s ‘right hand.’

The Vow of Rāna Partāp Singh.

—To commemorate the desolation of Chitor, which the bardic historian represents as a ‘widow’ despoiled of the ornaments to her loveliness, Partap interdicted to himself and his successors every article of luxury or pomp, until the insignia of her glory should be redeemed. The gold and silver dishes were laid aside for pattras of leaves; their beds henceforth of straw, and their beards left untouched. But in order more distinctly to mark their fallen fortune and stimulate to its recovery, he commanded that the martial nakkaras, which always sounded in the van of battle or processions, should follow in the rear. This last sign of the depression of Mewar still survives; the beard is yet untouched by the shears; and even in the subterfuge by which the patriot king’s behest is set aside, we have a tribute to his memory: for though his descendant eats off gold and silver, and sleeps upon a bed, he places the leaves beneath the one and straw under the other.

Often was Partap heard to exclaim, “Had Udai Singh never been, or none intervened between him and Sanga Rana, no Turk should ever have given laws to Rajasthan.” Hindu society had assumed a new form within the century preceding: the wrecks of dominion from the Jumna and Ganges had been silently growing into importance; and Amber and Marwar had attained such power, that the latter single-handed coped with the imperial Sher Shah; while numerous minor chieftainships were attaining shape and strength on both sides the Chambal. A prince of commanding genius alone was wanting, to snatch the sceptre of dominion from the Islamite. Such a leader they found in Sanga, who possessed every quality which extorts spontaneous obedience, and the superiority of whose birth, as well as dignity, were admitted without cavil, from the Himalaya to Rameswaram. These States had powerful motives to obey such a leader, in the absence of whom their ancient patrimony was lost; and such they would have found renewed in Sanga’s grandson, Partap, had Udai Singh not existed, or had a less gifted sovereign than Akbar been his contemporary.

With the aid of some chiefs of judgment and experience, Partap remodelled his government, adapting it to the exigencies of the times and to his slender resources. New grants were issued, with regulations defining the service required. Kumbhalmer, now the seat of government, was strengthened, as well as Gogunda and other mountain fortresses; and, being unable to keep the field in the plains of Mewar, he followed the system of his ancestors, and commanded his subjects, on pain of death, to retire into the mountains. During the protracted contest, the fertile tracts watered by the Banas and the Berach, from the Aravalli chain west to the eastern tableland, were be chiragh, ‘without a lamp.’

Many tales are related of the unrelenting severity with which Partap enforced obedience to this stern policy. Frequently, with a few horse, he issued forth to see that his commands were obeyed. The silence of the desert prevailed in the plains; grass had usurped the place of the waving corn; the highways were choked with the thorny babul, and beasts of prey made their abode in the habitations of his subjects. In the midst of this desolation, a single goatherd, trusting to elude observation, disobeyed his prince’s injunction, and pastured his flock in the luxuriant meadows of Untala, on the banks of the Banas. After a few questions, he was killed and hung up in terrorem. By such patriotic severity Partap rendered ‘the garden of Rajasthan’ of no value to the conqueror, and the commerce already established between the Mogul court and Europe, conveyed through Mewar from Surat and other ports, was intercepted and plundered.

Akbar attacks Rāna Partāp Singh, A.D. 1576.

—Akbar took the field against the Rajput prince, establishing his headquarters at Ajmer. This celebrated fortress, destined ultimately to be one of the twenty-two subahs of his empire and an imperial residence, had admitted for some time a royal garrison. Maldeo of Marwar, who had so ably opposed the usurper Sher Shah, was compelled to follow the example of his brother prince, Bhagwandas of Amber, and to place himself at the footstool of Akbar: only two years subsequent to Partap’s accession, after a brave but fruitless resistance in Merta and Jodhpur, he sent his son, Udai Singh, to pay homage to the king. Akbar received him at Nagor, on his route to Ajmer, on which occasion the Raos of Mandor were made Rajas; and as the heir of Marwar was of uncommon bulk, the title by which he was afterwards known in Rajasthan was Mota Raja, and henceforth the descendants of the kings of Kanauj had the ‘right hand’ of the emperor of the Moguls. But the Rathor was greater in his native pride than with all the accession of dignity or power which accrued on his sacrifice of Rajput principles . Udai ‘le gros’ was the first of his race who gave a daughter in marriage to a Tatar. The bribe for which he bartered his honour was splendid; for four provinces, yielding £200,000 of annual revenue, were given in exchange for Jodh Bai, at once doubling the fisc of Marwar. With such examples as Amber and Marwar, and with less power to resist the temptation, the minor chiefs of Rajasthan, with a brave and numerous vassalage, were transformed into satraps of Delhi, and the importance of most of them was increased by the change. Truly did the Mogul historian designate them “at once the props and the ornaments of the throne.”

Rāna Partāp Singh deserted by Rājput Princes.

—But these were fearful odds against Partap: the arms of his countrymen thus turned upon him, derived additional weight from their self-degradation, which kindled into jealousy and hatred against the magnanimous resolution they wanted the virtue to imitate. When Hindu prejudice was thus violated by every prince in Rajasthan (that of Bundi alone excepted), the Rana renounced all alliance with those who were thus degraded; and in order to carry on the line, he sought out and incorporated with the first class of nobles of his own kin the descendants of the ancient princes of Delhi, of Patan, of Marwar, and of Dhar. To the eternal honour of Partap and his issue be it told, that to the very close of the monarchy of the Moguls, they not only refused such alliance with the throne, but even with their brother princes of Marwar and Amber. It is a proud triumph of virtue to record, from the autograph letters of the most powerful of their princes, Bakhta Singh and Jai Singh, that whilst they had risen to greatness from the surrender of principle, as Mewar had decayed from her adherence to it, they should, even while basking in court favour, solicit, and that humbly, to be readmitted to the honour of matrimonial intercourse—‘to be purified,’ ‘to be regenerated,’ ‘to be made Rajputs’: and that this was granted only on condition of their abjuring the contaminating practice which had disunited them for more than a century; with the additional stipulation, that the issue of marriage with the house of Mewar should be the heirs to those they entered: conditions which the decline of the empire prevented from being broken.

Rāja Mān Singh and Rāna Partāp Singh.

—An anecdote illustrative of the settled repugnance of this noble family to sully the purity of its blood may here be related, as its result had a material influence on its subsequent condition. Raja Man, who had succeeded to the throne of Amber, was the most celebrated of his race, and from him may be dated the rise of his country. This prince exemplified the wisdom of that policy which Babur adopted to strengthen his conquest; that of connecting his family by ties of marriage with the Hindus. It has been already related, that Humayun espoused a daughter of Bhagwandas, consequently Raja Man was brother-in-law to Akbar. His courage and talents well seconded this natural advantage, and he became the most conspicuous of all the generals of the empire. To him Akbar was indebted for half his triumphs. The Kachhwaha bards find a delightful theme in recounting his exploits, from the snow-clad Caucasus to the shores of the ‘golden Chersonese.’ Let the eye embrace these extremes of his conquests, Kabul and the Paropanisos of Alexander, and Arakan (a name now well known) on the Indian Ocean; the former reunited, the latter subjugated, to the empire by a Rajput prince and a Rajput army. But Akbar knew the master-key to Hindu feeling, and by his skill overcame prejudices deemed insurmountable, and many are the tales yet told of their blind devotion to their favourite emperor.

Raja Man was returning from the conquest of Sholapur to Hindustan when he invited himself to an interview with Partap, then at Kumbhalmer, who advanced to the Udaisagar to receive him. On the mound which embanks this lake a feast was prepared for the prince of Amber. The board was spread, the Raja summoned, and Prince Amra appointed to wait upon him; but no Rana appeared, for whose absence apologies alleging headache were urged by his son, with the request that Raja Man would waive all ceremony, receive his welcome, and commence. The prince, in a tone at once dignified and respectful, replied: "Tell the Rana I can divine the cause of his headache; but the error is irremediable, and if he refuses to put a plate (kansa) before me, who will?" Further subterfuge was useless. The Rana expressed his regret; but added, that “he could not eat with a Rajput who gave his sister to a Turk, and who probably ate with him.” Raja Man was unwise to have risked this disgrace: and if the invitation went from Partap, the insult was ungenerous as well as impolitic; but of this he is acquitted. Raja Man left the feast untouched, save the few grains of rice he offered to Anndeva, which he placed in his turban, observing as he withdrew: “It was for the preservation of your honour that we sacrificed our own, and gave our sisters and our daughters to the Turk; but abide in peril, if such be your resolve, for this country shall not hold you”; and mounting his horse he turned to the Rana, who appeared at this abrupt termination of his visit, “If I do not humble your pride, my name is not Man”: to which Partap replied, “he should always be happy to meet him”; while some one, in less dignified terms, desired he would not forget to bring his ‘Phupha’ [father’s sister’s husband], Akbar. The ground was deemed impure where the feast was spread: it was broken up and lustrated with the water of the Ganges, and the chiefs who witnessed the humiliation of one they deemed apostate, bathed and changed their vestments, as if polluted by his presence. Every act was reported to the emperor, who was exasperated at the insult thus offered to himself, and who justly dreaded the revival of those prejudices he had hoped were vanquished; and it hastened the first of those sanguinary battles which have immortalised the name of Partap: nor will Haldighat be forgotten while a Sesodia occupies Mewar, or a bard survives to relate the tale.

Salīm’s Campaign, A.D. 1576.

—Prince Salim, the heir of Delhi, led the war, guided by the counsels of Raja Man and the distinguished apostate son of Sagarji, Mahabat Khan. Partap trusted to his native hills and the valour of twenty-two thousand Rajputs to withstand the son of Akbar. The divisions of the royal army encountered little opposition at the exterior defiles by which they penetrated the western side of the Aravalli, concentrating as they approached the chief pass which conducted to the vulnerable part of this intricate country.

Battle of Haldīghāt or Gogūnda, June 18, 1576.

—The range to which Partap was restricted was the mountainous region around, though chiefly to the west of the new capital. From north to south, Kumbhalmer to Rakhabhnath, about eighty miles in length; and in breadth, from Mirpur west to Satola east, about the same. The whole of this space is mountain and forest, valley and stream. The approaches to the capital from every point to the north, west, and south are so narrow as to merit the term of defile; on each side lofty perpendicular rocks, with scarcely breadth for two carriages abreast, across which are those ramparts of nature termed Col in the mountain scenery of Europe, which occasionally open into spaces sufficiently capacious to encamp a large force. Such was the plain of Haldighat, at the base of a neck of mountain which shut up the valley and rendered it almost inaccessible. Above and below the Rajputs were posted, and on the cliffs and pinnacles overlooking the field of battle, the faithful aborigines, the Bhil, with his natural weapon the bow and arrow, and huge stones ready to roll upon the combatant enemy.

At this pass Partap was posted with the flower of Mewar, and glorious was the struggle for its maintenance. Clan after clan followed with desperate intrepidity, emulating the daring of their prince, who led the crimson banner into the hottest part of the field. In vain he strained every nerve to encounter Raja Man; but though denied the luxury of revenge on his Rajput foe, he made good a passage to where Salim commanded. His guards fell before Partap, and but for the steel plates which defended his howda, the lance of the Rajput would have deprived Akbar of his heir. His steed, the gallant Chetak, nobly seconded his lord, and is represented in all the historical drawings of this battle with one foot raised upon the elephant of the Mogul, while his rider has his lance propelled against his foe. The conductor, destitute of the means of defence, was slain, when the infuriated animal, now without control, carried off Salim. On this spot the carnage was immense: the Moguls eager to defend Salim; the heroes of Mewar to second their prince, who had already received seven wounds . Marked by the ‘royal umbrella,’ which he would not lay aside, and which collected the might of the enemy against him, Partap was thrice rescued from amidst the foe, and was at length nearly overwhelmed, when the Jhala chief gave a signal instance of fidelity, and extricated him with the loss of his own life. Mana seized upon the insignia of Mewar, and rearing the ‘gold sun’ over his own head, made good his way to an intricate position, drawing after him the brunt of the battle, while his prince was forced from the field. With all his brave vassals the noble Jhala fell; and in remembrance of the deed his descendants have, since the day of Haldighat, borne the regal ensigns of Mewar, and enjoyed ‘the right hand of her princes.’ But this desperate valour was unavailing against such a force, with a numerous field artillery and a dromedary corps mounting swivels; and of twenty-two thousand Rajputs assembled on that day for the defence of Haldighat, only eight thousand quitted the field alive.

The Escape of Rāna Partāp Singh.

—Partap, unattended, fled on the gallant Chetak, who had borne him through the day, and who saved him now by leaping a mountain stream when closely pursued by two Mogul chiefs, whom this impediment momentarily checked. But Chetak, like his master, was wounded; his pursuers gained upon Partap, and the flash from the flinty rock announced them at his heels, when, in the broad accents of his native tongue, the salutation Ho! nila ghora ra aswar, ‘Ho! rider of the blue horse,’ made him look back, and he beheld but a single horseman: that horseman his brother.

Sakta, whose personal enmity to Partap had made him a traitor to Mewar, beheld from the ranks of Akbar the ‘blue horse’ flying unattended. Resentment was extinguished, and a feeling of affection, mingling with sad and humiliating recollections, took possession of his bosom. He joined in the pursuit, but only to slay the pursuers, who fell beneath his lance; and now, for the first time in their lives, the brothers embraced in friendship. Here Chetak fell, and as the Rana unbuckled his caparison to place it upon Ankara, presented to him by his brother, the noble steed expired. An altar was raised, and yet marks the spot, where Chetak died; and the entire scene may be seen painted on the walls of half the houses of the capital .

The greeting between the brothers was necessarily short; but the merry Sakta, who was attached to Salim’s personal force, could not let it pass without a joke; and inquiring “how a man felt when flying for his life?” he quitted Partap with the assurance of reunion the first safe opportunity. On rejoining Salim, the truth of Sakta was greatly doubted when he related that Partap had not only slain his pursuers, but his own steed, which obliged him to return on that of the Khorasani. Prince Salim pledged his word to pardon him if he related the truth; when Sakta replied, “The burthen of a kingdom is on my brother’s shoulders, nor could I witness his danger without defending him from it.” Salim kept his word, but dismissed the future head of the Saktawats. Determined to make a suitable nazar on his introduction, he redeemed Bhainsror by a coup de main, and joined Partap at Udaipur, who made him a grant of the conquest, which long remained the chief abode of the Saktawats; and since the day when this, their founder, preserved the life of his brother and prince against his Mogul pursuers, the birad of the bard to all of his race is Khorasani Multani ka Agal, ‘the barrier to Khorasan and Multan,’ from which countries were the chiefs he slew.

On the 7th of Sawan, S. 1632 (July, A.D. 1576), a day ever memorable in her annals, the best blood of Mewar irrigated the pass of Haldighat. Of the nearest kin of the prince five hundred were slain: the exiled prince of Gwalior, Ramsah, his son Khanderao, with three hundred and fifty of his brave Tuar clan, paid the debt of gratitude with their lives. Since their expulsion by Babur they had found sanctuary in Mewar, whose princes diminished their feeble revenues to maintain inviolable the rites of hospitality. Mana, the devoted Jhala, lost one hundred and fifty of his vassals, and every house of Mewar mourned its chief support.

Siege of Kumbhalmer.

—Elate with victory, Salim left the hills. The rainy season had set in, which impeded operations, and obtained for Partap a few months of repose; but with the spring the foe returned, when he was again defeated, and took post in Kumbhalmer, which was invested by the Koka, Shahbaz Khan. He here made a gallant and protracted resistance, and did not retire till insects rendered the water of the Naugun well, their sole resource, impure. To the treachery of the Deora chief of Abu, who was now with Akbar, this deed is imputed. Partap thence withdrew to Chawand, while Bhan, the Sonigira chief, defended the place to the last, and was slain in the assault. On this occasion also fell the chief bard of Mewar, who inspired by his deeds, as well as by his song, the spirit of resistance to the ‘ruthless king,’ and whose laudatory couplets on the deeds of his lord are still in every mouth. But the spirit of poesy died not with him, for princes and nobles, Hindu and Turk, vied with each other in exalting the patriot Partap, in strains replete with those sentiments which elevate the mind of the martial Rajput, who is inflamed into action by this national excitement.

Further Imperialist Advance.

—On the fall of Kumbhalmer, the castles of Dharmeti and Gogunda were invested by Raja Man. Mahabat Khan took possession of Udaipur; and while a prince of the blood cut off the resources furnished by the inhabitants of Oghna Panarwra, Khan Farid invaded Chappan, and approached Chawand from the south. Thus beset on every side, dislodged from the most secret retreats, and hunted from glen to glen, there appeared no hope for Partap: yet, even while his pursuers deemed him panting in some obscure lurking-place, he would by mountain signals reassemble his bands, and assail them unawares and often unguarded. By a skilful manœuvre, Farid, who dreamed of nothing less than making the Rajput prince his prisoner, was blocked up in a defile and his force cut off to a man. Unaccustomed to such warfare, the mercenary Moguls became disgusted in combating a foe seldom tangible; while the monsoon swelled the mountain streams, filling the reservoirs with mineral poisons and the air with pestilential exhalations. The periodical rains accordingly always brought some respite to Partap.

Years thus rolled away, each ending with a diminution of his means and an increase to his misfortunes. His family was his chief source of anxiety: he dreaded their captivity, an apprehension often on the point of being realised. On one occasion they were saved by the faithful Bhils of Kava, who carried them in wicker baskets and concealed them in the tin mines of Jawara, where they guarded and fed them. Bolts and rings are still preserved in the trees about Jawara and Chawand, to which baskets were suspended, the only cradles of the royal children of Mewar, in order to preserve them from the tiger and the wolf. Yet amidst such complicated evils the fortitude of Partap remained unshaken, and a spy sent by Akbar represented the Rajput and his chiefs seated at a scanty meal, maintaining all the etiquette observed in prosperity, the Rana bestowing the dauna to the most deserving, and which, though only of the wild fruit of the country, was received with all the reverence of better days. Such inflexible magnanimity touched the soul of Akbar, and extorted the homage of every chief in Rajasthan; nor could those who swelled the gorgeous train of the emperor withhold their admiration. Nay, these annals have preserved some stanzas addressed by the Khankhanan, the first of the satraps of Delhi, to the noble Rajput, in his native tongue, applauding his valour and stimulating his perseverance: “All is unstable in this world: land and wealth will disappear, but the virtue of a great name lives for ever. Patta abandoned wealth and land, but never bowed the head: alone, of all the princes of Hind, he preserved the honour of his race.”

But there were moments when the wants of those dearer than his own life almost excited him to frenzy. The wife of his bosom was insecure, even in the rock or the cave; and his infants, heirs to every luxury, were weeping around him for food: for with such pertinacity did the Mogul myrmidons pursue them, that “five meals have been prepared and abandoned for want of opportunity to eat them.” On one occasion his queen and his son’s wife were preparing a few cakes from the flour of the meadow grass, of which one was given to each; half for the present, the rest for a future meal. Partap was stretched beside them pondering on his misfortunes, when a piercing cry from his daughter roused him from reflection: a wild cat had darted on the reserved portion of food, and the agony of hunger made her shrieks insupportable. Until that moment his fortitude had been unsubdued. He had beheld his sons and his kindred fall around him on the field without emotion—“For this the Rajput was born”; but the lamentation of his children for food “unmanned him.” He cursed the name of royalty, if only to be enjoyed on such conditions, and he demanded of Akbar a mitigation of his hardships .

Submission of Rāna Partāp Singh.

—Overjoyed at this indication of submission, the emperor commanded public rejoicings, and exultingly showed the letter to Prithiraj, a Rajput compelled to follow the victorious car of Akbar. Prithiraj was the younger brother of the prince of Bikaner, a State recently grown out of the Rathors of Marwar, and which, being exposed in the flats of the desert, had no power to resist the example of its elder, Maldeo. Prithiraj was one of the most gallant chieftains of the age, and like the Troubadour princes of the west, could grace a cause with the soul-inspiring effusions of the muse, as well as aid it with his sword: nay, in an assembly of the bards of Rajasthan, the palm of merit was unanimously awarded to the Rathor cavalier. He adored the very name of Partap, and the intelligence filled him with grief. With all the warmth and frankness of his nature, he told the king it was a forgery of some foe to the fame of the Rajput prince. “I know him well,” said he; “for your crown he would not submit to your terms.” He requested and obtained permission from the king to transmit by his courier a letter to Partap, ostensibly to ascertain the fact of his submission, but really with the view to prevent it. On this occasion he composed those couplets, still admired, and which for the effect they produced will stand comparison with any of the sirventes of the Troubadours of the west.

"The hopes of the Hindu rest on the Hindu; yet the Rana forsakes them. But for Partap, all would be placed on the same level by Akbar; for our chiefs have lost their valour and our females their honour. Akbar is the broker in the market of our race: all has he purchased but the son of Uda; he is beyond his price. What true Rajput would part with honour for nine days (nauroza); yet how many have bartered it away? Will Chitor come to this market, when all have disposed of the chief article of the Khatri? Though Patta has squandered away wealth, yet this treasure has he preserved. Despair has driven man to this mart, to witness their dishonour: from such infamy the descendant of Hamir alone has been preserved. The world asks, whence the concealed aid of Partap? None but the soul of manliness and his sword: with it, well has he maintained the Khatri’s pride. This broker in the market of men will one day be overreached; he cannot live for ever: then will our race come to Partap, for the seed of the Rajput to sow in our desolate lands. To him all look for its preservation, that its purity may again become resplendent."

Rally of Rāna Partāp Singh.

—This effusion of the Rathor was equal to ten thousand men; it nerved the drooping mind of Partap, and roused him into action: for it was a noble incentive to find every eye of his race fixed upon him.

The Nauroza.

—The allusion of the princely poet in the phrase, “bartering their honour on the Nauroza,” requires some explanation. The Nauroza, or ‘New Year’s Day,’ when the sun enters Aries, is one of great festivity among the Muhammadan princes of the East; but of that alluded to by Prithiraj we can form an adequate idea from the historian Abu-l Fazl.

It is not New Year’s Day, but a festival especially instituted by Akbar, and to which he gave the epithet Khushroz, ‘day of pleasure,’ held on the ninth day (nauroza), following the chief festival of each month. The court assembled, and was attended by all ranks. The queen also had her court, when the wives of the nobles and of the Rajput vassal princes were congregated. But the Khushroz was chiefly marked by a fair held within the precincts of the court, attended only by females. The merchants’ wives exposed the manufactures of every clime, and the ladies of the court were the purchasers. “His majesty is also there in disguise, by which means he learns the value of merchandise, and hears what is said of the state of the empire and the character of the officers of government.” The ingenuous Abu-l Fazl thus softens down the unhallowed purpose of this day; but posterity cannot admit that the great Akbar was to obtain these results amidst the Pushto jargon of the dames of Islam, or the mixed Bhakha of the fair of Rajasthan. These ‘ninth day fairs’ are the markets in which Rajput honour was bartered, and to which the brave Prithiraj makes allusion.

Akbar and Rajput Ladies.

—It is scarcely to be credited that a statesman like Akbar should have hazarded his popularity or his power, by the introduction of a custom alike appertaining to the Celtic races of Europe as to these the Goths of Asia; and that he should seek to degrade those whom the chances of war had made his vassals, by conduct so nefarious and repugnant to the keenly cherished feelings of the Rajput. Yet there is not a shadow of doubt that many of the noblest of the race were dishonoured on the Nauroza; and the chivalrous Prithiraj was only preserved from being of the number by the high courage and virtue of his wife, a princess of Mewar, and daughter of the founder of the Saktawats. On one of these celebrations of the Khushroz, the monarch of the Moguls was struck with the beauty of the daughter of Mewar, and he singled her out from amidst the united fair of Hind as the object of his passion. It is not improbable that an ungenerous feeling united with that already impure, to despoil the Sesodias of their honour, through a princess of their house under the protection of the sovereign. On retiring from the fair, she found herself entangled amidst the labyrinth of apartments by which egress was purposely ordained, when Akbar stood before her: but instead of acquiescence, she drew a poniard from her corset, and held it to his breast, dictating, and making him repeat, the oath of renunciation of the infamy to all her race. The anecdote is accompanied in the original with many dramatic circumstances. The guardian goddess of Mewar, the terrific Mata, appears on her tiger in the subterranean passage of this palace of pollution, to strengthen her mind by a solemn denunciation , and her hand with a weapon to protect her honour. Rae Singh, the elder brother of the princely bard, had not been so fortunate; his wife wanted either courage or virtue to withstand the regal tempter, and she returned to their dwelling in the desert despoiled of her chastity, but loaded with jewels; or, as Prithiraj expresses it: “She returned to her abode, tramping to the tinkling sound of the ornaments of gold and gems on her person; but where, my brother, is the moustache on thy lip?”

Adventures of Rāna Partāp Singh.

—It is time to return to the Aravalli, and to the patriot prince Partap. Unable to stem the torrent, he had formed a resolution worthy of his character; he determined to abandon Mewar and the blood-stained Chitor (no longer the stay of his race), and to lead his Sesodias to the Indus, plant the ‘crimson banner’ on the insular capital of the Sogdoi, and leave a desert between him and his inexorable foe. With his family, and all that was yet noble in Mewar, his chiefs and vassals, a firm and intrepid band, who preferred exile to degradation, he descended the Aravalli, and had reached the confines of the desert, when an incident occurred which made him change his measures, and still remain a dweller in the land of his forefathers. If the historic annals of Mewar record acts of unexampled severity, they are not without instances of unparalleled devotion. The minister of Partap, whose ancestors had for ages held the office, placed at his prince’s disposal their accumulated wealth, which, with other resources, is stated to have been equivalent to the maintenance of twenty-five thousand men for twelve years. The name of Bhama Sah is preserved as the saviour of Mewar. With this splendid proof of gratitude, and the sirvente of Prithiraj as incitements, he again “screwed his courage to the sticking-place,” collected his bands, and while his foes imagined that he was endeavouring to effect a retreat through the desert, surprised Shahbaz in his camp at Dawer, whose troops were cut in pieces. The fugitives were pursued to Amet, the garrison of which shared the same fate. Ere they could recover from their consternation, Kumbhalmer was assaulted and taken; Abdulla and his garrison were put to the sword, and thirty-two fortified posts in like manner carried by surprise, the troops being put to death without mercy. To use the words of the annals: "Partap made a desert of Mewar; he made an offering to the sword of whatever dwelt in its plains": an appalling but indispensable sacrifice. In one short campaign (S. 1586, A.D. 1530), he had recovered all Mewar, except Chitor, Ajmer, and Mandalgarh; and determining to have a slight ovation in return for the triumph Raja Man had enjoyed (who had fulfilled to the letter his threat, that Partap should “live in peril”), he invaded Amber, and sacked its chief mart of commerce, Malpura.

Udaipur was also regained; though this acquisition was so unimportant as scarcely to merit remark. In all likelihood it was abandoned from the difficulty of defending it, when all around had submitted to Partap; though the annals ascribe it to a generous sentiment of Akbar, prompted by the great Khankhanan, whose mind appears to have been captivated by the actions of the Rajput prince. An anecdote is appended to account for Akbar’s relaxation of severity, but it is of too romantic a nature even for this part of their annals.

Mewār left in Peace by the Imperialists.

—Partap was indebted to a combination of causes for the repose he enjoyed during the latter years of his life; and though this may be ascribed principally to the new fields of ambition which occupied the Mogul arms, we are authorized also to admit the full weight of the influence that the conduct of the Hindu prince exerted upon Akbar, together with the general sympathy of his fellow-princes, who swelled the train of the conqueror, and who were too powerful to be regarded with indifference.

Repose was, however, no boon to the noblest of his race. A mind like Partap’s could enjoy no tranquillity while, from the summit of the pass which guarded Udaipur, his eye embraced the Kunguras of Chitor, to which he must ever be a stranger. To a soul like his, burning for the redemption of the glory of his race, the mercy thus shown him, in placing a limit to his hopes, was more difficult of endurance than the pangs of fabled Tantalus. Imagine the warrior, yet in manhood’s prime, broken with fatigues and covered with scars, from amidst the fragments of basaltic ruin (fit emblem of his own condition!), casting a wistful eye to the rock stained with the blood of his fathers; whilst in the ‘dark chamber’ of his mind the scenes of glory enacted there appeared with unearthly lustre. First, the youthful Bappa, on whose head was the ‘mor he had won from the Mori’: the warlike Samarsi, arming for the last day of Rajput independence, to die with Prithiraj on the banks of the Ghaggar: again, descending the steep of Chitor, the twelve sons of Arsi, the crimson banner floating around each, while from the embattled rock the guardian goddess looked down on the carnage which secured a perpetuity of sway. Again, in all the pomp of sacrifice, the Deolia chiefs, Jaimall and Patta; and like the Pallas of Rajasthan, the Chondawat dame, leading her daughter into the ranks of destruction: examples for their sons’ and husbands’ imitation. At length clouds of darkness dimmed the walls of Chitor: from her battlements ‘Kungura Rani’ had fled; the tints of dishonour began to blend with the visions of glory; and lo! Udai Singh appeared flying from the rock to which the honour of his house was united. Aghast at the picture his fancy had portrayed, imagine him turning to the contemplation of his own desolate condition, indebted for a cessation of persecution to the most revolting sentiment that can assail an heroic mind—compassion; compared with which scorn is endurable, contempt even enviable: these he could retaliate; but for the high-minded, the generous Rajput, to be the object of that sickly sentiment, pity, was more oppressive than the arms of his foe.

The Last Days of Rāna Partāp.

—A premature decay assailed the pride of Rajasthan; a mind diseased preyed on an exhausted frame, and prostrated him in the very summer of his days. The last moments of Partap were an appropriate commentary on his life, which he terminated, like the Carthaginian, swearing his successor to eternal conflict against the foes of his country’s independence. But the Rajput prince had not the same joyful assurance that inspired the Numidian Hamilcar; for his end was clouded with the presentiment that his son Amra would abandon his fame for inglorious repose. A powerful sympathy is excited by the picture which is drawn of this final scene. The dying hero is represented in a lowly dwelling; his chiefs, the faithful companions of many a glorious day, awaiting round his pallet the dissolution of their prince, when a groan of mental anguish made Salumbar inquire , “What afflicted his soul that it would not depart in peace?” He rallied: “It lingered,” he said, “for some consolatory pledge that his country should not be abandoned to the Turk”; and with the death-pang upon him, he related an incident which had guided his estimate of his son’s disposition, and now tortured him with the reflection that for personal ease he would forgo the remembrance of his own and his country’s wrongs.

On the banks of the Pichola, Partap and his chiefs had constructed a few huts (the site of the future palace of Udaipur), to protect them during the inclemency of the rains in the day of their distress. Prince Amra, forgetting the lowliness of the dwelling, a projecting bamboo of the roof caught the folds of his turban and dragged it off as he retired. A hasty emotion, which disclosed a varied feeling, was observed with pain by Partap, who thence adopted the opinion that his son would never withstand the hardships necessary to be endured in such a cause. “These sheds,” said the dying prince, “will give way to sumptuous dwellings, thus generating the love of ease; and luxury with its concomitants will ensue, to which the independence of Mewar, which we have bled to maintain, will be sacrificed: and you, my chiefs, will follow the pernicious example.” They pledged themselves, and became guarantees for the prince, “by the throne of Bappa Rawal,” that they would not permit mansions to be raised till Mewar had recovered her independence. The soul of Partap was satisfied, and with joy he expired.