Chapter 2
=The Chauhān Rāj.=—This sovereignty (raj) of the Chauhans occupies the most remote corner of Rajputana, and its existence is now for the first time noticed. As the quality of greatness as well as goodness is, in a great measure, relative, the Raj of the Chauhans may appear an empire to the lesser chieftains of the desert. Externally, it is environed, on the north and east, by the tracts of the Marwar State we have just been sketching. To the south-east it is bounded by Koliwara, to the south hemmed-in by the Rann, and to the west by the desert of Dhat. Internally, it is partitioned into two distinct governments, the eastern being termed Virawah, and the western from its position ‘across the Luni,’ Parkar;[8.2.1] which appellation, conjoined to Nagar, is also applied to the capital, with the distinction of Srinagar, or metropolis. This is the Negar-Parker of the distinguished Rennel, a place visited at a very early stage of our intercourse with these regions by an enterprising Englishman, named Whittington.[8.2.2]
=History of the Chauhāns.=—The Chauhans of this desert boast the great antiquity of their settlement, as well as the nobility of their blood: they have only to refer to Manik Rae and Bisaldeo of Ajmer, and to Prithiraj, the last Hindu sovereign of Delhi, to establish the latter fact; but the first we must leave to conjecture and their bards, though we may [305] fearlessly assert that they were posterior to the Sodhas and other branches of the Pramar race, who to all appearance were its masters when Alexander descended the Indus. Neither is it improbable that the Malli or Mallani, whom he expelled in that corner of the Panjab, wrested ‘the land of Kher’ from the Sodhas. At all events, it is certain that a chain of Chauhan principalities extended, from the eighth to the thirteenth century, from Ajmer to the frontiers of Sind, of which Ajmer, Nadol, Jalor, Sirohi, and Juna-Chhotan were the capitals; and though all of these in their annals claim to be independent, it may be assumed that some kind of obedience was paid to Ajmer. We possess inscriptions which justify this assertion. Moreover, each of them was conspicuous in Muslim history, from the time of the conqueror of Ghazni to that of Alau-d-din, surnamed ‘the second Alexander.’ Mahmud, in his twelfth expedition, by Multan to Ajmer (whose citadel, Ferishta says, “he was compelled to leave in the hands of the enemy”),[8.2.3] passed and sacked Nadol (transliterated Buzule);[8.2.4] and the traditions of the desert have preserved the recollection of his visit to Juna-Chhotan, and they yet point out the mines by which its castle on the rock was destroyed. Whether this was after his visitation and destruction of Nahrvala (Anhilwara Patan), or while on his journey, we have no means of knowing; but when we recollect that in this his last invasion, he attempted to return by Sind, and nearly perished with all his army in the desert, we might fairly suppose his determination to destroy Juna-Chhotan betrayed him into this danger: for besides the all-ruling motive of the conversion or destruction of the ‘infidels,’ in all likelihood the expatriated princes of Nahrvala had sought refuge with the Chauhans amidst the sandhills of Kherdhar, and may thus have fallen into his grasp.
Although nominally a single principality, the chieftain of Parkar pays little, if any, submission to his superior of Virawah. Both of them have the ancient Hindu title of Rana, and are said at least to possess the quality of hereditary valour, which is synonymous with Chauhan. It is unnecessary to particularize the extent in square miles of thal in this raj, or to attempt to number its population, which is so fluctuating; but we shall subjoin a brief account of the chief towns, which will aid in estimating the population of Marusthali. We begin with the first division.
=Chief Towns.=—The principal towns in the Chauhan raj are Suigam, Dharanidhar,[8.2.5] Bakhasar, Tharad, Hotiganv, and Chitalwana. Rana Narayan Rao resides alternately at Sui and Bah, both large towns surrounded by an abbatis, chiefly of the babul and other thorny trees, called in these regions kantha-ka-kot, which has given these simple, but very [306] efficient fortifications the term of kantha-ka-kot, or ‘fort of thorns.’ The resources of Narayan Rao, derived from this desert domain, are said to be three lakhs of rupees, of which he pays a triennial tribute of one lakh to Jodhpur, to which no right exists, and which is rarely realized without an army. The tracts watered by the Luni yield good crops of the richer grains; and although, in the dry season, there is no constant stream, plenty of sweet water is procured by excavating wells in its bed. But it is asserted that, even when not continuous, a gentle current is perceptible in those detached portions or pools, filtrating under the porous sand: a phenomenon remarked in the bed of the Kunwari River (in the district of Gwalior), where, after a perfectly dry space of several miles, we have observed in the next portion of water a very perceptible current.[8.2.6]
=Nagar Pārkar.=—Nagar, or Srinagar, the capital of Parkar, is a town containing fifteen hundred houses, of which, in 1814, one-half were inhabited. There is a small fort to the south-west of the town on the ridge, which is said to be about two hundred feet high. There are wells and beras (reservoirs) in abundance. The river Luni is called seven coss south of Nagar, from which we may infer that its bed is distinctly to be traced through the Rann. The chief of Parkar assumes the title of Rana, as well as his superior of Virawah whose allegiance he has entirely renounced, though we are ignorant of the relation in which they ever stood to each other: all are of the same family, the Hapa-Raj, of which Juna-Chhotan was the capital.
=Bakhasar.=—Bakhasar ranks next to Srinagar. It was at no distant period a large and, for the desert, a flourishing town; but now (1814) it contains but three hundred and sixty inhabited dwellings. A son of the Nagar chief resides here, who enjoys, as well as his father, the title of Rana. We shall make no further mention of the inferior towns, as they will appear in the itinerary.
=Tharād.=—Tharad is another subdivision of the Chauhans of the Luni whose chief town of the same name is but a few coss to the east of Suigam, and which like Parkar is but nominally dependent upon it. With this we shall conclude the subject of Virawah, which, we repeat, may contain many errors.
=Face of the Chauhān Rāj.=—As the itinerary will point out in detail the state of the country, it would be superfluous to attempt a more minute description here. The same sterile ridge, already described as passing through Chhotan to Jaisalmer, is to be [307] traced two coss west of Bakhasar, and thence to Nagar, in detached masses. The tracts on both banks of the Luni yield good crops of wheat and the richer grains, and Virawah, though enclosing considerable thal, has a good portion of flat, especially towards Radhanpur, seventeen coss from Sui. Beyond the Luni, the thal rises into lofty tibas: and indeed from Chhotan to Bakhasar, all is sterile, and consists of lofty sandhills and broken ridges often covered by the sands.
=Water Production.=—Throughout the Chauhan raj, or at least its most habitable portion, water is obtained at a moderate distance from the surface, the wells being from ten to twenty pursas,[8.2.7] or about sixty-five to a hundred and thirty feet in depth; nothing, when compared with those in Dhat, sometimes near seven hundred. Besides wheat, on the Luni, the oil-plant (til), mung, moth, and other pulses, with bajra, are produced in sufficient quantities for internal consumption; but plunder is the chief pursuit throughout this land, in which the lordly Chauhan and the Koli menial vie in dexterity. Wherever the soil is least calculated for agriculture, there is often abundance of fine pasture, especially for camels, which browse upon a variety of thorny shrubs. Sheep and goats are also in great numbers, and bullocks and horses of a very good description, which find a ready sale at the Tilwara fair.
=Inhabitants.=—We must describe the descendants, whether of the Malli, foe of Alexander, or of the no less heroic Prithiraj, as a community of thieves, who used to carry their raids into Sind, Gujarat, and Marwar, to avenge themselves on private property for the wrongs they suffered from the want of all government, or the oppression of those (Jodhpur) who asserted supremacy over, and the right to plunder them. All classes are to be found in the Chauhan raj: but those predominate, the names of whose tribes are synonyms for ‘robber,’ as the Sahariya, Khosa, Koli, Bhil. Although the Chauhan is lord-paramount, a few of whom are to be found in every village, yet the Koli and Bhil tribe, with another class called Pital,[8.2.8] are the most numerous: the last named, though equally low in caste, is the only industrious class in this region. Besides cultivation, they make a trade of the gums, which they collect in great quantities from the various trees whose names have been already mentioned. The Chauhans, like most of these remote Rajput tribes, dispense with the zunnar[8.2.9] or janeo, the distinctive thread of a ‘twice-born tribe,’ and are altogether free from [308] the prejudices of those whom association with Brahmans has bound down with chains of iron. But to make amends for this laxity in ceremonials, there is a material amendment in their moral character, in comparison with the Chauhans of the purab (east); for here the unnatural law of infanticide is unknown, in spite of the examples of their neighbours, the Jarejas, amongst whom it prevails to the most frightful extent. In eating, they have no prejudices; they make no chauka, or fireplace; their cooks are generally of the barber (Nai) tribe, and what is left at one meal, they, contrary to all good manners, tie up and eat at the next.
=Kolis and Bhils.=—The first is the most numerous class in these regions, and may be ranked with the most degraded portion of the human species. Although they puja all the symbols of Hindu worship, and chiefly the terrific Mata, they scoff at all laws, human or divine, and are little superior to the brutes of their own forests. To them every thing edible is lawful food; cows, buffaloes, the camel, deer, hog; nor do they even object to such as have died a natural death. Like the other debased tribes, they affect to have Rajput blood, and call themselves Chauhan Koli, Rathor Koli, Parihar Koli, etc., which only tends to prove their illegitimate descent from the aboriginal Koli stock. Almost all the cloth-weavers throughout India are of the Koli class, though they endeavour to conceal their origin under the term Julaha, which ought only to distinguish the Muslim weaver.[8.2.10] The Bhils partake of all the vices of the Kolis, and perhaps descend one step lower in the scale of humanity; for they will feed on vermin of any kind, foxes, jackals, rats, guanas,[8.2.11] and snakes; and although they make an exception of the camel and the pea-fowl, the latter being sacred to Mata, the goddess they propitiate, yet in moral degradation their fellowship is complete. The Kolis and Bhils have no matrimonial intercourse, nor will they even eat with each other—such is caste! The bow and arrow form their arms, occasionally swords, but rarely the matchlock.
Pital is the chief husbandman of this region, and, with the Bania, the only respectable class. They possess flocks, and are also cultivators, and are said to be almost as numerous as either the Bhils or Kolis. The Pital is reputed synonymous with the Kurmi of Hindustan and the Kulambi of Malwa and the Deccan. There are other tribes, such as the Rabari, or rearer of camels, who will be described with the classes appertaining to the whole desert.
=Dhāt and Umrasūmra.=—We now take leave of Rajputana, as it is, for the desert depending upon Sind, or that space between the frontier of Rajputana to the valley [309] of the Indus, on the west, and from Daudputra north, to Baliari on the Rann.[8.2.12] This space measures about two hundred and twenty miles of longitude, and its greatest breadth is eighty; it is one entire thal, having but few villages, though there are many hamlets of shepherds sprinkled over it, too ephemeral to have a place in the map. A few of these puras and vas, as they are termed, where the springs are perennial, have a name assigned to them, but to multiply them would only mislead, as they exist no longer than the vegetation. The whole of this tract may be characterized as essentially desert, having spaces of fifty miles without a drop of water, and without great precaution, impassable. The sandhills rise into little mountains, and the wells are so deep, that with a large kafila, many might die before the thirst of all could be slaked. The enumeration of a few of these will put the reader in possession of one of the difficulties of a journey through Maru; they range from eleven to seventy-five pursa, or seventy to five hundred feet in depth. One at Jaisinghdesar, fifty pursa; Dhot-ki-basti, sixty; Girab, sixty; Hamirdeora, seventy; Jinjiniali, seventy-five; Chailak, seventy-five to eighty.
=The Horrors of Humāyūn’s March.=—In what vivid colours does the historian Ferishta describe the miseries of the fugitive emperor, Humayun, and his faithful followers, at one of these wells! “The country through which they fled being an entire desert of sand, the Moguls were in the utmost distress for water: some ran mad; others fell down dead. For three whole days there was no water; on the fourth day they came to a well, which was so deep that a drum was beaten, to give notice to the man driving the bullocks, that the bucket had reached the top; but the unhappy followers were so impatient for drink, that, so soon as the first bucket appeared, several threw themselves upon it, before it had quite reached the surface, and fell in. The next day, they arrived at a brook, and the camels, which had not tasted water for several days, were allowed to quench their thirst; but, having drunk to excess, several of them died. The king, after enduring unheard-of miseries, at length reached Omurkote with only a few attendants. The Raja, who has the title of Rana, took compassion on his misfortunes, and spared nothing that could alleviate his sufferings, or console him in his distress.”—Briggs’ Ferishta, vol. ii. p. 93.[8.2.13]
We are now in the very region where Humayun suffered these miseries, and in its chief town, Umarkot, Akbar, the greatest monarch India ever knew, first saw the light. Let us throw aside the veil which conceals the history of the race of Humayun’s protector, and notwithstanding he is now but nominal sovereign of Umarkot, and lord [310] of the village of Chor,[8.2.14] give him “a local habitation and a name,” even in the days of the Macedonian invader of India.
=Dhāt.=—Dhat,[8.2.15] of which Umarkot is the capital, was one of the divisions of Marusthali, which from time immemorial was subject to the Pramar. Amongst the thirty-five tribes of this the most numerous of the races called Agnikula, were the Sodha, the Umar, and the Sumra;[8.2.16] and the conjunction of the two last has given a distinctive appellation to the more northern thal, still known as Umarsumra, though many centuries have fled since they possessed any power.
=Aror, Umarsūmra.=—Aror, of which we have already narrated the discovery, and which is laid down in the map about six miles east of Bakhar on the Indus, was in the region styled Umarsumra, which may once have had a much wider acceptation, when a dynasty of thirty-six princes of the Sumra tribe ruled all these countries during five hundred years.[8.2.17] On the extinction of its power, and the restoration of their ancient rivals, the Sind-Samma princes, who in their turn gave way to the Bhattis, this tract obtained the epithet of Bhattipoh; but the ancient and more legitimate name, Umarsumra, is yet recognized, and many hamlets of shepherds, both of Umars and Sumras, are still existing amidst its sandhills. To them we shall return, after discussing their elder brethren, the Sodhas. We can trace the colonization of the Bhattis, the Chawaras, and the Solankis, the Guhilots, and the Rathors, throughout all these countries, both of central and western Rajputana; and wherever we go, whatever new capital is founded, it is always on the site of a Pramar establishment. Pirthi tain na Pramar ka, or ‘the world is the Pramars,’[8.2.18] I may here repeat, is hardly hyperbolical when applied to the Rajput world.
=Aror.=—Aror, or Alor as written by Abu-l Fazl, and described by that celebrated geographer, Ibn-Haukal, as “rivalling Multan in greatness,” was one of the ‘nine divisions of Maru’ governed by the Pramar, of which we must repeat, one of the chief branches was the Sodha. The islandic Bakhar, or Mansura (so named by the lieutenant of the Khalif Al-Mansur), a few miles west of Aror, is considered as the capital of the Sogdoi, when Alexander sailed down the Indus,[8.2.19] and if we couple the similarity of name to the well-authenticated fact of immemorial sovereignty over this region, it might not be drawing too largely on credulity to suggest that the Sogdoi and Soda are one and [311] the same.[8.2.20] The Sodha princes were the patriarchs of the desert when the Bhattis immigrated thither from the north: but whether they deprived them of Aror as well as Lodorva, the chronicle does not intimate. It is by no means unlikely that the Umars and Sumras, instead of being coequal or coeval branches with the Sodha, may be merely subdivisions of them.
We may follow Abu-l Fazl and Ferishta in their summaries of the history of ancient Sind, and these races. The former says: “In former times, there lived a Rāja named Siharas, whose capital was Alor. His sway extended eastward, as far as Kashmīr and towards the sea to Mekrān, while the sea confined it on the south and the mountains to the north. An invading army entered the country from Persia, in opposing which the Rāja lost his life. The invaders, contenting themselves with devastating part of the territory, returned. Rāē Sahi,[8.2.21] the Rāja’s son, succeeded his father, by whose enlightened wisdom and the aid of his intelligent minister Rām, justice was universally administered and the repose of the country secured.... In the caliphate of Walīd bin Abdu’l Malik, when Hajjāj was governor of Irāk, he dispatched on his own authority Muhammad Kāsim, his cousin and son-in-law, to Sind, who fought Dāhir in several engagements.... After Muhammad Kāsim’s death, the sovereignty of this country devolved on the descendants of the Banu Tamīm Ansāri. They were succeeded by the Sūmrah race, who established their rule, and were followed by the Sammas, who asserted their descent from Jamshīd, and each of them assumed the name of Jām.”[8.2.22]
Ferishta gives a similar version. “On the death of Mahomed Kasim, a tribe who trace their origin from the Ansarias established a government in Sind; after which the zamindars [lords of the soil or indigenous chiefs], denominated in their country Soomura, usurped the power, and held independent rule over the kingdom of Sinde for the space of five hundred years. These [312], the Soomuras, subverted the country of another dynasty called Soomuna [the Samma of Abu-l Fazl], whose chief assumed the title of Jam.”[8.2.23]
The difficulty of establishing the identity of these tribes from the cacography of both the Greek and Persian writers, is well exemplified in another portion of Ferishta, treating of the same race, called by him Soomuna, and Samma by Abu-l Fazl. “The tribe of Sahna appears to be of obscure origin, and originally to have occupied the tract lying between Bekher and Tatta in Sinde, and pretend to trace their origin from Jemshid.” We can pardon his spelling for his exact location of the tribe, which, whether written Soomuna, Sehna, or Seemeh, is the Summa or Samma tribe of the great Yadu race, whose capital was Summa-ka-kot, or Sammanagari, converted into Minnagara, and its princes into Sambas, by the Greeks.[8.2.24] Thus the Sodhas appear to have ruled at Aror and Bakhar, or Upper Sind, and the Sammas in the lower,[8.2.25] when Alexander passed through this region. The Jarejas and Jams of Navanagar in Saurashtra claim descent from the Sammas, hence called elsewhere by Abu-l Fazl “the Sind-Samma dynasty”; but having been, from their amalgamation with the ‘faithful,’ put out of the pale of Hinduism, they desired to conceal their Samma-Yadu descent, which they abandoned for Jamshid, and Samma was converted into Jam.[8.2.26]
We may, therefore, assume that a prince of the Sodha tribe held that division of the great Puar sovereignty, of which Aror, or the insular Bakhar, was the capital, when Alexander passed down the Indus: nor is it improbable that the army, styled Persian by Abu-l Fazl, which invaded Aror, and slew Raja Siharas, was a Graeco-Bactrian army led by Apollodotus, or Menander, who traversed this region, “ruled by Sigertides” (qu. Raja Siharas?) even to “the country of the Σῶρα,” or Saurashtra,[8.2.27] where, according to their historian, their medals were existent when he wrote in the second century.[8.2.28] The histories so largely quoted give us decided proof that Dahir, and his son [313] Raesa, the victims of the first Islamite invasion led by Kasim, were of the same lineage as Raja Siharas; and the Bhatti annals prove to demonstration, that at this, the very period of their settling in the desert, the Sodha tribe was paramount (see p. 1185); which, together with the strong analogies in names of places and princes, affords a very reasonable ground for the conclusion we have come to, that the Sodha tribe of Puar race was in possession of Upper Sind, when the Macedonian passed down the stream; and that, amidst all the vicissitudes of fortune, it has continued (contesting possession with its ancient Yadu antagonist, the Samma) to maintain some portion of its ancient sovereignty unto these days. Of this portion we shall now instruct the reader, after hazarding a passing remark on the almost miraculous tenacity which has preserved this race in its desert abode during a period of at least two thousand two hundred years,[8.2.29] bidding defiance to foreign foes, whether Greek, Bactrian, or Muhammadan, and even to those visitations of nature, famines, pestilence, and earthquakes, which have periodically swept over the land, and at length rendered it the scene of desolation it now presents; for in this desert, as in that of Egypt, tradition records that its increase has been and still is progressive, as well in the valley of the Indus as towards the Jumna.
=Umarkot.=—This stronghold (kot) of the Umars, until a very few years back, was the capital of the Sodha Raj, which extended, two centuries ago, into the valley of Sind, and east to the Luni; but the Rathors of Marwar, and the family at present ruling Sind, have together reduced the sovereignty of the Sodhas to a very confined spot, and thrust out of Umarkot (the last of the nine castles of Maru) the descendant of Siharas, who, from Aror, held dominions extending from Kashmir to the ocean. Umarkot has sadly fallen from its ancient grandeur, and instead of the five thousand houses it contained during the opulence of the Sodha princes, it hardly reckons two hundred and fifty houses, or rather huts.[8.2.30] The old castle is to the north-west of the town. It is built of brick, and the bastions, said to be eighteen in number, are of stone. It has an inner citadel, or rather a fortified palace. There is an old canal to the north of the fort, in which water still lodges part of the year. When Raja Man [314] had possession of Umarkot, he founded several villages thereunto, to keep up the communication. The Talpuris then found it to their interest, so long as they had any alarms from their own lord paramount of Kandahar, to court the Rathor prince; but when civil war appeared in that region, as well as in Marwar, the cessation of all fears from the one, banished the desire of paying court to the other, and Umarkot was unhappily placed between the Kalhoras of Sind and the Rathors, each of whom looked upon this frontier post as the proper limit of his sway, and contended for its possession. We shall therefore give an account of a feud between these rivals, which finally sealed the fate of the Sodha prince, and which may contribute something to the history of the ruling family of Sind, still imperfectly known.
=The Fate of the Sodha Tribe. Assassination of Mīr Bijar.=—When Bijai Singh ruled Marwar, Miyan Nur Muhammad, Kalhora, governed Sind; but being expelled by an army from Kandahar, he fled to Jaisalmer, where he died. The eldest son, Antar Khan, and his brothers, found refuge with Bahadur Khan Khairani; while a natural brother, named Ghulam Shah, born of a common prostitute, found means to establish himself on the masnad at Haidarabad. The chiefs of Daudputra espoused the cause of Antar Khan, and prepared to expel the usurper. Bahadur Khan, Sabzal Khan, Ali Murad, Muhammad Khan, Kaim Khan, Ali Khan, chiefs of the Khairani tribe, united, and marched with Antar Khan to Haidarabad. Ghulam Shah advanced to meet him, and the brothers encountered at Ubaura[8.2.31] (see map); but legitimacy failed: the Khairani chiefs almost all perished, and Antar Khan was made prisoner, and confined for life in Gaja-ka-kot, an island in the Indus, seven coss south of Haidarabad. Ghulam Shah transmitted his masnad to his son Sarfaraz, who, dying soon after, was succeeded by Abdul Nabi. At the town of Abhaipura, seven coss east of Sheodadpur (a town in Lohri Sind), resided a chieftain of the Talpuri tribe, a branch of the Baloch, named Goram, who had two sons, named Bijar and Sobhdan. Sarfaraz demanded Goram’s daughter to wife; he was refused, and the whole family was destroyed. Bijar Khan, who alone escaped the massacre, raised his clan to avenge him, deposed the tyrant, and placed himself upon the masnad of Haidarabad. The Kalhoras dispersed; but Bijar, who was of a violent and imperious temperament, became involved in hostilities with the Rathors regarding the possession of Umarkot. It is asserted that he not only demanded tribute from Marwar, but a daughter of the Rathor prince, to wife, setting forth as a precedent his grandfather Ajit, who bestowed a wife on Farrukhsiyar. This insult led to a pitched battle, fought at Dugara, five coss from Dharnidhar, in which the Baloch [315] army was fairly beaten from the field by the Rathor; but Bijai Singh, not content with his victory, determined to be rid of this thorn in his side. A Bhatti and Chondawat offered their services, and lands being settled on their families, they set out on this perilous enterprise in the garb of ambassadors. When introduced to Bijar, he arrogantly demanded if the Raja had thought better of his demand, when the Chondawat referred him to his credentials. As Bijar rapidly ran his eye over it, muttering “no mention of the dola (bride),” the dagger of the Chondawat was buried in his heart. “This for the dola,” he exclaimed; and “this for the tribute,” said his comrade, as he struck another blow. Bijar fell lifeless on his cushion of state, and the assassins, who knew escape was hopeless, plied their daggers on all around; the Chondawat slaying twenty-one, and the Bhatti five, before they were hacked to pieces.[8.2.32] The nephew of Bijar Khan, by name Fateh Ali, son of Sobhdan, was chosen his successor, and the old family of Kalhora was dispersed to Bhuj, and Rajputana, while its representative repaired to Kandahar. There the Shah put him at the head of an army of twenty-five thousand men, with which he reconquered Sind, and commenced a career of unexampled cruelty. Fateh Ali, who had fled to Bhuj, reassembled his adherents, attacked the army of the Shah, which he defeated and pursued with great slaughter beyond Shikarpur, of which he took possession, and returned in triumph to Haidarabad. The cruel and now humbled Kalhora once more appeared before the Shah, who, exasperated at the inglorious result of his arms, drove him from his presence; and after wandering about, he passed from Multan to Jaisalmer, settling at length at Pokaran, where he died. The Pokaran chief made himself his heir, and it is from the great wealth (chiefly in jewels) of the ex-prince of Sind that its chiefs have been enabled to take the lead in Marwar. The tomb of the exile is on the north side of the town [316].[8.2.33]
This episode, which properly belongs to the history of Marwar, or to Sind, is introduced for the purpose of showing the influence of the latter on the destinies of the Sodha princes. It was by Bijar, who fell by the emissaries of Bijai Singh, that the Sodha Raja was driven from Umarkot, the possession of which brought the Sindis into immediate collision with the Bhattis and Rathors. But on his assassination and the defeat of the Sind army on the Rann, Bijai Singh reinducted the Sodha prince to his gaddi of Umarkot; not, however, long to retain it, for on the invasion from Kandahar, this poor country underwent a general massacre and pillage by the Afghans, and Umarkot was assaulted and taken. When Fateh Ali made head against the army of Kandahar, which he was enabled to defeat, partly by the aid of the Rathors, he relinquished, as the price of this aid, the claims of Sind upon Umarkot, of which Bijai Singh took possession, and on whose battlements the flag of the Rathors waved until the last civil war, when the Sindis expelled them. Had Raja Man known how to profit by the general desire of his chiefs to redeem this distant possession, he might have got rid of some of the unquiet spirits by other means than those which have brought infamy on his name.
=Chor.=—Since Umarkot has been wrested from the Sodhas, the expelled prince, who still preserves his title of Rana, resides at the town of Chor, fifteen miles north-east of his former capital. The descendant of the princes who probably opposed Alexander, Menander, and Kasim, the lieutenant of Walid, and who sheltered Humayun when driven from the throne of India, now subsists on the eleemosynary gifts of those with whom he is connected by marriage, or the few patches of land of his own desert domain left him by the rulers of Sind. He has eight brothers, who are hardly pushed for a subsistence, and can only obtain it by the supplement to all the finances of these States, plunder.
The Sodha, and the Jareja, are the connecting links between the Hindu and the Muslim; for although the farther west we go the greater is the laxity of Rajput prejudice, yet to something more than mere locality must be attributed the denationalized sentiment which allows the Sodha to intermarry with a Sindi: this cause is hunger; and there are few zealots who will deny that its influence is more potent than the laws of Manu. Every third year brings famine, and those who have not stored up against it fly to their neighbours, and chiefly to the valley of the Indus. The [317] connexions they then form often end in the union of their daughters with their protectors; but they still so far adhere to ancient usage as never to receive back into the family caste a female so allied.[8.2.34] The present Rana of the Sodhas has set the example, by giving daughters to Mir Ghulam Ali and Mir Sohrab, and even to the Khosa chief of Dadar; and in consequence, his brother princes of Jaisalmer, Bah and Parkar, though they will accept a Sodha princess to wife (because they can depend on the purity of her blood), yet will not bestow a daughter on the Rana, whose offspring might perhaps grace the harem of a Baloch. But the Rathors of Marwar will neither give to nor receive daughters of Dhat. The females of this desert region, being reputed very handsome, have become almost an article of matrimonial traffic; and it is asserted, that if a Sindi hears of the beauty of a Dhatiani, he sends to her father as much grain as he deems an equivalent, and is seldom refused her hand. We shall not here further touch on the manners or other peculiarities of the Sodha tribe, though we may revert to them in the general outline of the tribes, with which we shall conclude the sketch of the Indian desert.
=Tribes.=—The various tribes inhabiting the desert and valley of the Indus would alone form an ample subject of investigation, which would, in all probability, elicit some important truths. Amongst the converts to Islam the inquirer into the pedigree of nations would discover names, once illustrious, but which, now hidden under the mantle of a new faith, might little aid his researches into the history of their origin. He would find the Sodha, the Kathi, the Mallani, affording in history, position, and nominal resemblance grounds for inferring that they are the descendants of the Sogdoi, Kathi, and Malloi, who opposed the Macedonian in his passage down the Indus; besides swarms of Getae or Yuti, many of whom have assumed the general title of Baloch, or retain the ancient specific name of Numri; while others, in that of Zj’at [Jat], preserve almost the primitive appellation. We have also the remains of those interesting races the Johyas and Dahyas, of which much has been said in the Annals of Jaisalmer, and elsewhere; who, as well as the Getae or Jats, and Huns, hold places amongst the “Thirty-six Royal Races” of ancient India.[8.2.35] These, with the Barahas and the Lohanas, tribes who swarmed a few centuries ago in the Panjab, will now only be discerned in small numbers in “the region of death,” which has even preserved the illustrious name of Kaurava, Krishna’s foe in the Bharat. The Sahariya, or great robber of our western desert, would alone afford a text for discussion on his habits [318] and his raids, as the enemy of all society. But we shall begin with those who yet retain any pretensions to the name of Hindu (distinguishing them from the proselytes to Islam), and afterwards descant upon their peculiarities. Bhatti, Rathor, Jodha, Chauhan, Mallani, Kaurava, Johya, Sultana, Lohana, Arora, Khumra, Sindhal, Maisuri, Vaishnavi, Jakhar, Asaich, Punia.
Of the Muhammadan there are but two, Kalhora and Sahariya, concerning whose origin any doubt exists, and all those we are about to specify are Nayyads,[8.2.36] or proselytes chiefly from Rajput or other Hindu tribes:
Zjat; Rajar; Umra; Sumra; Mair, or Mer; Mor, or Mohor; Baloch; Lumria, or Luka; Samaicha; Mangalia; Bagria; Dahya; Johya; Kairui; Jangaria; Undar; Berawi; Bawari; Tawari; Charandia; Khosa; Sadani; Lohanas.
=The Nayyāds.=—Before we remark upon the habits of these tribes, we may state one prominent trait which characterizes the Nayyad, or convert to Islam, who, on parting with his original faith, divested himself of its chief moral attribute, toleration, and imbibed a double portion of the bigotry of the creed he adopted. Whether it is to the intrinsic quality of the Muhammadan faith that we are to trace this moral metamorphosis, or to a sense of degradation (which we can hardly suppose) consequent on his apostasy, there is not a more ferocious or intolerant being on the earth than the Rajput convert to Islam. In Sind, and the desert, we find the same tribes, bearing the same name, one still Hindu, the other Muhammadan; the first retaining his primitive manners, while the convert is cruel, intolerant, cowardly, and inhospitable. Escape, with life at least, perhaps a portion of property, is possible from the hands of the Maldot, the Larkhani, the Bhatti, or even the Tawaris, distinctively called “the sons of the devil”; but from the Khosas, the Sahariyas, or Bhattis, there would be no hope of salvation. Such are their ignorance and brutality, that should a stranger make use of the words rassa, or rasta (rope, and road), he will be fortunate if he escape with bastinado from these beings, who discover therein an analogy to rasul, or ‘the prophet’: he must for the former use the words kilbar, randori, and for the latter, dagra, or dag.[8.2.37] It will not fail to strike those who have perused the heart-thrilling adventures of Park, Denham, and Clapperton—names which will live for ever in the annals of discovery—how completely the inoffensive, kind, and hospitable negro resembles in these qualities the Rajput, who is transformed into a wild beast the moment he can repeat, “Ashhadu an lā ilāha illa allāh! [319] Ashhadu anna Muhammad rasūlu-llāh,” “there is but one God, and Muhammad is the prophet of God”: while a remarkable change has taken place amongst the Tatar tribes, since the anti-destructive doctrines of Buddha (or Hinduism purified of polytheism) have been introduced into the regions of Central Asia.
On the Bhattis, the Rathors, the Chauhans, and their offset the Mallani, we have sufficiently expatiated, and likewise on the Sodha; but a few peculiarities of this latter tribe remain to be noticed.
=The Sodha Tribe.=—The Sodha, who has retained the name of Hindu, has yet so far discarded ancient prejudice, that he will drink from the same vessel and smoke out of the same hukka with a Musalman, laying aside only the tube that touches the mouth. With his poverty, the Sodha has lost his reputation for courage, retaining only the merit of being a dexterous thief, and joining the hordes of Sahariyas and Khosas who prowl from Daudputra to Gujarat. The arms of the Sodhas are chiefly the sword and shield, with a long knife in the girdle, which serves either as a stiletto or a carver for his meat: few have matchlocks, but the primitive sling is a general weapon of offence, and they are very expert in its use. Their dress partakes of the Bhatti and Muhammadan costume, but the turban is peculiar to themselves, and by it a Sodha may always be recognized. The Sodha is to be found scattered over the desert, but there are offsets of his tribe, now more numerous than the parent stock, of which the Samecha is the most conspicuous, whether of those who are still Hindu, or who have become converts to Islam.
=The Kaurava Tribe.=—This singular tribe of Rajputs, whose habits, even in the midst of pillage, are entirely nomadic, is to be found chiefly in the thal of Dhat, though in no great numbers.[8.2.38] They have no fixed habitations, but move about with their flocks, and encamp wherever they find a spring or pasture for their cattle; and there construct temporary huts of the wide-spreading pilu,[8.2.39] by interlacing its living branches, covering the top with leaves, and coating the inside with clay: in so skilful a manner do they thus shelter themselves that no sign of human habitation is observable from without. Still the roaming Sahariya is always on the look-out for these sylvan retreats, in which the shepherds deposit their little hoards of grain, raised from the scanty patches around them. The restless disposition of the Kauravas, who even among their ever-roaming brethren enjoy a species of fame in this respect, is attributed (said my Dhati) to a curse entailed upon them from remote ages. They rear camels, cows, buffaloes, and goats, which they sell to the Charans and other merchants. They are altogether a singularly peaceable race; and like all their Rajput brethren, can at will [320] people the desert with palaces of their own creation, by the delightful amal-pani, the universal panacea for ills both moral and physical.
=The Dhāti Tribe.=—Dhat, or Dhati, is another Rajput, inhabiting Dhat, and in no greater numbers than the Kauravas, whom they resemble in their habits, being entirely pastoral, cultivating a few patches of land, and trusting to the heavens alone to bring it forward. They barter the ghi or clarified butter, made from the produce of their flocks, for grain and other necessaries of life. Rabri and chhachh, or ‘porridge and buttermilk,’ form the grand fare of the desert. A couple of sers of flour of bajra, juar, and khejra is mixed with some sers of chhachh, and exposed to the fire, but not boiled, and this mess will suffice for a large family. The cows of the desert are much larger than those of the plains of India, and give from eight to ten sers (eight or ten quarts) of milk daily. The produce of four cows will amply subsist a family of ten persons from the sale of ghi; and their prices vary with their productive powers, from ten to fifteen rupees each. The rabri, so analogous to the kouskous of the African desert, is often made with camel’s milk, from which ghi cannot be extracted, and which soon becomes a living mass when put aside. Dried fish, from the valley of Sind, is conveyed into the desert on horses or camels, and finds a ready sale amongst all classes, even as far east as Barmer. It is sold at two dukras (coppers) a ser. The puras, or temporary hamlets of the Dhatis, consisting at most of ten huts in each, resemble those of the Kauravas.
=The Lohāna Tribe.=—This tribe is numerous both in Dhat and Talpura: formerly they were Rajputs, but betaking themselves to commerce, have fallen into the third class. They are scribes and shopkeepers, and object to no occupation that will bring a subsistence; and as to food, to use the expressive idiom of this region, where hunger spurns at law, “excepting their cats and their cows, they will eat anything.”[8.2.40]
=The Arora Tribe.=—This class, like the former, apply themselves to every pursuit, trade, and agriculture, and fill many of the inferior offices of government in Sind, being shrewd, industrious, and intelligent. With the thrifty Arora and many other classes, flour steeped in cold water suffices to appease hunger. Whether this class has its name from being an inhabitant of Aror, we know not.[8.2.41]
=The Bhātia Tribe.=—Bhatia is also one of the equestrian order converted into the commercial, and the exchange has been to his advantage. His habits are like those of the Arora, next to whom he ranks as to activity and wealth. The Aroras and Bhatias have commercial houses at Shikarpur, Haidarabad, and even at Surat and Jaipur [321].[8.2.42]
=Brāhmans.=—Bishnoi is the most common sect of Brahmans in the desert and Sind. The doctrines of Manu with them go for as much as they are worth in the desert, where “they are a law unto themselves.” They wear the janeo, or badge of their tribe, but it here ceases to be a mark of clerical distinction, as no drones are respected; they cultivate, tend cattle, and barter their superfluous ghi for other necessaries. They are most numerous in Dhat, having one hundred of their order in Chor, the residence of the Sodha Rana, and several houses in Umarkot, Dharnas, and Mitti.[8.2.43] They do not touch fish or smoke tobacco, but will eat food dressed by the hands of a Mali (gardener), or even a Nai (barber caste); nor do they use the chauka, or fireplace, reckoned indispensable in more civilized regions. Indeed, all classes of Hindus throughout Sind will partake of food dressed in the sarai, or inn, by the hands of the Bhathiyarin. They use indiscriminately each other’s vessels, without any process of purification but a little sand and water. They do not even burn their dead, but bury them near the threshold; and those who can afford it, raise small chabutras, or altars, on which they place an image of Siva, and a ghara, or jar of water. The janeo, or thread which marks the sacerdotal character in Hindustan, is common in these regions to all classes, with the exception of Kolis and Lohanas. This practice originated with their governors, in order to discriminate them from those who have to perform the most servile duties.[8.2.44]
=The Rabāri Tribe.=—This term is known throughout Hindustan only as denoting persons employed in rearing and tending camels, who are there always Muslims. Here they are a distinct tribe, and Hindus, employed entirely in rearing camels, or in stealing them, in which they evince a peculiar dexterity, uniting with the Bhattis in the practice as far as Daudputra. When they come upon a herd grazing, the boldest and most experienced strikes his lance into the first he reaches, then dips a cloth in the blood, which at the end of his lance he thrusts close to the nose of the next, and wheeling about, sets off at speed, followed by the whole herd, lured by the scent of blood and the example of their leader.[8.2.45]
=Jat Tribes.=—Jakhar, Asaich, Punia are all denominations of the Jat race, a few of whom preserve under these ancient subdivisions their old customs and religion; but the greater part are among the converts to Islam, and retain the generic name, pronounced Zjat. Those enumerated are harmless and industrious, and are found both in the desert and valley. There are besides these a few scattered families of ancient tribes [322], as the Sultana[8.2.46] and Khumra, of whose history we are ignorant, Johyas, Sindhals, and others, whose origin has already been noticed in the Annals of Marusthali.
We shall now leave this general account of the Hindu tribes, who throughout Sind are subservient to the will of the Muhammadan, who is remarkable, as before observed, for intolerance. The Hindu is always second: at the well, he must wait patiently until his tyrant has filled his vessel; or if, in cooking his dinner, a Muslim should require fire, it must be given forthwith, or the shoe would be applied to the Hindu’s head.
=The Sahariya Tribe.=—The Sahariya is the most numerous of the Muhammadan tribes of the desert, said to be Hindu in origin, and descendants of the ancient dynasty of Aror; but whether his descent is derived from the dynasty of Siharas (written Sahir by Pottinger), or from the Arabic word sahra, ‘a desert,’ of which he is the terror, is of very little moment.[8.2.47]
=The Khosa Tribe.=—The Kosas or Khosas, etc., are branches of the Sahariya, and their habits are the same. They have reduced their mode of rapine to a system, and established kuri, or blackmail, consisting of one rupee and five daris of grain for every plough, exacted even from the hamlets of the shepherds throughout the thal. Their bands are chiefly mounted on camels, though some are on horseback; their arms are the sel or sang (lances of bamboo or iron), the sword and shield, and but few firearms. Their depredations used to be extended a hundred coss around, even into Jodhpur and Daudputra, but they eschew coming in contact with the Rajput, who says of a Sahariya, “he is sure to be asleep when the battle nakkara beats.” Their chief abode is in the southern portion of the desert; and about Nawakot, Mitti, as far as Baliari.[8.2.48] Many of them used to find service at Udaipur, Jodhpur, and Suigam, but they are cowardly and faithless.
=The Samaicha Tribe.=—Samaicha is one of the nayyad, or proselytes to Islam from the Sodha race, and numerous both in the thal and the valley, where they have many puras or hamlets. They resemble the Dhatis in their habits, but many of them associate with the Sahariyas, and plunder their brethren. They never shave or touch the hair of their heads, and consequently look more like brutes than human beings. They allow no animal to die of disease, but kill it when they think there are no hopes of recovery. The Samaicha women have the reputation of being great scolds, and never veil their faces [323].
=The Rājar Tribe.=—They are said to be of Bhatti descent, and confine their haunts to the desert, or the borders of Jaisalmer, as at Ramgarh, Kiala, Jarela, etc.; and the thal between Jaisalmer and Upper Sind: they are cultivators, shepherds, and thieves, and are esteemed amongst the very worst of the converts to Muhammadanism.[8.2.49]
=The Umar Sūmra Tribe.=—Umars and Sumras are from the Pramar or Puar race, and are now chiefly in the ranks of the faithful, though a few are to be found in Jaisalmer and in the thal called after them; of whom we have already said enough.[8.2.50]
=The Kalhora, Tālpuri Tribes.=—Kalhora and Talpuri are tribes of celebrity in Sind, the first having furnished the late, and the other its present, dynasty of rulers; and though the one has dared to deduce its origin from the Abbasides of Persia, and the other has even advanced pretensions to descent from the Prophet, it is asserted that both are alike Baloch, who are said to be essentially Jat or Gete in origin. The Talpuris, who have their name from the town (pura) of palms (tal or tar), are said to amount to one-fourth of the population of Lori or Little Sind, which misnomer they affix to the dominion of Haidarabad. There are none in the thal.
=Nūmri, Lūmri, or Lūka Tribe.=—This is also a grand subdivision of the Baloch race, and is mentioned by Abu-l Fazl as ranking next to the Kulmani, and being able to bring into the field three hundred cavalry and seven thousand infantry. Gladwin has rendered the name Nomurdy, and is followed by Rennel.[8.2.51] The Numris, or Lumris, also styled Luka, a still more familiar term for fox,[8.2.52] are likewise affirmed to be Jat in origin. What is the etymology of the generic term Baloch, which they have assumed, or whether they took it from, or gave it to, Baluchistan, some future inquirer into these subjects may discover.[8.2.53]
=The Zott[8.2.54] or Jat Tribe.=—This very original race, far more numerous than perhaps all the Rajput tribes put together, still retains its ancient appellation throughout the whole of Sind, from the sea to Daudputra, but there are few or none in the thal. Their habits differ little from those who surround them. They are amongst the oldest converts to Islam.
=The Mer, Mair Tribe.=—We should scarcely have expected to find a mountaineer (mera) in the valley of Sind, but their Bhatti origin sufficiently accounts for the term, as Jaisalmer is termed Mer.[8.2.55]
=The Mor, Mohor Tribe.=—Said to be also Bhatti in origin.[8.2.56]
=The Tāwari, Thori, or Tori Tribe.=—These engross the distinctive epithet of bhut, or ‘evil spirits,’ and the yet more emphatic title of ‘sons of the devil.’ Their origin is doubtful, but [324] they rank with the Bawariyas, Khengars, and other professional thieves scattered over Rajputana, who will bring you either your enemy’s head or the turban from it. They are found in the thals of Daudputra, Bijnot, Nok, Nawakot, and Udar. They are proprietors of camels, which they hire out, and also find employment as convoys to caravans.
=Johya, Dahya, Mangalia Tribes.=—Once found amongst the Rajput tribes, now proselytes to Islam, but few in number either in the valley or the desert. There are also Bairawis, a class of Baloch, Khairawis, Jangrias, Undars, Bagrias, descended from the Pramar and Sankhla Rajputs, but not possessing, either in respect to numbers or other distinctive marks, any claims on our attention.
=Dāūdputra, Bahāwalpur State.=—This petty State, though beyond the pale of Hinduism, yet being but a recent formation out of the Bhatti State of Jaisalmer, is strictly within the limits of Marusthali. Little is known regarding the family who founded it, and we shall therefore confine ourselves to this point, which is not adverted to by Mr. Elphinstone, who may be consulted for the interesting description of its prince, and his capital, Bahawalpur, during the halt of the embassy to Kabul.[8.2.57]
Daud Khan, the founder of Daudputra, was a native of Shikarpur, west of the Indus, where he acquired too much power for a subject, and consequently drew upon himself the arms of his sovereign of Kandahar. Unable to cope with them, he abandoned his native place, passed his family and effects across the Indus, and followed them into the desert. The royal forces pursued, and coming up with him at Sutiala, Daud had no alternative but to surrender, or destroy the families who impeded his flight or defence. He acted the Rajput, and faced his foes; who, appalled at this desperate act, deemed it unwise to attack him, and retreated. Daud Khan, with his adherents, then settled in the kachhi, or flats of Sind, and gradually extended his authority into the thal. He was succeeded by Mubarik Khan; he, by his nephew Bahawal Khan, whose son is Sadik Muhammad Khan, the present lord of Bahawalpur, or Daudputra, a name applied both to the country and to its possessors, “the children of David.”[8.2.58] It was Mubarik who deprived the Bhattis of the district called Khadal, so often mentioned in the Annals of Jaisalmer, and whose chief town is Derawar, founded by Rawal Deoraj in the eighth century; and where the successor of Daud established his abode. Derawar was at that time inhabited by a branch of the Bhattis, broken off at a very early period, its chief holding the title of Rawal, and whose family since their expulsion have resided at Ghariala, belonging to Bikaner, on [325] an allowance of five rupees a day, granted by the conqueror. The capital of the “sons of David” was removed to the south bank of the Gara by Bahawal Khan (who gave it his name), to the site of an old Bhatti city, whose name I could not learn. About thirty years ago[8.2.59] an army from Kandahar invaded Daudputra, invested and took Derawar, and compelled Bahawal Khan to seek protection with the Bhattis at Bikampur. A negotiation for its restoration took place, and he once more pledged his submission to the Abdali king, and having sent his son Mubarik Khan as a hostage and guarantee for the liquidation of the imposition, the army withdrew. Mubarik continued three years at Kabul, and was at length restored to liberty and made Khan of Bahawalpur, on attempting which he was imprisoned by his father, and confined in the fortress of Khangarh, where he remained nearly until Bahawal Khan’s death. A short time previous to this, the principal chiefs of Daudputra, namely, Badera Khairani, chief of Mozgarh, Khudabakhsh of Traihara, Ikhtiyar Khan of Garhi, and Haji Khan of Uchh, released Mubarik Khan from Khangarh and they had reached Murara, when tidings arrived of the death of Bahawal Khan. He continued his route to the capital; but Nasir Khan, son of Alam Khan, Gurgecha (Baloch), having formerly injured him and dreading punishment, had him assassinated, and placed his brother, the present chief, Sadik Muhammad, on the masnad: who immediately shut up his nephews, the sons of Mubarik, together with his younger brothers, in the fortress of Derawar. They escaped, raised a force of Rajputs and Purbias, and seized upon Derawar; but Sadik escaladed it, the Purbias made no defence [326], and both his brothers and one nephew were slain. The other nephew got over the wall, but was seized by a neighbouring chief, surrendered, and slain; and it is conjectured the whole was a plot of Sadik Khan to afford a pretext for their death. Nasir Khan, by whose instigation he obtained the masnad, was also put to death, being too powerful for a subject. But the Khairani lords have always been plotting against their liege; an instance of which has been given in the Annals of Bikaner, when Traihara and Mozgarh were confiscated, and the chiefs sent to the castle of Khangarh, the State prison of Daudputra. Garhi still belongs to Abdulla, son of Haji Khan, but no territory is annexed to it. Sadik Muhammad has not the reputation of his father, whom Bijai Singh, of Marwar, used to style his brother. The Daudputras are much at variance amongst each other, and detested by the Bhattis, from whom they have hitherto exacted a tribute to abstain from plunder. The fear of Kandahar no longer exists at Bahawalpur, whose chief is on good terms with his neighbour of Upper Sind, though he is often alarmed by the threats of Ranjit Singh of Lahore, who asserts supremacy over “the children of David.”
=Diseases.=—Of the numerous diseases to which the inhabitants of the desert are subjected, from poor and unwholesome diet, and yet more unwholesome drink, rataundha or night-blindness, the narua or Guinea-worm, and varicose veins, are the most common. The first and last are mostly confined to the poorer classes, and those who are compelled to walk a great deal, when the exertion necessary to extricate the limbs from deep sand, acting as a constant drag upon the elasticity of the fibres, occasions them to become ruptured. Yet such is the force of habit that the natives of Dhat in my service, who had all their lives been plying their limbs as kasids, or carriers of dispatches, between all the cities on the Indus and in Rajputana, complained of the firmer footing of the Indian plains, as more fatiguing than that of their native sandhills. But I never was a convert to the Dhati’s reasoning; with all his simplicity of character, even in this was there vanity, for his own swelled veins, which could be compared to nothing but rattans twisted round the calf of his limbs, if they did not belie his assertion, at least proved that he had paid dearly for his pedestrianism in the desert [327]. From the narua, or Guinea-worm, there is no exemption, from the prince to the peasant, and happy is the man who can boast of only one trial. The disease is not confined to the desert and western Rajputana, being far from uncommon in the central States; but beyond the Aravalli the question of “How is your narua?” is almost a general form of greeting, so numerous are the sufferers from this malady. It generally attacks the limbs and the integuments of the joints, when it is excruciating almost past endurance. Whether it arises from animalculae in sand or water, or porous absorption of minute particles imbued with the latent vital principle, the natives are not agreed. But the seat of the disease appears immediately under and adhesive to the skin, on which it at first produces a small speck, which, gradually increasing and swelling, at length reaches a state of inflammation that affects the whole system. The worm then begins to move, and as it attains the degree of vitality apparently necessary for extricating itself, its motions are unceasing, and night and day it gnaws the unhappy patient, who only exists in the hope of daily seeing the head of his enemy pierce the cuticle. This is the moment for action: the skilful narua-doctor is sent for, who seizes upon the head of the worm, and winding it round a needle or straw, employs it as a windlass, which is daily set in motion at a certain hour, when they wind out as much line as they can without the risk of breaking it. Unhappy the wretch whom this disaster befalls, when, happening to fall into a feverish slumber, he kicks the windlass, and snaps the living thread, which creates tenfold inflammation and suppuration. On the other hand, if by patience and skill it is extracted entire, he recovers. I should almost imagine, when the patriarch of Uz exclaims, “My flesh is clothed with worms: my skin is broken and become loathsome. When I lie down, I say, when shall I arise and the night be gone?” that he must have been afflicted with the narua, than which none of the ills that flesh is heir to can be more agonizing.[8.2.60]
They have the usual infantine and adult diseases, as in the rest of India. Of these the sitala, or ‘smallpox,’ and the tijari, or ‘tertian,’ are the most common. For the first, they merely recommend the little patient to Sitala Mata; and treat the other with astringents in which infusion of the rind of the pomegranate is always (when procurable) an ingredient. The rich, as in other countries, are under the dominion of empirics, who entail worse diseases by administering mineral poisons, of whose effects they are ignorant. Enlargement of the spleen under the influence of these fevers is very common, and its cure is mostly the actual cautery.
=Famines.=—Famine is, however, the grand natural disease of these regions, whose legendary stanzas teem with records of visitations of Bhukhi Mata, the ‘famished mother,’ from the remotest times. That which is best authenticated in the traditions of several of these States, occurred in the eleventh century, and continued during twelve years! It is erroneously connected with the name of Lakha Phulani, who was the personal foe of Siahji, the first Rathor emigrant from Kanauj, and who slew this Robin Hood of the desert in S. 1268 (A.D. 1212). Doubtless the desiccation of the Ghaggar River, in the time of Hamir Sodha, nearly a century before, must have been the cause of this. Every third year they calculate upon a partial visitation, and in 1812 one commenced which lasted three or four years, extending even to the central States of India, when flocks of poor creatures found their way to the provinces on the Ganges, selling their infants, or parting with their own liberty, to sustain existence.[8.2.61]
=Productions, Animal and Vegetable.=—The camel, ‘the ship of the desert,’ deserves the first mention. There he is indispensable; he is yoked to the plough, draws water from the well [328], bears it for his lordly master in mashaks, or ‘skins,’ in the passage of the desert, and can dispense with it himself altogether during several days. This quality, the formation of his hoof, which has the property of contracting and expanding according to the soil, and the induration of his mouth, into which he draws by his tongue the branches of the babul, the khair, and jawas, with their long thorns, sharp and hard as needles, attest the beneficence of the Supreme Artist. It is singular that the Arabian patriarch, who so accurately describes the habits of various animals, domestic and ferocious, and who was himself lord of three thousand camels, should not have mentioned the peculiar properties of the camel, though in alluding to the incapacity of the unicorn (rhinoceros) for the plough, he seems indirectly to insinuate the use of others besides the ox for this purpose. The camels of the desert are far superior to those of the plains, and those bred in the thals of Dhat and Barmer are the best of all. The Rajas of Jaisalmer and Bikaner have corps of camels trained for war.[8.2.62] That of the former State is two hundred strong, eighty of which belong to the prince; the rest are the quotas of his chiefs; but how they are rated, or in what ratio to the horsemen of the other principalities, I never thought of inquiring. Two men are mounted on each camel, one facing the head, the other the rear, and they are famous in a retreating action: but when compelled to come to close quarters, they make the camel kneel down, tie his legs, and retiring behind, make a breastwork of his body, resting the matchlock over the pack-saddle. There is not a shrub in the desert that does not serve the camel for fodder.
=The Wild Ass.=—Khar-gadha, Gorkhar, or the wild ass,[8.2.63] is an inhabitant of the desert, but most abounds in the southern part, about Dhat, and the deep rui which extends from Barmer to Bankasar and Baliari, along the north bank of the great Rann, or ‘salt desert.’
=Rojh or Nilgae, Lions, etc.=—The noble species of the deer, the nilgae, is to be met with in numerous parts of the desert; and although it enjoys a kind of immunity from the Rajput of the plains, who may hunt, but do not eat its flesh, here, both for food and for its hide, it is of great use.[8.2.64] Of the other wild animals common to India they have the tiger, fox, jackal, hare, and also the nobler animal, the lion.
=Domestic Animals.=—Of domestic animals, as horses, oxen, cows, sheep, goats, asses, there is no want, and even the last mentioned is made to go in the plough.
Flocks (here termed chang) of goats and sheep are pastured in vast numbers in the desert. It is asserted that the goat can subsist without water from the month of Karttik to the middle of Chait, the autumnal to the spring equinox [329]—apparently an impossibility: though it is well known that they can dispense with it during six weeks when the grasses are abundant. In the thals of Daudputra and Bhattipo, they remove to the flats of Sind in the commencement of the hot weather. The shepherds, like their flocks, go without water, but find a substitute in the chhachh, or buttermilk, after extracting the butter, which is made into ghi, and exchanged for grain, or other necessaries. Those who pasture camels also live entirely upon their milk, and the wild fruits, scarcely ever tasting bread.
=Shrubs and Fruits.=—We have often had occasion to mention the khair or karil; the khejra, whose pod converted, when dried, into flour, is called sangri; the jhal, which serves to hut the shepherds, and in Jeth and Raisakh affords them fruit; the pilu, used as food;[8.2.65] the babul, which yields its medicinal gum; the ber, or jujube, which also has a pleasant fruit; all of which serve the camel to browse on, and are the most common and most useful of the shrubs: the jawas, whose expressed juice yields a gum used in medicine; the phog, with whose twigs they line their wells; and the alkaline plant, the sajji, which they burn for its ashes. Of these, the first and last are worthy of a more detailed notice.
The karil, or khair (the capparis, or caper-bush), is well known both in Hindustan and the desert: there they use it as a pickle, but here it is stored up as a culinary article of importance. The bush is from ten to fifteen feet in height, spreading very wide; there are no leaves on its evergreen twig-like branches, which bear a red flower, and the fruit is about the size of a large black currant. When gathered, it is steeped for twenty-four hours in water, which is then poured off, and it undergoes, afterwards, two similar operations, when the deleterious properties are carried off; they are then boiled and eaten with a little salt, or by those who can afford it, dressed in ghi and eaten with bread. Many families possess a stock of twenty maunds.
The sajji is a low, bushy plant, chiefly produced in the northern desert, and most abundant in those tracts of Jaisalmer called Khadal, now subject to Daudputra. From Pugal to Derawar, and thence by Muridkot, Ikhtyar Khan-ki-garhi, to Khairpur (Dair Ali), is one extensive thal, or desert, in which there are very considerable tracts of low, hard flat, termed chittram,[8.2.66] formed by the lodgment of water [330] after rain, and in these spots only is the sajji plant produced. The salt, which is a sub-carbonate of soda, is obtained by incineration, and the process is as follows: Pits are excavated and filled with the plant, which, when fired, exudes a liquid substance that falls to the bottom. While burning, they agitate the mass with long poles, or throw on sand if it burns too rapidly. When the virtue of the plant is extracted, the pit is covered with sand, and left for three days to cool; the alkali is then taken out, and freed from its impurities by some process. The purer product is sold at a rupee the ser (two pounds weight); of the other upwards of forty sers are sold for a rupee. Both Rajputs and Muhammadans pursue this employment, and pay a duty to the lord paramount of a copper pice on every rupee’s worth they sell. Charans and others from the towns of Marwar purchase and transport this salt to the different marts, whence it is distributed over all parts of India. It is a considerable article of commerce with Sind, and entire caravans of it are carried to Bakhar, Tatta, and Cutch. The virtue of the soda is well understood in culinary purposes, a little sajji added to the hard water soon softening the mess of pulse and rice preparing for their meals; and the tobacconists use considerable quantities in their trade, as it is said to have the power of restoring the lost virtues of the plant.
=Grasses.=—Grasses are numerous, but unless accompanied by botanical illustration, their description would possess little interest. There is the gigantic siwan, or siun, classically known as the kusa, and said to have originated the name of Kusa, the second son of Rama, and his race the Kachhwaha. It is often eight feet in height; when young, it serves as provender for animals, and when more mature, as thatch for the huts, while its roots supply a fibre, converted by the weavers into brushes indispensable to their trade. There is likewise the sarkanda, the dhaman, the duba, and various others; besides the gokhru, the papri, and the bharut, which adhering to their garments, are the torment of travellers.[8.2.67]
=Melons.=—Of the cucurbitaceous genus, indigenous to the desert, they have various kinds, from the gigantic kharbuza and the chitra, to the dwarf guar. The tomato, whose Indian name I have not preserved, is also a native of these regions, and well known in other parts of India.[8.2.68] We shall trespass no further with these details, than to add, that the botanical names of all such trees, shrubs, or grains, as occur in this work, will be given with the general Index, to avoid unnecessary repetition [331].
------------------
ITINERARY[8.2.69]
Jaisalmer to Sehwan, on the right bank of the Indus, and Haidarabad, and return by Umarkot to Jaisalmer
Kuldra (5 coss).—A village inhabited by Paliwal Brahmans; two hundred houses; wells.
Gajia-ki-basti (2 do.).—Sixty houses; chiefly Brahmans; wells.
Khaba (3 do.).—Three hundred houses; chiefly Brahmans; a small fort of four bastions on low hills, having a garrison of Jaisalmer.
Kanohi (5 do.).┐—An assemblage of hamlets of four or five huts on one Sum (5 do.).┘ spot, about a mile distant from each other, conjointly called Sum, having a burj or tower for defence, garrisoned from Jaisalmer; several large wells, termed beria; inhabitants, chiefly Sindis of various tribes, pasture their flocks, and bring salt and khara (natron) from Deo Chandeswar, the latter used as a mordant in fixing colours, exported to all parts. Half-way between Sum and Mulana is the boundary of Jaisalmer and Sind.
Mulana[8.2.70] (24 coss).—A hamlet of ten huts; chiefly Sindis; situated amidst lofty sandhills. From Sum, the first half of the journey is over alternate sandhills, rocky ridges (termed magra), and occasionally plain; for the next three, rocky ridges and sandhills without any flats, and the remaining nine coss a succession of lofty tibas. In all this space of twenty-four coss there are no wells, nor is a drop of water to be had but after rain, when it collects in some old tanks or reservoirs, called nadi and taba, situated half-way, where in past times there was a town.
It is asserted, that before the Muhammadans conquered Sind and these regions, the valley and desert belonged to Rajput princes of the Pramar and Solanki tribes; that the whole thal (desert) was more or less inhabited, and the remains of old tanks and temples, notwithstanding the drifting of the sands, attest the fact. Tradition records a famine of twelve years’ duration during the time of Lakha Phulani, in the twelfth century, which depopulated the country, when the survivors of the thal fled to the kachhi, or flats of the Sind. There are throughout still many oases or cultivated patches, designated by the local terms from the [332] indispensable element, water, which whether springs or rivulets, are called wah, bah, beria, rar, tar, prefixed by the tribe of those pasturing, whether Sodhas, Rajars, or Samaichas. The inhabitants of one hamlet will go as far as ten miles to cultivate a patch.
Bhor (2 do.). ┐ These are all hamlets of about ten huts, inhabited Palri (3 do.). │ by Rajars, who cultivate patches of Rajar-ki-basti │ land or pasture their flocks of buffaloes, (2 do.). │ cows, camels, goats, amidst the thal; at Hamlet of Rajars │ each of these hamlets there are plenty of (2 do.). ┘ springs; at Rajar-ki-basti there is a pool called Mahadeo-ka-dah. (See p. 1263 above.)
Deo Chandeswar Mahadeo (2 do.).—When the Sodha princes held sway in these regions, there was a town here, and a temple to Mahadeo, the ruins of which still exist, erected over a spring called Suraj kund, or fountain of the Sun. The Islamite destroyed the temple, and changed the name of the spring to Dinbawa, or ‘waters of the faith.’ The kund is small, faced with brick, and has its margin planted with date trees and pomegranates, and a Mulla, or priest from Sind, resides there and receives tribute from the faithful. For twelve coss around this spot there are numerous springs of water, where the Rajars find pasture for their flocks, and patches to cultivate. Their huts are conical like the wigwams of the African, and formed by stakes tied at the apex and covered with grass and leaves, and often but a large blanket of camel’s hair stretched on stakes.
Chandia-ki-basti (2 coss).—Hamlet inhabited by Muslims of the Chandia tribe, mendicants who subsist on the charity of the traveller.
Rajar-ki-basti (2 do.). ┐ Purwas⓵, or hamlets of shepherds, Samaichas,
Samaicha-ki-do (2 do.). │ Rajars, and others, who
Rajar do. (1 do.). │ are all migratory, and shift with their
Do. do. (2 do.). │ flocks as they consume the pastures.
Do. do. (2 do.). │ There is plenty of water in this space
Do. do. (2 do.). │ for all their wants, chiefly springs.
Do. do. (2 do.). │
Do. do. (2 do.). ┘
Udhania (7 do.).—Twelve huts; no water between it and the last hamlet.
Nala (5 do.).—Descent from the thal or desert, which ceases a mile east of the nala or stream, said to be the same which issues from the Indus at Dara, above Rohri-Bakhar; thence it passes east of Sohrab’s Khairpur, and by Jinar to Bersia-ka-rar, whence there is a canal cut to Umarkot and Chor.
Mitrao (4 do.).—Village of sixty houses, inhabited by Baloch; a thana, or post here from Haidarabad; occasional low sandhills.
Mir-ki-kui (6 do.).—Three detached hamlets of ten huts each, inhabited by Aroras.
Sheopuri (3 do.).—One hundred and twenty houses, chiefly Aroras: small fort of six bastions to the south-east, garrisoned from Haidarabad.
Kamera-ka-Nala (6 do.).—This nala issues from the Indus between Kakar-ki-basti and Sakrand, and passes eastward; probably the bed of an old canal, with which the country is everywhere intersected.
Sakrand (2 do.).—One hundred houses, one-third of which are Hindus; patches of cultivation; numerous watercourses neglected; everywhere overgrown with jungle, chiefly jhau and [333] khejra (tamarisk and acacia). Cotton, indigo, rice, wheat, barley, peas, grain, and maize grow on the banks of the watercourses.
Jatui (2 do.).—Sixty houses; a nala between it and Jatui.
Kazi-ka-Shahr (4 do.).—Four hundred houses; two nalas intervene.
Makera (4 coss).—Sixty houses; a nala between it and Jatui.
Kakar-ki-basti (6 do.).—Sixteen houses; half-way the remains of an ancient fortress; three canals or nalas intervening; the village placed upon a mound four miles from the Indus, whose waters overflow it during the periodic monsoon.
Pura or Hamlet (1 do.).—A ferry.
The Indus (1 do.).—Took boat and crossed to
Sewan or Sehwan (1½ do.).—A town of twelve hundred houses on the right bank, belonging to Haidarabad[8.2.71] [334].
Sehwan to Haidarabad
Jat-ki-basti (2 coss).—The word jāt or jat is here pronounced Zjat. This hamlet ‘basti,’ is of thirty huts, half a mile from the Indus: hills close to the village.
Samaicha-ki-basti (2½ coss).—Small village.
Lakhi (2½ do.).—Sixty houses; one mile and a half from the river: canal on the north side of the village; banks well cultivated. In the hills, two miles west, is a spot sacred to Parbati and Mahadeo, where are several springs, three of which are hot.[8.2.72]
Umri (2 do.).—Twenty-five houses, half a mile from River; the hills not lofty, a coss west.
Sumri (3 do.).—Fifty houses, on the River hills; one and a half coss west.
Sindu or San (4 do.).—Two hundred houses and a bazar, two hundred yards from the River; hills one and a half coss west.
Manjhand (4½ do.).—On the River two hundred and fifty houses, considerable trade; hills two coss west.
Umar-ki-basti (3 do.).—A few huts, near the river.
Sayyid-ki-basti (3 do.).
Shikarpur (4 do.).—On the river; crossed to the east side.
Haidarabad (3 coss).—One and a half coss from the river Indus. Haidarabad to Nasarpur, nine coss; to Sheodadpur, eleven do.; to Sheopuri, seventeen do.; to Rohri-Bakhar, six do.—total forty-three coss.
Haidarabad via Umarkot, to Jaisalmer
Sindu Khan ki-basti (3 do.).—West bank of Phuleli river.
Tajpur (3 do.).—Large town, north-east of Haidarabad [335].
Katrel (1½ do.).—A hundred houses.
Nasarpur (1½ do.).—East of Tajpur, large town.
Alahyar-ka-Tanda (4 do.).—A considerable town built by Alahyar Khan, brother of the late Ghulam Ali, and lying south-east of Nasarpur. Two coss north of the town is the Sangra Nala or Bawa,[8.2.73] said to issue from the Indus between Hala and Sakrand and passing Jandila.
Mirbah (5 do.).—Forty houses; Bah, Tanda, Got, Purwa, are all synonymous terms for habitations of various degrees.
Sunaria (7 do.).—Forty houses.
Dangana (4 do.).—To this hamlet extend the flats of Sind. Sandhills five and six miles distant to the north. A small river runs under Dangana.
Karsana (7 do.).—A hundred houses. Two coss east of Karsana are the remains of an ancient city; brick buildings still remaining, with well and reservoirs. Sandhills two to three coss to the northward.
Umarkot (8 do.).—There is one continued plain from Haidarabad to Umarkot, which is built on the low ground at the very extremity of the thal or sand-hills of the desert, here commencing. In all this space, estimated at forty-four kachha coss, or almost seventy miles of horizontal distance, as far as Sunaria the soil is excellent, and plentifully irrigated by bawahs, or canals from the Indus. Around the villages there is considerable cultivation; but notwithstanding the natural fertility, there is a vast quantity of jungle, chiefly babul (Mimosa arabica), the evergreen thal, and thal or tamarisk. From Sunaria to Umarkot is one continued jungle, in which there are a few cultivated patches dependent on the heavens for irrigation; the soil is not so good as the first portion of the route.
Katar (4 do.).—A mile east of Umarkot commences the thal or sandhills, the ascent a hundred and fifty to two hundred feet. A few huts of Samaichas who pasture; two wells.
Dhat-ki-basti (4 do.).—A few huts; one well; Dhats, Sodhas, and Sindis cultivate and pasture.
Dharnas (8 coss).—A hundred houses, chiefly Pokharna Brahmans and Banias, who purchase up the thal from the pastoral tribes, which they export to Bhuj and the valley. It is also an entrepôt for trade; caravans from the east exchange their goods for the thal, here very cheap, from the vast flocks pastured in the Rui.
Kherlu-ka-Par (3 do.).—Numerous springs (thal) and hamlets scattered throughout this tract.
Lanela (1½ do.).—A hundred houses; water brackish; conveyed by camels from Kherlu.
Bhoj-ka-Par (3 do.).—Huts; wells; patches of cultivation.
Bhu (6 do.).—Huts.
Garara (10 do.).—A small town of three hundred houses, belonging to Sawai Singh Sodha, with several thal or hamlets attached to it. This is the boundary between Dhat or the Sodha raj and Jaisalmer. Dhat is now entirely incorporated in Sind. A thal, or collector of the transit duties, resides here.
Harsani (10 do.).—Three hundred houses, chiefly Bhattis. It belongs to a Rajput of this tribe, now dependent on Marwar [336].
Jinjiniali (10 do.).—Three hundred houses. This is the fief of the chief noble of Jaisalmer; his name Ketsi,[8.2.74] Bhatti. It is the border town of Jaisalmer. There is a small mud fortress, and several talaos, or sheets of water, which contain water often during three-fourths of the year; and considerable cultivation in the little valleys formed by the thal, or sand-ridges. About two miles north of Jinjiniali there is a village of Charans.
Gaj Singh-ki-basti (2 do.).—Thirty-five houses. Water scarce, brought on camels from the Charan village.
Hamirdeora (5 do.).—Two hundred houses. There are several thal or pools, about a mile north, whither water is brought on camels, that in the village being saline. The ridge of rocks from Jaisalmer here terminates.
Chelak (5 do.).—Eighty houses; wells; Chelak on the ridge.
Bhopa (7 do.).—Forty houses; wells; small thal or pool.
Bhao (2 do.).—Two hundred houses; pool to the west; small wells.
Jaisalmer (5 do.).—Eighty-five and a half coss from Umarkot to Jaisalmer by this route, which is circuitous. That by Jinjiniali 26 coss, Girab 7, Nilwa 12, Umarkot 25—in all 70 pakka coss, or about 150 miles. Caravans or kitars of camels pass in four days, kasids or messengers in three and a half, travelling night and day. The last 25 coss, or 50 miles, is entire desert: add to this 44 short coss from Haidarabad to Umarkot, making a total of 129½ coss. The most direct road is estimated at 105 pakka coss, which, allowing for sinuosities, is equal to about 195 English miles.
Total of this route, 85½ coss.
Jaisalmer to Haidarabad, by Baisnau
Kuldar (5 coss).
Khaba (5 do.).
Lakha-ka-ganw (30 do.).—Desert the whole way; no hamlets or water.
Baisnau (8 do.).
Bersia-ka-Rar (16 do.).—Wells.
Thipra (3 do.).
Mata-ka-dher (7 do.).—Umarkot distant 20 coss.
Jandila (8 do.).
Alahyar-ka-Tanda (10 do.).—Sankra, or Sangra thal.
┌ In the former route the distance from Tajpur (4 do.). │ Alahyar-ka-Tanda, by the town of Jam-ka-Tanda (2 do.). │ Nasarpur, is called 13 coss, or two Haidarabad (5 do.). │ more than this. There are five nalas └ or canals in the last five coss.
Total of this route, 103 coss.
Jaisalmer, by Shahgarh, to Khairpur of Mir Sohrab
Anasagar (2 do.).
Chonda (2 do.).
Pani-ka-tar (3 do.).—Tar or Tir, springs [337].
Pani-ki-kuchri (7 do.).—No village.
Kuriala (4 do.).
Shahgarh (20 do.[8.2.75]).—Rui or waste all this distance. Shahgarh is the boundary; it has a small castle of six bastions, a post of Mir Sohrab, governor of Upper Sind.
Garsia (6 do.).
Garhar (28 do.).—Rui or desert the whole way; not a drop of water. There are two routes branching off from Garhar, one to Khairpur, the other to Ranipur.
Baloch-ki-basti (5 do.). ┐ Hamlets of Baloch and Samaichas. Samaicha-ki-basti (5 do.). ┘
Nala (2 do.).—The same stream which flows from Dara, and through the ancient city of Alor; it marks the boundary of the desert.
Khairpur[8.2.76] (18 coss).—Mir Sohrab, governor of Upper Sind, and brother of the prince of Haidarabad, resides here. He has erected a stone fortress of twelve bastions, called Nawakot or New-castle. The 18 coss from the thal to Khairpur is flat, and marks the breadth of the valley here. The following towns are of consequence.
Khairpur to Larkhana.—Twenty coss west of the Indus, held by Karam Ali, son of the prince of Haidarabad.
Khairpur to Lakhi.—Fifteen coss, and five from Shikarpur.
Khairpur to Shikarpur (20 do.).
Garhar to Ranipur
Pharara (10 do.).—A village of fifty houses, inhabited by Sindis and Karars; several hamlets around. A dani, or collector of transit dues, resides here on the part of Mir Sohrab, the route being travelled by kitars or caravans of camels. The nala from Dara passes two coss east of Pharara, which is on the extremity of the desert. Commencement of the ridge called Takar, five coss west of Pharara, extending to Rohri Bakhar, sixteen coss distant from Pharara. From Pharara to the Indus, eighteen coss, or thirty miles breadth of the valley here.
Ranipur[8.2.77] (18 do.).
Jaisalmer to Rohri Bakhar
Kuriala (18 do.).—See last route.
Banda (4 do.).—A tribe of Muslims, called Undar, dwell here.
Gotru (16 do.).—Boundary of Jaisalmer and Upper Sind. A small castle and garrison of Mir Sohrab’s; two wells, one inside; and a hamlet of thirty huts of Samaichas and Undars; thal heavy.
Udat (32 do.).—Thirty huts of shepherds; a small mud fortress. Rui, a deep and entire desert, throughout all this space; no water [338].
Sankram or Sangram (16 do.).—Half the distance sand-hills, the rest numerous temporary hamlets constructed of the thal, or maize stalks; several water-courses.
Nala-Sangra (½ do.).—This nala or stream is from Dara, on the Sind, two coss and a half north of Rohri Bakhar; much cultivation; extremity of the sand-hills.
Targatia (½ do.).—A large town; Bankers and Banias, here termed Karar and Samaichas.
Low ridge of hills, called Takar (4 do.).—This little chain of silicious rocks runs north and south; Nawakot, the Newcastle of Sohrab, is at the foot of them; they extend beyond Pharara, which is sixteen coss from Rohri Bakhar. Gumat is six coss from Nawakot.
Rohri (4 coss). ┐ On the ridge, on the left bank of the Indus. Crossed Bakhar (½ do.). ├ over to Bakhar; breadth of the river near a mile. Sakhar (½ do.). ┘ Bakhar is an island, and the other branch to Sakhar is almost a mile over also. This insulated rock is of silex, specimens of which I possess. There are the remains of the ancient fortress of Mansura, named in honour of the Caliph Al-Mansur, whose lieutenants made it the capital of Sind on the opening of their conquests. It is yet more famed as the capital of the Sogdoi of Alexander; in all probability a corruption of Sodha, the name of the tribe which has ruled from immemorial ages, and who till very lately held Umarkot.
N.B.—Kasids or messengers engage to carry despatches from Jaisalmer to Rohri Bakhar in four days and a half; a distance of one hundred and twelve coss.
Bakhar to Shikarpur
Lakhi, also called Lakhisar (12 do.).
Sindu Nala (3½ do.).
Shikarpur (½ do.).
Total of this route, 16 do.
Bakhar to Larkhana (28 do.).
Shikarpur to Larkhana (20 do.).
Jaisalmer to Dahir Ali Khairpur
Kuriala (18 do.).
Khara (20 do.).—Rui or desert all the way. This is the thal, or mutual boundary of Upper Sind and Jaisalmer, and there is a small thal or mud fort, jointly held by the respective troops; twenty huts and one well.
Sutiala (20 do.).—Rui all the way. A thal for the collection of duties; six wells.
Khairpur (Dahir Ali) (20 do.).—Rui, and deep jungle of the evergreens called thal and thal, from Sutiala to Khairpur.
Total of this route, 78 do.
Khairpur (Dahir Ali) to Ahmadpur
Ubaura (6 do.).—Considerable town; Indus four coss west.
Sabzal-ka-kot (8 do.).—Boundary of Upper Sind and Daudputra. This frontier castle, often disputed, was lately taken by Mir Sohrab from Bahawal Khan. Numerous hamlets and watercourses [339].
Ahmadpur (8 coss).—Considerable garrison town of Daudputra; two battalions and sixteen guns.
Total of this route, 22 coss.
Khairpur (Dahir Ali) to Haidarabad
Mirpur (8 do.).—Four coss from the Indus.
Matela (5 do.).—Four coss from the Indus.
Gotki (7 do.).—Two coss from the Indus.
Dadla (8 do.).—Two coss from the Indus.
Rohri Bakhar (20 do.).—Numerous hamlets and temporary villages, with many water-courses for cultivation in all this space.
Coss.
Khairpur ┐ 8 ┐ Six coss from the Indus. (Sohrab-ka-) ┘ │ Gumat 8 │ Ranipur 2 │ (See route to │ The coss in this distance seems a medium it from Garhar). │ between the pakka of two coss and the Hingor 5 │ kachha of one and a half. The medium of Bhiranapur 5 ├ one and three quarter miles to each coss, Haliani 1 │ deducting a tenth for windings, appears, Kanjara 3 │ after numerous comparisons, to be just. Naushahra 8 │ This is alike applicable to all Upper Sind. Mora 7 │ Shahpura 3 │ Daulatpur 3 ┘ Mirpur 3 ┌ On the Indus. Here Madari crossed to └ Sehwan, and returned to Mirpur. Kazi-ka-Got 9 ┐ Sakrand 11 │ Hala 7 ├ The coss about two miles each; which, deducting Khardao 4 │ one in ten for windings of the road, Matari 4 │ may be protracted. Haidarabad 6 ┘ —— TOTAL 145 coss.
Jaisalmer to Ikhtyar Khan-ki-Garhi
┌ These villages are all inhabited by Paliwal Brahmsar (4 coss) │ Brahmans, and are in the tract termed Mordesar (3 do.) ┤ Kandal or Khadal, of which Katori, eight Gugadeo (3 do.) │ coss north of Jaisalmer, is the chief town of Kaimsar (5 do.) │ about forty villages.—N.B. All towns with └ the affix of thal have pools of water.
Nohar-ki-Garhi (25 do.).—thal or desert throughout this space. The castle of Nohar is of brick, and now belongs to Daudputra, who captured it from the Bhattis of Jaisalmer. About forty huts and little cultivation. It is a place of toll for the kitars or caravans; two rupees for each [340] camel-load of ghi, and four for one with sugar; half a rupee for each camel, and a third for an ox laden with grain.
Murid Kot (24 coss).—thal or desert. Rangarh is four coss east of this.
Ikhtyar-ki-Garhi (15 do.).—thal until the last four coss, or eight miles. Thence the descent from the thal or sand-hills to the valley of the Indus.
Total of this route, 79 coss. Ikhtyar to Ahmadpur 18 coss ” Khanpur 5 ” ” Sultanpur 8 ”
Jaisalmer to Sheo-Kotra, Kheralu, Chhotan, Nagar-Parkar, Mitti, and return to Jaisalmer.
Dabla (3 do.).—Thirty houses, Pokharna Brahmans.
Akali (2 do.).—Thirty houses, Chauhans, well and small talao.
Chor (5 do.).—Sixty houses, mixed classes.
Devikot (2 do.).—A small town of two hundred houses; belongs to the Jaisalmer fisc or khalisa. There is a little fort and garrison. A talao or pool excavated by the Paliwals, in which water remains throughout the year after much rain.
Sangar (6 do.).—N.B. This route is to the east of that (following) by Chincha, the most direct road to Balotra, and the one usually travelled; but the villages are now deserted.
Biasar (2 do.).—Forty houses, and talao. Bhikarae 2 coss distant.
Mandai (frontier) (2½ do.).—Two hundred and fifty houses. Sahib Khan Sahariya with a hundred horse is stationed here; the town is khalisa and the last of Jaisalmer. The ridge from Jaisalmer is close to all the places on this route to Mandi.
Gunga (4½ do.).—thal, or post of Jodhpur.
Sheo (2 do.).—A large town of three hundred houses, but many deserted, some through famine. Chief of a district. A Hakim resides here from Jodhpur; collects the transit dues, and protects the country from the depredations of the Sahariyas.
Kotra (3 do.).—Town of five hundred houses, of which only two hundred are now inhabited. On the north-west side is a fort on the ridge. A Rathor chief resides here. The district of Sheo Kotra was taken from the Bhattis of Jaisalmer by the Rathors of Jodhpur.
Vesala (6 do.).—In ancient times a considerable place; now only fifty houses. A fort on the ridge to the south-west, near two hundred feet high; connected with the Jaisalmer ridge, but often covered by the lofty thal of sand.
Kheralu (7 coss).—Capital of Kherdhar, one of the ancient divisions of Marusthali. Two coss south of Vesala crossed a pass over the hills.
Chhotan (10 do.).—An ancient city, now in ruins, having at present only about eighty houses, inhabited by the Sahariyas [341].
Bankasar (11 do.). Formerly a large city, now only about three hundred and sixty houses.
Bhil-ki-basti (5 do.) ┐ Few huts in each. Chauhan-ka-pura (6 do.) ┘
Nagar (3 do.).—A large town, capital of Parkar, containing one thousand five hundred houses, of which one-half are inhabited.
Kaim Khan Sahariya-ki-basti (18 do.).—Thirty houses in the thal; wells, with water near the surface; three coss to the east the boundary of Sind and the Chauhan Raj.
Dhat-ka-pura (15 do.).—A hamlet; Rajputs, Bhils, and Sahariyas.
Mitti or Mittri-ka-kot (3 do.).—A town of six hundred houses in Dhat, or the division of Umarkot belonging to Haidarabad; a relative of whose prince, with the title of Nawab, resides here; a place of great commerce, and also of transit for the caravans; a fortified mahall to the south-west. When the Shah of Kabul used to invade Sind, the Haidarabad prince always took refuge here with his family and valuables. The sand-hills are immensely high and formidable.
Chailasar (10 do.).—Four hundred houses, inhabited by Sahariyas, Brahmans, Bijaranis, and Banias; a place of great importance to the transit trade.
Samaicha-ki-basti (10 do.).—thal from Chailasar.
Nur Ali, Pani-ka-Tar (9 do.).—Sixty houses of Charans, Sultana Rajputs and Kauravas (qu. the ancient Kauravas?) water (thal) plenty in the thal.
Rual (5 do.).—Twelve hamlets termed thal, scattered round a tract of several coss, inhabited by different tribes, after whom they are named, as Sodha, Sahariya, Kaurava, Brahman, Bania and Sutar, as Sodha-ka-bas, Sahariya-ka-bas, or habitations of the Sodhas; of the Sahariyas, etc. etc. (see p. 1263).
Deli (7 do.).—One hundred houses; a thal, or collector of duties, resides here.
Garara (10 do.).—Described in route from Umarkot to Jaisalmer.
Raedana (11 do.).—Forty houses; a lake formed by damming up the water. thal, or salt-pans.
Kotra (9 do.).
Sheo (3 do.).—The whole space from Nagar to Sheo-Kotra is a continuous mass of lofty sand-hills (thal), scattered with hamlets (thal), in many parts affording abundant pasture for flocks of sheep, goats, buffaloes, and camels; the thal extends south to Nawakot and Balwar, about ten coss south of the former and two of the latter. To the left of Nawakot are the flats of Talpura, or Lower Sind.
Jaisalmer to Sheo Kotra, Barmer, Nagar-Gura and Suigam.
Dhana (5 coss).—Two hundred houses of Paliwals; pool and wells; ridge two to three hundred feet high, cultivation between the ridges.
Chincha (7 do.).—Small hamlet; Sara, half a coss east; ridge, low thal, cultivation.
Jasrana (2 do.).—Thirty houses of Paliwals, as before; Kita to the right half a coss.
Unda (1 do.).—Fifty houses of Paliwals and Jain Rajputs; wells and pools; country as before [342].
Sangar (2 do.).—Sixty houses; only fifteen inhabited, the rest fled to Sind during the famine of 1813; Charans. Grand thal commences.
Sangar-ka-talao (½ do.).—Water remains generally eight months in the talao or pool, sometimes the whole year.
┌ Between is the thal or boundary of Jaisalmer Bhikarae (1½ do.) │ and Jodhpur. Bhikarae has one Kharel (4 do.) │ hundred and twenty houses of Paliwals; └ wells and pools at both places.
Rajarel (1 do.).—Seventy houses; most deserted since famine.
Gonga (4 do.).—Hamlet of twenty huts; thal, or small wells and pools; to this the ridge and thal intermingle.
Sheo (2 do.).—Capital of the district.
Nimla (4 do.).—Forty houses; deserted.
Bhadka (2 do.).—Four hundred houses; deserted. This is “the third year of famine!”
Kapulri (3 do.).—Thirty huts, deserted; wells.
Jalepa (3 do.).—Twenty huts; deserted.
Nagar (Gurha) (20 do.).—This is a large town on the west bank of the Luni River, of four to five hundred houses, but many deserted since the famine, which has almost depopulated this region. In 1813 the inhabitants were flying as far as the Ganges, and selling themselves and offspring into slavery to save life.
Barmer (6 do.).—A town of twelve hundred houses.
Guru (2 do.).—West side of the Luni; town of seven hundred houses; the chief is styled Rana, and of the Chauhan tribe.
Bata (3 do.).—West side of river.
Patarna (1 do.) ┐West side of river. Gadla (1 do.) ┘
Ranas (3 do.).—East side of river.
Charani (2 do.).—Seventy houses; east side.
Chitalwana (2 do.).—Town of three hundred houses; east side of river; belonging to a Chauhan chief, styled Rana. Sanchor seven coss to the south.
Ratra (2 coss).—East side of river; deserted.
Hotiganw (2 do.).—South side of river; temple to Phulmukheswar Mahadeo.
Dhuta (2 do.) ┌ North side. On the west side the thal is very Tapi (2 do.) └ heavy; east side is plain; both sides well cultivated.
Lalpura (2 do.).—West side.
Surpura (1 do.).—Crossed river.
Sanloti (2 do.).—Eighty houses, east side of river.
Butera (2 do.).—East side; relation of the Rana resides here.
Narke (4 do.).—South side river; Bhils and Sonigiras.
Karoi (4 do.).—Sahariyas [343].
Pitlana (2 do.).—Large village; Kolis and Pitals.
Dharanidhar (3 do.).—Seven or eight hundred houses, nearly deserted, belonging to Suigam.
Bah (4 do.).—Capital of Rana Narayan Rao, Chauhan prince of Virawah.
Luna (5 do.).—One hundred houses.
Sui (7 do.).—Residence of Chauhan chief.
Balotra on the Luni River to Pokaran and Jaisalmer.
Panchbhadra (3 do.).—Balotra fair on the 11th Magh—continues ten days. Balotra has four to five hundred houses in the tract called Siwanchi; the ridge unites with Jalor and Siwana. Panchbhadra has two hundred houses, almost all deserted since the famine. Here is the celebrated Agar, or salt-lake, yielding considerable revenue to the government.
Gopti (2 coss).—Forty houses; deserted; one coss north of this the deep thal commences.
Patod (4 do.).—A considerable commercial mart; four hundred houses; cotton produced in great quantities.
Sivai (4 do.).—Two hundred houses, almost deserted.
Serara (1 do.).—Sixty houses. To Patod the tract is termed Siwanchi; from thence Indhavati, from the ancient lords of the Indha tribe.
┌ Bungara has seventy houses, Solankitala four │ hundred, and Pongali sixty. Throughout Bungara (3 do.) │ sand-hills. This tract is called Thalecha, Solankitala (4 do.) ┤ and the Rathors who inhabit it, Thalecha Pongali (5 do.) │ Rathors. There are many of the Jat or │ Jāt tribe as cultivators. Pongali a Charan └ community.
Bakri (5 do.).—One hundred houses; inhabited by Charans.
Dholsar (4 do.).—Sixty houses, inhabited by Paliwal Brahmans.
Pokaran (4 do.).—From Bakri commences the Pokaran district; all flat, and though sandy, no thal or hills.
Udhania (6 coss).—Fifty houses; a pool the south side.
Lahti (7 do.).—Three hundred houses; Paliwal Brahmans.
Sodhakur (2 do.) ┌ Sodhakur has thirty houses and Chandan fifty; Channda (4 do.) ┤ Paliwals. Dry thal at the latter; water └ obtained by digging in its bed.
Bhojka (3 do.).—One coss to the left is the direct road to Basanki, seven coss from Chandan.
Basanki-talao (5 do.).—One hundred houses; Paliwals.
Moklet (1½ do.).—Twelve houses; Pokharna Brahmans.
Jaisalmer (4 do.).—From Pokaran to Udhania, the road is over a low ridge of rocks; thence to Lahti is a well-cultivated plain, the ridge being on the left. A small thal intervenes at Sodhakur, thence to Chandan, plain. From Chandan to Basanki the road again traverses the low ridge, increasing in height, and with occasional cultivation, to Jaisalmer [344].
Bikaner to Ikhtyar Khan-ki Garhi, on the Indus.
Nai-ki-basti (4 do.) ┐ Gajner (5 do.) │ Sandy plains; water at all these villages. Gurha (5 do.) ├ From Girajsar, the Jaisalmer frontier, the Bitnok (5 do.) │ thal, or sand-hills commence, and continue Girajsar (8 do.) │ moderate to Bikampur. Narai (4 do.) ┘ Bikampur (9 do.) ┌ Bikampur to Mohangarh, thal or desert all Mohangarh (16 do.) │ the way, having considerable sand-hills └ and jungle.
Nachna (16 do.).—thal, or sand-hills throughout this space.
Narai (9 do.).—A Brahman village.
Nohar-ki-Garhi (24 do.).—Deep thal or desert; the frontier garrison of Sind; the garhi, or castle, held by Haji Khan.
Murid Kot (24 coss).—thal, high sand-hills.
Garhi Ikhtyar Khan-ki (18 do.)—The best portion of this through the Kachhi, or flats of the valley. Garhi on the Indus.
Total 147 coss, equal to 220½ miles, the coss being about a mile and a half each; 200 English miles of horizontal distance to be protracted [345].
-----
Footnote 8.2.1:
From par, ‘beyond,’ and kar or khar, synonymous with Luni, the ‘salt-river.’ We have several Khari Nadis, or salt-rivulets, in Rajputana, though only one Luni. The sea is frequently called the Luna-pani, ‘the salt-water,’ or Khara-pani, metamorphosed into Kala-pani, or ‘the black water,’ which is by no means insignificant. [The proposed etymology of Pārkar is impossible, and Khārā, ‘saline,’ has no connexion with Kālā, ‘black.’]
Footnote 8.2.2:
[An account of the travels of Withington or Whithington is given in Purchas his Pilgrimes, ed. 1625, i. 483. Mr. W. Foster, who is engaged on a new edition, describes the story as interesting, but muddled in history and geography.]
Footnote 8.2.3:
[Briggs’ trans. i. 69, but compare Elliot-Dowson iv. 180.]
Footnote 8.2.4:
[See Vol. II. p. 807.]
Footnote 8.2.5:
[Dharanīdhar, the Kūrma or tortoise, ‘supporter of the earth,’ the second incarnation of Vishnu. At Dhema in Tharād a fair is held in honour of Dharanīdharji (BG, v. 300, 342).]
Footnote 8.2.6:
One of my journals mentions that a branch of the Luni passes by Sui, the capital of Virawah, where it is four hundred and twelve paces in breadth: an error, I imagine. [Sūigām is on the E. shore of the Rann, and the Lūni does not pass by it or by Virawāh.]
Footnote 8.2.7:
Pursa, the standard measure of the desert, is here from six to seven feet, or the average height of a man, to the tip of his finger, the hand being raised vertically over the head. It is derived from purush, ‘man.’
Footnote 8.2.8:
[Pital is another name for the Kalbi farming caste, Kalbi being apparently the local form of the name Kanbi or Kunbi (Census Report, Mārwār, 1891, ii. 343). The caste does not appear in the 1911 Census Report of Rājputāna.]
Footnote 8.2.9:
[Arabic zunnār, probably Greek ζωνάριον The Hindi janeo is Skt. yajnopavīta, the investiture of youths with the sacred thread, and later the thread itself.]
Footnote 8.2.10:
[For a full account of the Kolis see BG, ix. Part i. 237 ff.]
Footnote 8.2.11:
[Iguanas (Yule, Hobson-Jobson, 2nd ed. 379 f.)]
Footnote 8.2.12:
[That is to say, from Bahāwalpur on the N. to Baliāri on the N. shore of the Rann of Cutch, a distance, as the crow flies, of some 380 miles.]
Footnote 8.2.13:
[The original is condensed. “The lands of the Rāthor, who rules nine districts, are for the most part all sand; they have little or no water. The wells in some places are so deep that the water is drawn with the help of oxen. When water is to be drawn, those who set the animals to work beat a drum as a warning that the pot is at the mouth of the well, and they are about to draw water” (Manucci ii. 432).]
Footnote 8.2.14:
[About 15 miles N. of Umarkot. See Elliot-Dowson i. 532.]
Footnote 8.2.15:
[The name Dhāt has disappeared from modern maps, and is not to be found in the IGI.]
Footnote 8.2.16:
See table of tribes, and sketch of the Pramaras, Vol. I. pp. 98 and 107.
Footnote 8.2.17:
Ferishta [iv. 411], Abu-l Fazl [Āīn, ii. 337, 340 ff.].
Footnote 8.2.18:
[A better version runs:
“_Pirthī barā Panwār, Pirthi Panwārān tāni; Ek Ujjaini Dhār, dūjē Ābū baithno._”
“The Panwār the greatest on earth, and the world belongs to the Panwārs. Their early seats were Ujjain, Dhār, and Mount Ābū” (Census Report, Mārwār, 1891, ii. 29).]
Footnote 8.2.19:
[St. Martin fixes the capital of the Sogdoi at Alor or Aror, but Cunningham would place it higher up stream, about midway between Alor and Uchh, at the village of Sirwahi (McCrindle, Alexander, 354).]
Footnote 8.2.20:
To convince the reader I do not build upon nominal resemblance, when localities do not bear me out, he is requested to call to mind, that we have elsewhere assigned to the Yadus of the Panjab the honour of furnishing the well-known king named Porus; although the Puar, the usual pronunciation of Pramar, would afford a more ready solution. [This is doubtful (Smith, EHI, 40 note).]
Footnote 8.2.21:
Colonel Briggs, in his translation [iv. 406], writes it Hully Sa, and in this very place remarks on the “mutilation of Hindu names by the early Mahomedan writers, which are frequently not to be recognized”; or, we might have learned that the adjunct Sa to Hully (qu. Heri), the son of Sehris, was the badge of his tribe, Soda. The Roy-sahy, or Rae-sa of Abulfazil, means ‘Prince Sa’ or ‘Prince of the Sodas.’ Of the same family was Dahir, whose capital, in A.H. 99, was (says Abu-l fazil) “Alore or Debeil,” in which this historian makes a geographical mistake: Alore or Arore being the capital of Upper Sinde, and Debeil (correctly Dewul, the temple), or Tatta, the capital of Lower Sinde. In all probability Dahir held both. We have already dilated, in the Annals of Mewar, on a foreign prince named “Dahir Despati,” or the sovereign prince, Dahir, being amongst her defenders, on the first Mooslem invasion, which we conjectured must have been that of Mahomed Kasim, after he had subdued Sinde. Bappa, the lord of Cheetore, was nephew of Raja Maun Mori, shewing a double motive in the exiled son of Dahir to support Cheetore against his own enemy Kasim. The Moris and Sodas were alike branches of the Pramar (see Vol. I. p. 111). It is also worth while to draw attention to the remark elsewhere made (p. 286) on the stir made by Hejauje of Khorasan (who sent Kasim to Sinde) amongst the Hindu princes of Zabulist’han: dislocated facts, all demonstrating one of great importance, namely, the wide dominion of the Rajpoot race, previous to the appearance of Mahomed. Oriental literature sustained a loss which can scarcely be repaired, by the destruction of the valuable MSS. amassed by Colonel Briggs, during many years, for the purpose of a general history of the early transactions of the Mahomedans. [This note has been reprinted as it stands in the original text. Many statements must be received with caution. See Elliot-Dowson i. 120 ff.]
Footnote 8.2.22:
Of the latter stock he gives us a list of seventeen princes. Gladwin’s translation of Ayeen Akberi, vol. ii. p. 122. [This has been replaced by that of Jarrett, Āīn, ii. 343 ff.]
Footnote 8.2.23:
See Briggs’ Ferishta, vol. iv. pp. 411 and 422.
Footnote 8.2.24:
[For Minnagara see Vol. I. p. 255.]
Footnote 8.2.25:
The four races called Agnikula (of which the Pramar was the most numerous), at every step of ancient Hindu history are seen displacing the dynasty of Yadu. Here the struggle between them is corroborated by the two best Muhammadan historians, both borrowing from the same source, the more ancient histories, few of which have reached us. It must be borne in mind that the Sodhas, the Umars, the Sumras, were Pramars (vulg. Puar); while the Sammas were Yadus, for whose origin see Annals of Jaisalmer, p. #1185# above.
Footnote 8.2.26:
[This is very doubtful. See Yule, Hobson-Jobson, 2nd ed. 447.]
Footnote 8.2.27:
[Sora is supposed to represent the Chola Kingdom in S. India (McCrindle, Ptolemy, 64 f.).]
Footnote 8.2.28:
Of these, the author was so fortunate as to obtain one of Menander and three of Apollodotus, whose existence had heretofore been questioned: the first of the latter from the wreck of Suryapura, the capital of the Surasenakas of Manu [Laws, ii. 19, vii. 193] and Arrian; another from the ancient Avanti, or Ujjain, whose monarch, according to Justin, held a correspondence with Augustus; and the third, in company with a whole jar of Hindu-Scythic and Bactrian medals, at Agra, which was dug up several years since in excavating the site of the more ancient city. This, I have elsewhere surmised, might have been the abode of Aggrames, Agra-gram-eswar, the “lord of the city of Agra,” mentioned by Arrian as the most potent monarch in the north of India, who, after the death of Porus, was ready to oppose the further progress of Alexander. Let us hope that the Panjab may yet afford us another peep into the past. For an account of these medals, see Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. i. p. 313. [Aggrames, King of the Gangaridae and Prasii, also known as Xandrames, probably the Hindu Chandra, belonged to the Nanda dynasty (Smith, EHI, 40; McCrindle, Ancient India in Classical Literature, 43).]
Footnote 8.2.29:
Captain, now Colonel, Pottinger, in his interesting work on Sind and Baluchistan, in extracting from the Persian work Mu’jamu-l Waridat, calls the ancient capital of Sind, Ulaor, and mentions the overthrow of the dynasty of ‘Sahir’ (the Siharas of Abu-l Fazl), whose ancestors had governed Sind for two thousand years.
Footnote 8.2.30:
[The present population is 4924.]
Footnote 8.2.31:
[In Shikārpur, Sind, near the frontier of Bahāwalpur.]
Footnote 8.2.32:
[By another story, Abdu-n-nabi Khān, brother of Ghulām Nabi Khān, prince of Sind, assassinated his too successful general, Mīr Bijar, in A.D. 1781 (IGI, xxii. 399).]
Footnote 8.2.33:
The memoir adds: Fateh Ali was succeeded by his brother, the present Ghulam Ali, and he by his son, Karam Ali. The general correctness of this outline is proved by a very interesting work (which has only fallen into my hands in time to make this note), entitled Narrative of a Visit to the Court of Sinde, by Dr. Burnes. Bijar Khan was minister to the Kalhora rulers of Sind, whose cruelties at length gave the government to the family of the minister. As it is scarcely to be supposed that Raja Bijai Singh would furnish assassins to the Kalhora, who could have little difficulty in finding them in Sind, the insult which caused the fate of Bijar may have proceeded from his master, though he may have been made the scapegoat. It is much to be regretted that the author of the Visit to Sinde did not accompany the Amirs to Sehwan (of which I shall venture an account obtained nearly twenty years ago). With the above memoir and map (by his brother, Lieut. Burnes) of the Rann, a new light has been thrown on the history and geography of this most interesting and important portion of India. It is to be desired that to a gentleman so well prepared may be entrusted the examination of this still little-known region. I had long entertained the hope of passing through the desert, by Jaisalmer to Uchh, and thence, sailing down to Mansura, visiting Aror, Sehwan, Sammanagari, and Bamanwasa. The rupture with Sind in 1820 gave me great expectations of accomplishing this object, and I drew up and transmitted to Lord Hastings a plan of marching a force through the desert, and planting the cross on the insular capital of the Sogdoi; but peace was the order of the day. I was then in communication with Mir Sohrab, governor of Upper Sind, who, I have little doubt, would have come over to our views.
Footnote 8.2.34:
[The chief connexion of the Sodhas with Cutch is through the marriage of their daughters with leading Jāreja and Musalmān families. Their women are of great natural ability, but ambitious and intriguing, not scrupling to make away with their husbands in order that their sons may obtain the estate (BG, v. 67).]
Footnote 8.2.35:
See sketch of the tribes, Vol. I. p. 98.
Footnote 8.2.36:
Nayyad is the noviciate, literally new (naya), or original converts, I suppose. [In other parts of India they are known as Naumuslim.]
Footnote 8.2.37:
Dagra is very common in Rajputana for a ‘path-way’; but the substitute here used for rassa, a rope, I am not acquainted with. [For a large collection of similar taboo names for persons, animals, and things see Sir J. Frazer, The Golden Bough, “Taboo and Perils of the Soul,” 318 ff.]
Footnote 8.2.38:
[The name cannot be traced in recent Census Reports.]
Footnote 8.2.39:
[Salvadora oleoides or persica (Watt, Econ. Dict. vi. Part ii. 447 ff.).]
Footnote 8.2.40:
[In Cutch they claim to be Rāthors from Multān, and are said to have been driven by the Muhammadans from the Panjāb into Cutch. In Gujarāt they are Vaishnavas, and are particular about their food and drink, but in Sind they are more lax (BG, v. 54 ff., ix. Part i. 122; Burton, Sindh, 314).]
Footnote 8.2.41:
[They are numerous in S.W. Panjāb, where Rose (Glossary, ii. 16 ff.) gives a full account of them.]
Footnote 8.2.42:
[On their connexion with the Bhatti Rājputs see Crooke, Tribes and Castes N.W.P. and Oudh, ii. 37; Russell, Tribes and Castes Central Provinces, i. 380; BG, v. 37 f.]
Footnote 8.2.43:
[About 45 miles S. of Umarkot.]
Footnote 8.2.44:
[These desert Brāhmans, whose laxity of custom is notorious, have no connexion with other orthodox Brāhmans, and are probably priests or medicine-men who now claim that rank.]
Footnote 8.2.45:
[Census Report, Bombay, 1911, i. 298.]
Footnote 8.2.46:
Abu-l Fazl, in describing the province of Bajaur, inhabited by the Yusufzais, says: “The whole of the tract [Swāt] of hill and plain is the domain of the Yūsufzai clan. In the time of Mīrza Ulugh Beg of Kābul, they migrated from Kābul to this territory and wrested it from the Sultāns who affected to be descendants of Alexander Bicornutus” (Āīn, ii. 392 f.). Mr. Elphinstone inquired in vain for this offspring of Alexander the Great.
Footnote 8.2.47:
[These derivations are impossible; the name is possibly connected with that of the Savara tribe.]
Footnote 8.2.48:
[Nawakot and Mitti in the interior of Thar-Pārkar; Baliāri on the shore of the Great Rann.]
Footnote 8.2.49:
[The Rājar are recorded as a section of the Saman, an aboriginal tribe in Sind (Census Report, Bombay, 1911, i. 233).]
Footnote 8.2.50:
[See Elliot-Dowson i. 489.]
Footnote 8.2.51:
[The true reading is Nohmardi (Āīn, ii. 337).]
Footnote 8.2.52:
[Cf. Hindi lokri or lokhri.]
Footnote 8.2.53:
[Max Müller derived Baloch from Skt. mlechchha, ‘a barbarian,’ but this is doubtful.]
Footnote 8.2.54:
[Zott is the Arabic form of Jat or Jāt (Sykes, Hist. of Persia, ii. 79).]
Footnote 8.2.55:
[The ascription of Bhatti origin to the Mers is obviously intended to correspond with the assertion that they are a branch of the Mīna or Maina tribe (Elliot-Dowson i. 523 f.).]
Footnote 8.2.56:
[In the Panjāb Mor is the name of a Jāt sept which worship the peacock (mor) because it is said to have saved their ancestor from a snake (Rose, Glossary, iii. 129). There was a settlement of this tribe at Sārangpur on the Kāli Sind River (ASR, ii. 228).]
Footnote 8.2.57:
[Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, 2nd ed. (1842) i. 22 ff. For a full account of the Abbāsi Dāūdputras of Bahāwalpur see the State Gazetteer by Malik Muhammad Din (1908), i. 47 ff..]
Footnote 8.2.58:
[The succession runs: Bahāwal Khān II. (A.D. 1772-1809); Sādik Muhammad Khān (1809-25); Muhammad Bahāwal Khān III. (1825-52); Sādik Muhammad Khān II. (1853-58); Muhammad Bahāwal Khān IV. (1858-66); Sādik Muhammad Khān III., a minor, installed in 1879.]
Footnote 8.2.59:
This memorandum was written, I think, in 1811 or 1812.
Footnote 8.2.60:
My friend Dr. Joseph Duncan (attached to the Residency when I was Political Agent at Udaipur) was attacked by the narua in a very aggravated form. It fixed itself in the ankle-joint, and being broken in the attempt to extricate it, was attended by all the evil results I have described, ending in lameness, and generally impaired health, which obliged him to visit the Cape for recovery, where I saw him on my way home eighteen months after, but he had even then not altogether recovered from the lameness. [Guinea-worm (Dracontiasis), a disease due to the Filaria medinensis or Dracunculus, known in Persia as rīshtah, infests the Persian Gulf and many parts of India. See Curzon, Persia, ii. 234; Fryer, New Account of East India and Persia, ed. 1912, i. 175; Sleeman, Rambles, 76; Asiatic Researches, vi. 58 ff.; EB, 11th ed. xix. 361. The disease from which Job suffered (Job ii. 7) is generally believed to be elephantiasis (A. B. Davidson, The Book of Job, 13).]
Footnote 8.2.61:
[Since this was written Rājputāna has suffered from terrible famines in 1868-69, 1877-78, 1891-92, and 1899-1900, besides several seasons of scarcity.]
Footnote 8.2.62:
[These camel corps have been placed at the service of the Indian Government, and have done excellent service in several recent campaigns.]
Footnote 8.2.63:
[The wild ass (Equus hemionus) seems to have almost entirely disappeared in Jaisalmer. It is seldom seen in Mārwār, and no specimen has appeared in Bīkaner for many years (Erskine iii. A. 7, 50, 311; Blanford, Mammalia of India, 470 f.). Herodotus (vii. 86) says that the Indian chariots in the army of Xerxes were drawn by horses or wild asses.]
Footnote 8.2.64:
[Nīlgāē, Boselaphus tragocamelus, is not a deer, but belongs to the order Bovidae (Blanford, 517 ff.).]
Footnote 8.2.65:
[The fruits or small red berries of the pilu (Salvadora persica) have a strong aromatic smell and a pungent taste, like mustard or garden cress, while the shoots and leaves are eaten as a salad (Watt, Econ. Dict. vi. Part ii. 449; Burnes, Travels into Bokhara, iii. 122).]
Footnote 8.2.66:
Chittram, the name applied to these flats of hard soil (which Mr. Elphinstone happily describes, by saying that it rings under the horses’ hoofs in marching over it), is literally ‘the picture,’ from the circumstance of such spots almost constantly presenting the mirage, here termed chittram. How far the soil, so deeply impregnated with alkaline matter, may tend to heighten, if not to cause this, we have elsewhere noted in a general account of this optical phenomenon in various parts of northern India.
Footnote 8.2.67:
[Sarkanda, Saccharum sara or arundinaceum; dhāman, Pennisetum cenchroides; dūb, Cynodon dactylon; gokhru, Tribulus lancigenosus; bharūt, Cenchrus catharticus.]
Footnote 8.2.68:
[The tomato, introduced in modern times into India, generally called wilāyati baingan, ‘the foreign egg-plant.’]
Footnote 8.2.69:
[Many of the places named in this Itinerary are merely temporary halting-places in the desert, which do not appear in modern maps. Hence, in several cases, the transliteration is conjectural, and depends on the method of the Author in the case of well-known localities. A series of similar routes is given by Lieut. A. H. E. Boileau, Narrative of a Tour through Rajwara in 1835 (Calcutta, 1837), p. 192 ff.]
Footnote 8.2.70:
There are two routes from Mulana to Sehwan. The Dhati went the longest on account of water. The other is by Sakrand, as follows:
Coss. Coss. Palri 5 Sakrand 3 ┐ [8.2.70.A] Padshah-ki-basti 6 Nala 0-½ │ This Udani 5 Makrand 4 │ appears Mitrao 10 Koka-ki-basti 6 │ very Mir-ki-khoi 6 The Sind 10 │ circuitous. Supari 5 Sehwan 0-½ ┘ Kambhar-ka-nala 9
Footnote 8.2.70.A:
Town high road from Upper to Lower Sind.
Footnote 8.2.71:
Sehwan is erected on an elevation within a few hundred yards of the river, having many clumps of trees, especially to the south. The houses are built of clay, often three stories high, with wooden pillars supporting the floors. To the north of the town are the remains of a very ancient and extensive fortress, sixty of its bastions being still visible; and in the centre the vestiges of a palace still known as Raja Bhartrihari-ka-Mahall, who is said to have reigned here when driven from Ujjain by his brother Vikramaditya. Although centuries have flown since the Hindus had any power in these regions, their traditions have remained. They relate that Vikrama, the eldest son of Gandharap Sen, was so devoted to his wife, that he neglected the affairs of government, which made his brother expostulate with him. This coming to his wife’s ears, she insisted on the banishment of Vikrama. Soon after a celebrated ascetic reached his court, and presented to Bhartrihari the Amarphul, or ‘fruit of immortality,’ the reward of years of austere devotion at the shrine of Mahadeo. Bhartrihari gave it to his wife, who bestowed it on an elephant-driver, her paramour; he to a common prostitute, his mistress; who expecting to be highly rewarded for it, carried it to the raja. Incensed at such a decided proof of infidelity, Bhartrihari, presenting himself before his queen, asked for the prize—she had lost it. Having produced it, she was so overwhelmed with shame that she rushed from his presence, and precipitating herself from the walls of the palace, was dashed to pieces. Raja Bhartrihari consoled himself with another wife, Rani Pingula, to whose charms he in like manner became enslaved; but experience had taught him suspicion. Having one day gone a-hunting, his huntsman shot a deer, whose doe coming to the spot, for a short time contemplated the body, then threw herself on his antlers and died. The Shikari, or huntsman, who had fallen asleep, was killed by a huge snake. His wife came to seek him, supposing him still asleep, but at length seeing he was dead, she collected leaves, dried reeds, and twigs, and having made a pyre, placed the body under it; after the usual perambulations she set fire to, and perished with it. The raja, who witnessed these proceedings, went home and conversed with Pingulani on these extraordinary Satis, especially the Shikari’s, which he called unparalleled. Pingulani disputed the point, and said it was the sacrifice of passion, not of love; had it been the latter, grief would have required no pyre. Some time after, having again gone a-hunting, Bhartrihari recalled this conversation, and having slain a deer, he dipped his clothes in the blood, and sent them by a confidential messenger to report his death in combat with a tiger. Pingulani heard the details; she wept not, neither did she speak, but prostrating herself before the sun, ceased to exist. The pyre was raised, and her remains were consuming outside the city as the raja returned from his excursion. Hastening to the spot of lamentation, and learning the fatal issue of his artifice, he threw off the trappings of sovereignty, put on the pilgrim’s garb, and abandoned Ujjain to Vikrama. The only word which he uttered, as he wandered to and fro, was the name of his faithful Pingulani! “Hae Pingula! Hae Pingula!” The royal pilgrim at length fixed his abode at Sehwan; but although they point out the ruins of a palace still known even to the Islamite as the Am-khass of Raja Bhartrihari, it is admitted that the fortress is of more ancient date. There is a mandir, or shrine, to the south of the town, also called, after him, Bhartri-ka-mandir. In this the Islamite has deposited the mortal remains of a saint named Lal Pir Shahbaz, to whom they attribute their victorious possession of Sind.[8.2.71.A] The cenotaph of this saint, who has the character of a proselyte Hindu, is in the centre of the mandir, and surrounded by wooden stakes. It is a curious spectacle to see both Islamite and Hindu paying their devotions in the same place of worship; and although the first is prohibited from approaching the sacred enceinte of the Pir, yet both adore a large salagram, that vermiculated fossil sacred to Vishnu, placed in a niche in the tomb. The fact is a curious one, and although these Islamite adorers are the scions of conversion, it perhaps shows in the strongest manner that this conversion was of the sword, for, generally speaking, the converted Hindu makes the most bigoted and intolerant Musalman. My faithful and intelligent emissaries, Madari Lal and the Dhati, brought me a brick from the ruins of this fortress of Sehwan. It was about a cubit in length, and of symmetrical breadth and thickness, uncommonly well burnt, and rang like a bell. They also brought me some charred wheat, from pits where it had been burned. The grains were entire and reduced to a pure carbon. Tradition is again at work, and asserts its having lain there for some thousand years. There is very little doubt that this is the site of one of the antagonists of the Macedonian conqueror, perhaps Mousikanos,[8.2.71.B] or Mukh-Sehwan, the chief of Sehwan. The passage of the Grecian down the Indus was marked by excesses not inferior to those of the Ghaznavede king in later times, and doubtless they fired all they could not plunder to carry to the fleet. There is also a Nanak-bara, or place of worship sacred to Nanak, the great apostle of the Sikhs, placed between the fortress and the river. Sehwan is inhabited by Hindus and Islamites in equal proportions: of the former, the mercantile tribe of Mahesri from Jaisalmer, is the most numerous, and have been fixed here for generations. There are also many Brahmans of the Pokharna[8.2.71.C] caste, Sunars or goldsmiths, and other Hindu artisans; of the Muslims the Sayyid is said to be the most numerous class. The Hindus are the monied men. Cotton and indigo, and great quantities of rice in the husk (paddy), grown in the vicinage of Sehwan, are exported to the ports of Tatta and Karachi Bandar by boats of considerable burthen, manned entirely by Muhammadans. The Hakim of Sehwan is sent from Haidarabad. The range of mountains which stretch from Tatta nearly parallel with the Indus, approaches within three miles of Sehwan, and there turns off to the north-west. All these hills are inhabited as far as the shrine of Hinglaj Mata[8.2.71.D] on the coast of Mekran (placed in the same range) by the Lumri, or Numri tribe, who though styling themselves Baloch, are Jats in origin.[8.2.71.E]
Footnote 8.2.71.A:
[The reference is to Lāl Shāhbāz, Qalandar, head of the Jalāli order, who died at Sehwān, A.D. 1274. For a full account see R. F. Burton, Sindh, 211 f.]
Footnote 8.2.71.B:
[Mousikanos was the stiff-necked king of Alor or Aror who opposed Alexander, was captured and executed (Smith, EHI, 100 f.; McCrindle, Alexander, 395).]
Footnote 8.2.71.C:
See Annals of Jaisalmer, Vol. II. p. 1256.
Footnote 8.2.71.D:
This famous shrine of the Hindu Cybele, yet frequented by numerous votaries, is nine days’ journey from Tatta by Karachi Bandar, and about nine miles from the seashore.
Footnote 8.2.71.E:
These are the Nomurdies of Rennel. [See p. 1299 above.]
Footnote 8.2.72:
These springs are frequented, despite the difficulties and dangers of the route from the savage Numri, by numerous Hindu pilgrims. Two of them are hot, and named Suryakund and Chandrakund, or fountains of the sun and moon, and imbued with especial virtues; but before the pilgrim can reap any advantage by purification in their waters, he must undergo the rite of confession to the attendant priests, who, through intercession with Mahadeo, have the power of granting absolution. Should a sinner be so hardened as to plunge in without undergoing this preparatory ordeal, he comes out covered with boils!!! This is a curious confirmation that the confessional rite is one of very ancient usage amongst the Hindus, even in the days of Rama of Kosala.—See Vol. I. p. 94.
Footnote 8.2.73:
This is the Sankra of Nadir Shah’s treaty with Muhammad Shah of India, which the conqueror made the boundary between India and Persia, by which he obtained the whole of that fertile portion of the valley of Sind, east of that stream. Others say it issues from Dara, above Rohri Bakhar.
Footnote 8.2.74:
See Annals of Jaisalmer for an account of the murder of this chieftain, Vol. II. p. 1233.
Footnote 8.2.75:
Shaikh Abu-l-barakat makes the distance only nine coss from Shahgarh to Kuriala, and states the important fact of crossing the dry bed of the Ghaggar, five coss west of Kuriala; water found plentifully by digging in the bed. Numerous thal, to which the shepherds drive their flocks.
Footnote 8.2.76:
[IGI, xv. 215 f.]
Footnote 8.2.77:
Considerable town on the high road from Upper to Lower Sind. See subsequent route.
-----
Chapter 1
By some conventional process, Europeans in India have adopted the habit of designating the principalities of Rajputana by the names of their respective capitals, instead of those of the countries. Thus Marwar and Mewar are recognized under the titles of their chief cities, Jodhpur and Udaipur; Kotah and Bundi are denominations indiscriminately applied to Haravati, the general term of the region, which is rarely mentioned; and Dhundhar is hardly known by that denomination to Europeans, who refer to the State only by the names of its capitals, Amber or Jaipur, the last of which is now universally used to designate the region inhabited by the Kachhwahas [346].
=Boundaries of Jaipur State.=—The map defines the existing boundaries of this principality, to which I shall indiscriminately apply the terms (as is the practice of the natives) of Dhundhar, Amber, and Jaipur.
=Etymology of Dhūndhār.=—Like all the other Rajput States, the country of the Kachhwahas is an assemblage of communities, the territories of which have been wrested from the aboriginal tribes, or from independent chieftains, at various periods; and therefore the term Dhundhar, which was only one of their earliest acquisitions, had scarcely a title to impose its name upon the aggregate. The etymology of Dhundhar is from a once celebrated sacrificial mount (thal) on the western frontier, near Kalakh Jobner.[9.1.2]
=The Kachhwāha Tribe.=—The Kachhwaha or Kachhwa race claims descent from Kusa, the second son of Rama, King of Kosala, whose capital was Ayodhya, the modern Oudh. Kusa, or some of his immediate offspring, is said to have migrated from the parental abode, and erected the celebrated castle of Rohtas, or Rohitas,[9.1.3] on the Son, whence, in the lapse of several generations, another distinguished scion, Raja Nal, migrated westward, and in S. 351, or A.D. 295, founded the kingdom and city of Narwar, or classically, Naishadha.[9.1.4] Some of the traditional chronicles record intermediate places of domicile prior to the erection of this famed city: first, the town of Lahar, in the heart of a tract yet named Kachhwahagar, or region (thal) of the Kachhwahas;[9.1.5] and secondly, that of Gwalior. Be this as it may, the descendants of Raja Nal adopted the affix of Pal (which appears to be the distinguishing epithet of all the early Rajput tribes), until Sora Singh (thirty-third in descent from Nal), whose son, Dhola Rae, was expelled the paternal abode, and in S. 1023, A.D. 967, laid the foundation of the State of Dhundhar [347].
A family, which traces its lineage from Rama of Kosala, Nala of Naishadha, and Dhola the lover of Maroni, may be allowed ‘the boast of heraldry’; and in remembrance of this descent, the Kachhwahas of India celebrate with great solemnity ‘the annual feast of the sun,’ on which occasion a stately car, called the chariot of the sun (thal), drawn by eight horses, is brought from the temple, and the descendant of Rama, ascending therein, perambulates his capital.
=Origin of Jaipur State. Dhola Rāē.=—A case of simple usurpation originated the Kachhwaha State of Amber; but it would be contrary to precedent if this event were untinged with romance. As the episode, while it does not violate probability, illustrates the condition of the aboriginal tribes, we do not exclude the tradition. On the death of Sora Singh, prince of Narwar, his brother usurped the government, depriving the infant, Dhola Rae, of his inheritance. His mother, clothing herself in mean apparel, put the infant in a basket, which she placed on her head, and travelled westward until she reached the town of Khoganw (within five miles of the modern Jaipur), then inhabited by the Minas. Distressed with hunger and fatigue, she had placed her precious burden on the ground, and was plucking some wild berries, when she observed a hooded serpent rearing its form over the basket.[9.1.6] She uttered a shriek, which attracted an itinerant Brahman, who told her to be under no alarm, but rather to rejoice at this certain indication of future greatness in the boy. But the emaciated parent of the founder of Amber replied, “What may be in futurity I heed not, while I am sinking with hunger”; on which the Brahman put her in the way of Khoganw, where he said her necessities would be relieved. Taking up the basket, she reached the town, which is encircled by hills, and accosting a female, who happened to be a slave of the Mina chieftain, begged any menial employment for food. By direction of the Mina Rani, she was entertained with the slaves. One day she was ordered to prepare dinner, of which Ralansi, the Mina Raja, partook, and found it so superior to his usual fare, that he sent for the cook, who related her story.[9.1.7] As soon as the Mina chief discovered the rank of the illustrious fugitive, he adopted her as his sister, and Dhola Rae as his nephew. When the boy had attained the age of Rajput manhood (fourteen), he was sent to Delhi,[9.1.8] with the tribute of Khoganw, to attend instead of the Mina. The young Kachhwaha remained there five years, when he conceived the idea of usurping his benefactor’s authority. Having consulted the Mina Dharhi,[9.1.9] or bard, as to the best means of executing his plan, he recommended [348] him to take advantage of the festival of the Diwali, when it is customary to perform the ablutions en masse, in a tank. Having brought a few of his Rajput brethren from Delhi, he accomplished his object, filling the reservoirs in which the Minas bathed with their dead bodies. The treacherous bard did not escape; Dhola Rae put him to death with his own hands, observing, “He who had proved unfaithful to one master could not be trusted by another.” He then took possession of Khoganw. Soon after he repaired to Dausa,[9.1.10] a castle and district ruled by an independent chief of the Bargujar tribe of Rajputs, whose daughter he demanded in marriage. “How can this be,” said the Bargujar, “when we are both Suryavansi, and one hundred generations have not yet separated us?”[9.1.11] But being convinced that the necessary number of descents had intervened, the nuptials took place, and as the Bargujar had no male issue, he resigned his power to his son-in-law. With the additional means thus at his disposal, Dhola determined to subjugate the Sira[9.1.12] tribe of Minas, whose chief, Rao Nata, dwelt at Machh. Again he was victorious, and deeming his new conquest better adapted for a residence than Khoganw, he transferred his infant government thither, changing the name of Machh, in honour of his great ancestor, to Ramgarh.
Dhola subsequently married the daughter of the prince of Ajmer, whose name was Maroni.[9.1.13] Returning on one occasion with her from visiting the shrine of Jamwahi Mata,[9.1.14] the whole force of the Minas of that region assembled, to the number of eleven thousand, to oppose his passage through their country. Dhola gave them battle: but after slaying vast numbers of his foes, he was himself killed, and his followers fled. Maroni escaped, and bore a posthumous child, who was named Kankhal, and who conquered the country of Dhundhar. His son, Maidal Rao, made a conquest of Amber from the Susawat Minas, the residence of their chief, named Bhato, who had the title of Rao, and was head of the Mina confederation. He also subdued the Nandla Minas, and added the district of Gatur-Ghati to his territory.
=Hūndeo, Kuntal.=—Hundeo succeeded, and, like his predecessors, continued the warfare against the Minas. He was succeeded by Kuntal, whose sway extended over all the hill-tribes round his capital. Having determined to proceed to Bhatwar, where a Chauhan prince resided, in order to marry his daughter, his Mina subjects, remembering the [349] former fatality, collected from all quarters, demanding that, if he went beyond the borders, he should leave the standards and nakkaras of sovereignty in their custody. Kuntal refusing to submit, a battle ensued, in which the Minas were defeated with great slaughter, which secured his rule throughout Dhundhar.
=Pajūn.=—Kuntal was succeeded by Pajun, a name well known to the chivalrous Rajput, and immortalized by Chand, in the poetic history (Raesa) of the emperor Prithiraj. Before, however, we proceed further, it may be convenient to give a sketch of the power and numbers of the indigenous tribes at this period.
=The Mīna Tribe.=—We have already had frequent occasion to observe the tendency of the aboriginal tribes to emerge from bondage and depression, which has been seen in Mewar, Kotah, and Bundi, and is now exemplified in the rise of the Kachhwahas in Dhundhar. The original, pure, unmixed race of Minas, or Mainas, of Dhundhar, were styled Pachwara, and subdivided into five grand tribes. Their original home was in the range of mountains called Kalikoh, extending from Ajmer nearly to the Jumna, where they erected Amber, consecrated to Amba, the universal mother,[9.1.15] or, as the Minas style her, Ghata Rani, ‘Queen of the pass.’ In this range were Khoganw, Machh, and many other large towns, the chief cities of communities. But even so late as Raja Baharmall Kachhwaha, the contemporary of Babur and Humayun, the Minas had retained or regained great power, to the mortification of their Rajput superiors. One of these independent communities was at the ancient city of Nain, destroyed by Baharmall, no doubt with the aid of his Mogul connexions. An old historical distich thus records the power of the Mina princes of Nain:
_Bāwan kot, chhappan darvāja, Mīna mard, Nāin kā rājā, Vado rāj Nāin ko bhago, Jab bhus-hī men vāmto māgo._
That is, 'There were fifty-two strongholds,[9.1.15] and fifty-six gates belonging to the manly Mina, the Raja of Nain, whose sovereignty of Nain was extinct, when even of chaff (bhus) he took a share.' If this is not an exaggeration, it would appear that, during the distractions of the first Islamite dynasties of Delhi, the Minas had attained their primitive importance. Certainly from Pajun, the vassal chieftain of Prithiraj [350], to Baharmall, the contemporary of Babur, the Kachhwahas had but little increased their territory. When this latter prince destroyed the Mina sovereignty of Nain, he levelled its half hundred gates, and erected the town of Lohwan (now the residence of the Rajawat chief) on its ruins.
A distinction is made in the orthography and pronunciation of the designation of this race: Maina, meaning the asl, or ‘unmixed class,’ of which there is now but one, the Usara; while Mina is that applied to the mixed, of which they reckon barah pal,[9.1.16] or twelve communities, descended from Rajput blood, as Chauhan, Tuar, Jadon, Parihar, Kachhwaha, Solanki, Sankhla, Guhilot, etc., and these are subdivided into no less than five thousand two hundred distinct clans, of which it is the duty of the Jaga, Dholi, or Dom, their genealogists, to keep account. The unmixed Usara stock is now exceedingly rare, while the mixed races, spread over all the hilly and intricate regions of central and western India, boast of their descent at the expense of ‘legitimacy.’ These facts all tend strongly to prove that the Rajputs were conquerors, and that the mountaineers, whether Kolis, Bhils, Minas, Gonds, Savaras or Sarjas, are the indigenous inhabitants of India. This subject will be fully treated hereafter, in a separate chapter devoted to the Mina tribes, their religion, manners, and customs.
=Death of Pajūn.=—Let us return to Pajun, the sixth in descent from the exile of Narwar, who was deemed of sufficient consequence to obtain in marriage the sister of Prithiraj, the Chauhan emperor of Delhi, an honour perhaps attributable to the splendour of Pajun’s descent, added to his great personal merit. The chivalrous Chauhan, who had assembled around him one hundred and eight chiefs of the highest rank in India, assigned a conspicuous place to Pajun, who commanded a division of that monarch’s armies in many of his most important battles. Pajun twice signalized himself in invasions from the north, in one of which, when he commanded on the frontier, he defeated Shihabu-d-din in the Khaibar Pass, and pursued him towards Ghazni.[9.1.17] His valour mainly contributed to the conquest of Mahoba, the country of the Chandels, of which he was left governor; and he was one of the sixty-four chiefs who, with a chosen body of their retainers, enabled Prithiraj to carry off the princess of Kanauj. In this service, covering [351] the retreat of his liege lord, Pajun lost his life, on the first of the five days’ continuous battle. Pajun was conjoined with Govind Guhilot, a chief of the Mewar house;—both fell together. Chand, the bard, thus describes the last hours of the Kachhwaha prince: “When Govind fell, the foe danced with joy: then did Pajun thunder on the curtain of fight: with both hands he plied the khadga (sword) on the heads of the barbarian. Four hundred rushed upon him; but the five brothers in arms, Kehari, Pipa, and Boho, with Narsingh and Kachra, supported him. Spears and daggers are plied—heads roll on the plain—blood flows in streams. Pajun assailed Itimad; but as his head rolled at his feet, he received the Khan’s lance in his breast; the Kurma[9.1.18] fell in the field, and the Apsaras disputed for the hero. Whole lines of the northmen strew the plain: many a head did Mahadeo add to his chaplet.[9.1.19] When Pajun and Govind fell, one watch of the day remained. To rescue his kin came Palhan, like a tiger loosed from his chain. The array of Kanauj fell back; the cloudlike host of Jaichand turned its head. The brother of Pajun, with his son, performed deeds like Karna:[9.1.20] but both fell in the field, and gained the secret of the sun, whose chariot advanced to conduct them to his mansion.
“Ganga shrunk with affright, the moon quivered, the Dikpals[9.1.21] howled at their posts: checked was the advance of Kanauj, and in the pause the Kurma performed the last rites to his sire (Pajun), who broke in pieces the shields of Jaichand. Pajun was a buckler to his lord, and numerous his gifts of the steel to the heroes of Kanauj: not even by the bard can his deeds be described. He placed his feet on the head of Sheshnag,[9.1.22] he made a waste of the forest of men, nor dared the sons of the mighty approach him. As Pajun fell, he exclaimed, ‘One hundred years are the limit of man’s life, of which fifty are lost in night, and half this in childhood; but the Almighty taught me to wield the brand.’ As he spoke, even in the arms of Yama, he beheld the arm of his boy playing on the head of the foeman. His parting soul was satisfied: seven wounds from the sword had Malasi received, whose steed was covered with wounds: mighty were the deeds performed by the son of Pajun.”
=Mālasi.=—This Malasi, in whose praise the bard of Prithiraj is so lavish, succeeded (according to the chronicle) his father Pajun in the Raj of Amber. There is little said of him in the transcript in my possession. There are, however, abundance of traditional couplets to prove that the successors of Pajun were not wanting in the chief duties of the Rajput [352], the exercise of his sword. One of these mentions his having gained a victory at Rutrahi over the prince of Mandu.[9.1.23]
We shall pass over the intermediate princes from Malasi to Prithiraj, the eleventh in descent, with a bare enumeration of their names: namely, Malasi, Bijal, Rajdeo, Kilan, Kuntal, Junsi, Udaikaran, Narsingh, Banbir, Udharan, Chandrasen, Prithiraj.
=Prithirāj.=—Prithiraj had seventeen sons, twelve of whom reached man’s estate. To them and their successors in perpetuity he assigned appanages, styled the Barah Kothri, or ‘twelve chambers’ of the Kachhwaha house. The portion of each was necessarily very limited; some of the descendants of this hereditary aristocracy now hold estates equal in magnitude to the principality itself at that period. Previous, however, to this perpetual settlement of Kachhwaha fiefs, and indeed intermediately between Malasi and Prithiraj, a disjunction of the junior branches of the royal family took place, which led to the foundation of a power for a long time exceeding in magnitude the parent State. This was in the time of Udaikaran, whose son Baloji left his father’s house, and obtained the town and small district of Amritsar, which in time devolved on his grandson Shaikhji, and became the nucleus of an extensive and singular confederation, known by the name of the founder, Shaikhavati, at this day covering an area of nearly ten thousand square miles. As this subject will be discussed in its proper place, we shall no longer dwell on it, but proceed with the posterity of Prithiraj, amongst the few incidents of whose life is mentioned his meritorious pilgrimage to Dewal,[9.1.24] near the mouth of the Indus. But [353] even this could not save him from foul assassination, and the assassin was his own son, Bhim, “whose countenance (says the chronicle) was that of a demon.” The record is obscure, but it would appear that one parricide was punished by another, and that Askaran, the son of Bhim, was instigated by his brethren to put their father to death, and “to expiate the crime by pilgrimage.”[9.1.25] In one list, both these monsters are enumerated amongst the ‘anointed’ of Amber, but they are generally omitted in the genealogical chain, doubtless from a feeling of disgust.
=Bahār or Bihāri Mall, c. A.D. 1548-75.=—Baharmall was the first prince of Amber who paid homage to the Muhammadan power. He attended the fortunes of Babur, and received from Humayun (previous to the Pathan usurpation), the mansab of five thousand as Raja of Amber.[9.1.26]
=Bhagwāndās, c. A.D. 1575-92.=—Bhagwandas, son of Baharmall, became still more intimately allied with the Mogul dynasty. He was the friend of Akbar, who saw the full value of attaching such men to his throne. By what arts or influence he overcame the scruples of the Kachhwaha Rajput we know not, unless by appealing to his avarice or ambition; but the name of Bhagwandas is execrated as the first who sullied Rajput purity by matrimonial alliance with the Islamite.[9.1.27] His daughter espoused Prince Salim, afterwards Jahangir, and the fruit of the marriage was the unfortunate Khusru.[9.1.28]
=Mān Singh, c. A.D. 1592-1614.=—Man Singh, nephew[9.1.29] and successor of Bhagwandas, was the most brilliant character of Akbar’s court. As the emperor’s lieutenant, he was entrusted with the most arduous duties, and added conquests to the empire from Khotan to the ocean. Orissa was subjugated by him,[9.1.30] Assam humbled and made tributary, and Kabul maintained in her allegiance. He held in succession the governments of Bengal and Behar,[9.1.31] the [354] Deccan and Kabul. Raja Man soon proved to Akbar that his policy of strengthening his throne by Rajput alliances was not without hazard; these alliances introducing a direct influence in the State, which frequently thwarted the views of the sovereign. So powerful was it, that even Akbar, in the zenith of his power, saw no other method of diminishing its force, than the execrable but common expedient of Asiatic despots—poison: it has been already related how the emperor’s attempt recoiled upon him to his destruction.[9.1.32]
Akbar was on his death-bed when Raja Man commenced an intrigue to alter the succession in favour of his nephew, Prince Khusru, and it was probably in this predicament that the monarch had recourse to the only safe policy, that of seeing the crown fixed on the head of Salim, afterwards Jahangir. The conspiracy for the time was quashed, and Raja Man was sent to the government of Bengal; but it broke out again, and ended in the perpetual imprisonment of Khusru,[9.1.33] and a dreadful death to his adherents. Raja Man was too wise to identify himself with the rebellion, though he stimulated his nephew, and he was too powerful to be openly punished, being at the head of twenty thousand Rajputs; but the native chronicle mentions that he was amerced by Jahangir in the incredible sum of ten crores, or millions sterling. According to the Muhammadan historian, Raja Man died in Bengal,[9.1.34] A.H. 1024 (A.D. 1615); while the chronicle says he was slain in an expedition against the Khilji tribe in the north two years later.[9.1.35]
=Bhāo Singh, c. A.D. 1615-21.=—Rao Bhao Singh succeeded his father, and was invested by the emperor with the Panjhazari, or dignity of a legionary chief of five thousand. He was of weak intellect, and ruled a few years without distinction. He died in A.H. 1030 of excessive drinking.
=Mahā Singh, c. A.D. 1621-25.=—Maha succeeded, and in like manner died from dissipated habits. These unworthy successors of Raja Man allowed the princes of Jodhpur to take the lead at the imperial court. At the instigation of the celebrated Jodha Bai (daughter of Rae Singh of Bikaner), the Rajputni wife of Jahangir, Jai Singh, grandson of Jagat Singh (brother of Man), was raised to the throne of Amber, to the no small jealousy, says [355] the chronicle, of the favourite queen, Nur Jahan. It relates that the succession was settled by the emperor and the Rajputni in a conference at the balcony of the seraglio, where the emperor saluted the youth below as Raja of Amber, and commanded him to make his salaam to Jodha Bai, as the source of this honour. But the customs of Rajwara could not be broken: it was contrary to etiquette for a Rajput chief to salaam, and he replied: “I will do this to any lady of your majesty’s family, but not to Jodha Bai”; upon which she good-naturedly laughed, and called out, “It matters not; I give you the raj of Amber.”
=Jai Singh, Mīrza Rājā, c. A.D. 1625-67.=—Jai Singh, the Mirza Raja, the title by which he is best known, restored by his conduct the renown of the Kachhwaha name, which had been tarnished by the two unworthy successors of Raja Man. He performed great services to the empire during the reign of Aurangzeb, who bestowed upon him the mansab of six thousand. He made prisoner the celebrated Sivaji, whom he conveyed to court, and afterwards, on finding that his pledge of safety was likely to be broken, was accessary to his liberation. But this instance of magnanimity was more than counterbalanced by his treachery to Dara, in the war of succession, which crushed the hopes of that brave prince. These acts, and their consequences, produced an unconquerable haughtiness of demeanour, which determined the tyrannical Aurangzeb to destroy him. The chronicle says he had twenty-two thousand Rajput cavalry at his disposal, and twenty-two great vassal chiefs, who commanded under him; that he would sit with them in darbar, holding two glasses, one of which he called Delhi, the other Satara, and dashing one to the ground, would exclaim, “There goes Satara; the fate of Delhi is in my right hand, and this with like facility I can cast away.” These vaunts reaching the emperor’s ear, he had recourse to the same diabolical expedient which ruined Marwar, of making a son the assassin of his father. He promised the succession to the gaddi of Amber to Kirat Singh, younger son of the Raja, to the prejudice of his elder brother Ram Singh, if he effected the horrid deed.[9.1.36] The wretch having perpetrated the crime by mixing poison in his father’s opium, returned to claim the investiture: but the king only gave him the district of Kama. From this period, says the chronicle, Amber declined.
=Rām Singh, Bishan Singh.=—Ram Singh, who succeeded, had the mansab of four thousand conferred upon him, and was sent against the Assamese.[9.1.37] Upon his death, Bishan Singh, whose mansab was further reduced to the grade of three thousand, succeeded; but he enjoyed the dignity only a short period [356].
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Footnote 9.1.1:
This account of the Amber or Jaipur State is nearly what I communicated to the Marquess of Hastings in 1814-15. Amidst the multiplicity of objects which subsequently engaged my attention, I had deemed myself absolved from the necessity of enlarging upon it, trusting that a more competent pen would have superseded this essay, there having been several political authorities at that court since it was written. Being, however, unaware that anything has been done to develop its historical resources, which are more abundant than those of any other court of India, I think it right not to suppress this sketch, however imperfect.
Footnote 9.1.2:
The traditional history of the Chauhans asserts, that this mount was the place of penance (thal) of their famed king Bisaldeo of Ajmer, who, for his oppression of his subjects, was transformed into a Rakshasa, or Demon, in which condition he continued the evil work of his former existence, “devouring his subjects” (as literally expressed), until a grandchild offered himself as a victim to appease his insatiable appetite. The language of innocent affection made its way to the heart of the Rakshasa, who recognized his offspring, and winged his flight to the Jumna. It might be worth while to excavate the dhundh of the transformed Chauhan king, which I have some notion will prove to be his sepulchre. [According to Cunningham (ASR, ii. 251) there is no mound of this kind at Jobner. He derives the name of the territory from the river Dhūndhu—Dhūndhwār, or Dhūndhār, meaning the land by the river Dhūndhu—the river having obtained its name from the demon-king Dhūndhu (see IGI, xiii. 385).]
Footnote 9.1.3:
Were this celebrated abode searched for inscriptions, they might throw light on the history of the descendants of Rama. [For Rohtāsgarh in Shāhābād District, Bengal, see IGI, xxi. 322 f.]
Footnote 9.1.4:
Prefixed to a descriptive sketch of the city of Narwar (which I may append), the year S. 351 is given for its foundation by Raja Nal, but whether obtained from an inscription or historical legend, I know not. It, however, corroborates in a remarkable manner the number of descents from Nal to Dhola Rae, namely, thirty-three, which, calculated according to the best data (see Vol. I. p. 64), at twenty-two years to a reign, will make 726 years, which subtracted from 1023, the era of Dhola Rae’s migration, leaves 297, a difference of only fifty-four years between the computed and settled eras; and if we allowed only twenty-one years to a reign, instead of twenty-two, as proposed in all long lines above twenty-five generations, the difference would be trifling. [The story is legendary. The eighth in descent from Vajradāman, the first historical chief of Gwalior, who captured that fortress from Vijayapāla of Kanauj (c. A.D. 955-90) was Tej Karan, otherwise known as Dulha Rāē, the Dhola Rāē of the text, who left Gwalior about A.D. 1128 (Smith, EHI, 381; IGI, xiii. 384).]
We may thus, without hesitation, adopt the date 351, or A.D. 295, for the period of Raja Nal, whose history is one of the grand sources of delight to the bards of Rajputana. The poem rehearsing his adventures under the title of Nala and Damayanti (fam. Nal-Daman) was translated into Persian at Akbar’s command, by Faizi, brother of Abu-l Fazl, and has since been made known to the admirers of Sanskrit literature by Professor Bopp of Berlin [Āīn, i. 106; Macdonell, Hist. Sanskrit Literature, 296 ff.].
Footnote 9.1.5:
[Kachhwāhagār or Kachhwāhagarh, the former meaning the ‘water-soaked land,’ the latter the ‘fort,’ of the Kachhwāhas, is a tract between the Sind and Pahuj Rivers, ceded to the British by the Gwalior State in payment of a British contingent (Elliot, Supplementary Glossary, 237, 283, note).]
Footnote 9.1.6:
[For the tale of a serpent identifying the heir see Vol. I. p. 342.]
Footnote 9.1.7:
[The hero in folk-tales often wins recognition by his skill in the kitchen, as in the story of Shams-al-Dīn in the Arabian Nights; see Tawney, Kathāsarit-sāgara, i. 567.]
Footnote 9.1.8:
The Tuar tribe were then supreme lords of India.
Footnote 9.1.9:
Dhārhi, Dholi, Dom, Jāga are all terms for the bards or minstrels of the Mina tribes.
Footnote 9.1.10:
See Map for Dausa (written Daunsa), on the Banganga River, about thirty miles east of Jaipur.
Footnote 9.1.11:
The Bargujar tribe claims descent from Lava or Lao, the elder son of Rama. As they trace fifty-six descents from Rama to Vikrama, and thirty-three from Raja Nala to Dhola Rae, we have only to calculate the number of generations between Vikrama and Nal, to ascertain whether Dhola’s genealogist went on good grounds. It was in S. 351 that Raja Nal erected Narwar, which, at twenty-two years to a reign, gives sixteen to be added to fifty-six, and this added to thirty-three is equal to one hundred and five generations from Rama to Dhola Rae. [The traditional dates are worthless.]
Footnote 9.1.12:
[See Rose, Glossary, iii. 103.]
Footnote 9.1.13:
[The tale of the love of Dulha or Dhola Rāē for Mārwan, the Maroni of the text, daughter of Rāja Pingal of Pingalgarh in Sinhaladwīpa, or Ceylon, as sung by the Panjab bards, is told in Temple, Legends of the Panjāb, ii. 276 ff., iii. 97.]
Footnote 9.1.14:
[The family deity of the Kachhwāha tribe, whose shrine is in the gorge of the river Bānganga, in Jaipur State (Census Report, Mārwār, 1891, ii. 28; Rajputana Gazetteer, 1880, iii. 212).]
Footnote 9.1.15:
Kot is ‘a fortress’; but it may be applied simply to the number of bastions of Nain, which in the number of its gates might rival Thebes. Lohwan, built on its ruins, contains three thousand houses, and has eighty-four townships dependent on it. [In the third line of the verse Major Luard’s Pandit reads for vado, dūbo, ‘annihilated’; in the fourth for vāmto, he gives muttha, ‘a handful.’]
Footnote 9.1.16:
Pal is the term for a community of any of the aboriginal mountain races; its import is a ‘defile,’ or ‘valley,’ fitted for cultivation and defence. It is probable that Poligar may be a corruption of Paligar, or the region (gar) of these Pals. Palita, Bhilita, Philita are terms used by the learned for the Bhil tribes. Maina, Maira, Mairot all designate mountaineers, from Mair, or Mer, a hill. [The ‘Palita’ of the note is possibly from a vague recollection of the Phyllītai or ‘leaf-clad’ applied to some aboriginal tribes by Ptolemy (vii. 1. 66) (McCrindle, Ptolemy, 159 f.).]
Footnote 9.1.17:
[This is probably a fiction of the bards, based on the defeat of Shihābu-d-dīn by Bhīmdeo of Nahrwāla in A.D. 1178 (Elliot-Dowson ii. 294; Ferishta i. 170).]
Footnote 9.1.18:
Kurma, or Kachhua, are synonymous terms, and indiscriminately applied to the Rajputs of Ajmer; meaning ‘tortoise.’
Footnote 9.1.19:
The chaplet of the god of war is of skulls; his drinking-cup a semi-cranium.
Footnote 9.1.20:
[The hero of the Mahābhārata.]
Footnote 9.1.21:
[Ganga, the Ganges; Dikpāls, regents of the four quarters of the heavens.]
Footnote 9.1.22:
[The serpent which supports the world.]
Footnote 9.1.23:
I give this chiefly for the concluding couplet, to see how the Rajputs applied the word Khotan to the lands beyond Kabul, where the great Raja Man commanded as Akbar’s lieutenant:
“_Pālan, Pajūn jītē, Mahoba, Kanauj larē, Māndu Mālasi jītē, Rār Rutrāhi kā; Rāj Bhagwāndās jītē, Mavāsī lar. Rājā Mān Singh jītē,_ KHOTAN phauj dabāī.”
“Palan and Pajun were victorious; Fought at Mahoba and Kanauj; Malasi conquered Mandu; In the battle of Rutrahi, Raja Bhagwandas vanquished. In the Mawasi (fastnesses, probably, of Mewat), Raja Man Singh was victorious; Subjugating the army of KHOTAN.”
Footnote 9.1.24:
‘The temple’; the Debal of the Muhammadan tribes: the Rajput seat of power of the Rajas of Sind, when attacked by the caliphs of Bagdad [Yule, Hobson-Jobson, 2nd ed. 320.]
Footnote 9.1.25:
The chronicle says of this Askaran, that on his return, the king (Babur or Humayun) gave him the title of Raja of Narwar. These States have continued occasionally to furnish representatives, on the extinction of the line of either. A very conspicuous instance of this occurred on the death of Raja Jagat Singh, the last prince of Amber, who dying without issue, an intrigue was set on foot, and a son of the ex-prince of Narwar was placed on the gaddi of Amber.
Footnote 9.1.26:
[This is the first mention of the grading of Mansabdārs (Smith, Akbar, the Great Moghul, 362). For Rāja Bihārimall and his son Bhagwāndās, see Āīn, i. 328, 333; Akbarnāma, trans. Beveridge ii. 244.]
Footnote 9.1.27:
[Akbar had married the daughter of Bahārmall.]
Footnote 9.1.28:
It is pleasing to find almost all these outlines of Rajput history confirmed by Muhammadan writers. It was in A.H. 993 (A.D. 1586) that this marriage took place. Three generations of Kachhwahas, namely, Bhagwandas, his adopted son Raja Man, and grandson, were all serving in the imperial army with great distinction at this time. Raja Man, though styled Kunwar, or heir-apparent, is made the most conspicuous. He quelled a rebellion headed by the emperor’s brother, and while Bhagwandas commanded under a prince of the blood against Kashmir, Man Singh overcame an insurrection of the Afghans at Khaibar; and his son was made viceroy of Kabul.—See Briggs’ Ferishta, vol. ii. p. 258 et seq.
Footnote 9.1.29:
Bhagwandas had three brothers, Surat Singh, Madho Singh, and Jagat Singh; Man Singh was son of the last.
Footnote 9.1.30:
Ferishta confirms this, saying he sent one hundred and twenty elephants to the king on this occasion.—Briggs’ Ferishta, vol. ii. p. 268.
Footnote 9.1.31:
Ferishta confirms this likewise. According to this historian, it was while Man was yet only Kunwar, or heir-apparent, that he was invested with the governments of “Behar, Hajipoor, and Patna,” the same year (A.D. 1589) that his uncle Bhagwandas died, and that following the birth of Prince Khusru by the daughter of the Kachhwaha prince, an event celebrated (says Ferishta) with great rejoicings. See Briggs’ Ferishta, vol. ii. p. 261. Col. Briggs has allowed the similarity of the names Khusru and Khurram to betray him into a slight error, in a note on the former prince. It was not Khusru, but Khurram, who succeeded his father Jahangir, and was father to the monster Aurangzeb (note, p. 261). Khusru was put to death by Khurram, afterwards Shah Jahan.
Footnote 9.1.32:
Annals of Rajasthan, Vol. I. p. 408.
Footnote 9.1.33:
He was afterwards assassinated by order of Shah Jahan [“under the walls of Azere” (Asīrgarh)]. See Dow’s Ferishta, ed. 1812, vol. iii. p. 56. [Elphinstone (p. 563) calls his death suspicious, but refuses to believe that Shāh Jahān procured his death. He died from colic in the Deccan on January 16, 1622.]
Footnote 9.1.34:
Dow, ed. 1812, vol. iii. p. 42; the chronicle says in S. 1699, or A.D. 1613. [He died a natural death in July 1614, while he was on service in the Deccan, and sixty of his fifteen hundred women are said to have burned themselves on his pyre (Āīn, i. 341; Memoirs of Jahāngīr, trans. Rogers-Beveridge 266).]
Footnote 9.1.35:
An account of the life of Raja Man would fill a volume; there are ample materials at Jaipur.
Footnote 9.1.36:
[Jai Singh died, aged about sixty, at Burhānpur, July 12, 1667 (Manucci ii. 152).]
Footnote 9.1.37:
[According to Manucci (ii. 153), Rām Singh, as a piece of revenge for the flight of Sivaji, was sent to Assam in the hope that, like Mīr Jumla, he would die there; but on an appeal being made to Aurangzeb, the order was cancelled, and he was banished beyond the river Indus. The real fact is that Rām Singh was appointed to the Command in Assam in December 1667, and arrived there in February 1669. After desultory and unsuccessful fighting he was allowed to leave Bengal, and reached the Imperial Court in June 1676 (Jadunath Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, iii. 212 ff.).]
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Chapter 2
=Sawāi Jai Singh, c. A.D. 1693-1743.=—Jai II., better known by the title of Sawai Jai Singh, in contradistinction to the first prince of this name, entitled the ‘Mirza Raja,’ succeeded in S. 1755 (A.D. 1699),[9.2.1] in the forty-fourth year of Aurangzeb’s reign, and within six years of that monarch’s death. He served with distinction in the Deccan, and in the war of succession attached himself to the prince Bedar Bakht, son of Azam Shah, declared successor of Aurangzeb; and with these he fought the battle of Dholpur, which ended in their death and the elevation of Shah Alam Bahadur Shah. For this opposition Amber was sequestrated, and an imperial governor sent to take possession; but Jai Singh entered his estates, sword in hand, drove out the king’s garrisons, and formed a league with Ajit Singh of Marwar for their mutual preservation.
It would be tedious to pursue this celebrated Rajput through his desultory military career during the forty-four years he occupied the gaddi of Amber; enough is already known of it from its combination with the Annals of Mewar and Bundi, of which house he was the implacable foe. Although Jai Singh mixed in all the troubles and warfare of this long period of anarchy, when the throne of Timur was rapidly crumbling into dust, his reputation as a soldier would never have handed down his name with honour to posterity; on the contrary, his courage had none of the fire which is requisite to make a Rajput hero; though his talents for civil government and court intrigue, in which he was the Machiavelli of his day, were at that period far more notable auxiliaries.
=The Building of Jaipur: Work in Astronomy.=—As a statesman, legislator, and man of science, the character of Sawai Jai Singh is worthy of an ample delineation,[9.2.2] which would correct our opinion of the genius and [357] capacity of the princes of Rajputana, of whom we are apt to form too low an estimate. He was the founder of the new capital, named after him Jaipur or Jainagar, which became the seat of science and art, and eclipsed the more ancient Amber, with which the fortifications of the modern city unite, although the extremity of the one is six miles from the other. Jaipur is the only city in India built upon a regular plan, with streets bisecting each other at right angles.[9.2.3] The merit of the design and execution is assigned to Vidyadhar, a native of Bengal, one of the most eminent coadjutors of the prince in all his scientific pursuits, both astronomical and historical. Almost all the Rajput princes have a smattering of astronomy, or rather of its spurious relation, astrology; but Jai Singh went deep, not only into the theory, but the practice of the science, and was so esteemed for his knowledge, that he was entrusted by the emperor Muhammad Shah with the reformation of the calendar. He had erected observatories with instruments of his own invention at Delhi, Jaipur, Ujjain, Benares, and Mathura, upon a scale of Asiatic grandeur; and their results were so correct as to astonish the most learned.[9.2.4] He had previously used such instruments as those of Ulugh Beg (the royal astronomer of Samarkand), which failed to answer his expectations.[9.2.5] From the observations of seven years at the various observatories, he constructed a set of tables. While thus engaged, he learned through a Portuguese missionary, Padre Manuel, the progress which his favourite pursuit was making in Portugal, and he sent “several skilful persons along with him”[9.2.6] to the court of Emanuel. The king of Portugal dispatched Xavier de Silva, who communicated to the Rajput prince the tables of De la Hire.[9.2.7] “On examining and comparing the calculations of these tables (says the Rajput prince) with actual observation, it appeared there was an error in the former, in assigning the moon’s place, of half a degree; although the error in the other planets was not so great, yet the times of solar and lunar eclipses he[9.2.8] found to come out later or earlier than the truth by the fourth part of a ghari, or fifteen pals (six minutes of time).” In like manner, as he found fault with the instruments of brass used by the Turki astronomer, and which he conjectures must have been such as were used by Hipparchus and Ptolemy, so he attributes the inaccuracies of De la Hire’s tables [358] to instruments of “inferior diameters.” The Rajput prince might justly boast of his instruments. With that at Delhi, he, in A.D. 1729, determined the obliquity of the ecliptic to be 23° 28´; within 28´´ of what it was determined to be, the year following, by Godin. His general accuracy was further put to the test in A.D. 1793 by our scientific countryman, Dr. W. Hunter, who compared a series of observations on the latitude of Ujjain with that established by the Rajput prince. The difference was 24″; and Dr. Hunter does not depend on his own observations within 15″. Jai Singh made the latitude 23° 10´ N.; Dr. Hunter, 23° 10´ 24″ N.
From the results of his varied observations, Jai Singh drew up a set of tables, which he entitled Zij Muhammadshahi, dedicated to that monarch; by these, all astronomical computations are yet made, and almanacks constructed. It would be wrong—while considering these labours of a prince who caused Euclid’s Elements, the treatises on plain and spherical trigonometry, ‘Don Juan,’ Napier on the construction and use of logarithms, to be translated into Sanskrit—to omit noticing the high strain of devotion with which he views the wonders of the “Supreme Artificer”; recalling the line of one of our own best poets:[9.2.9]
An undevout astronomer is mad.
The Rajput prince thus opens his preface: “Praise be to God, such that the minutely discerning genius of the most profound geometers, in uttering the smallest particle of it, may open the mouth in confession of inability; and such adoration, that the study and accuracy of astronomers, who measure the heavens, may acknowledge their astonishment, and utter insufficiency! Let us devote ourselves at the altar of the King of Kings, hallowed be his name! in the book of the register of whose power the lofty orbs of heaven are only a few leaves; and the stars, and that heavenly courser the sun, small pieces of money, in the treasury of the empire of the Most High.
“From inability to comprehend the all-encompassing beneficence of his power, Hipparchus is an ignorant clown, who wrings the hands of vexation; and in the contemplation of his exalted majesty, Ptolemy is a bat, who can never arrive at the sun of truth: the demonstrations of Euclid are an imperfect sketch of the forms of his contrivance.
“But since the well-wisher of the works of creation, and the admiring spectator of the works of infinite wisdom, Sawai Jai Singh, from the first dawning of reason in his mind, and during its progress towards maturity, was entirely devoted to the study [359] of mathematical science, and the bent of his mind was constantly directed to the solution of its most difficult problems; by the aid of the Supreme Artificer, he obtained a thorough knowledge of its principles and rules,” etc.[9.2.10]
Besides the construction of these objects of science, he erected, at his own expense, caravanserais for the free use of travellers in many of the provinces. How far vanity may have mingled with benevolence in this act (by no means uncommon in India), it were uncharitable to inquire: for the Hindu not only prays for all those “who travel by land or by water,” but aids the traveller by serais or inns, and wells dug at his own expense, and in most capitals and cities, under the ancient princes, there were public charities for necessitous travellers, at which they had their meals, and then passed on.
=Assassination of Farrukhsiyar, May 16, 1719.=—When we consider that Jai Singh carried on his favourite pursuits in the midst of perpetual wars and court intrigues, from whose debasing influence he escaped not untainted; when amidst revolution, the destruction of the empire, and the meteoric rise of the Mahrattas, he not only steered through the dangers, but elevated Amber above all the principalities around, we must admit that he was an extraordinary man. Aware of the approaching downfall of the Mogul empire, and determined to aggrandize Amber from the wreck, he was, nevertheless, not unfaithful to his lord-paramount; for, on the conspiracy which deprived Farrukhsiyar of empire and of life, Jai Singh was one of the few princes who retained their fidelity, and would have stood by him to the last, if he had possessed a particle of the valour which belonged to the descendants of Timur.[9.2.11]
Enough has been said of his public life, in that portion of the Annals of Mewar with which he was so closely connected, both by political and family ties. The Sayyids, who succeeded to power on the murder of their sovereign Farrukhsiyar, were too wise to raise enemies unnecessarily; and Jai Singh, when he left the unhappy monarch to his fate, retired to his hereditary dominions, devoting himself to his favourite pursuits, astronomy and history. He appears to have enjoyed three years of uninterrupted quiet, taking no part in the struggles, which terminated, in A.D. 1721, with Muhammad Shah’s defeat of his rivals, and the destruction of the Sayyids [360]. At this period Jai Singh was called from his philosophical pursuits, and appointed the king’s lieutenant for the provinces of Agra and Malwa in succession: and it was during this interval of comparative repose, that he erected those monuments which irradiate this dark epoch of the history of India.[9.2.12] Nor was he blind to the interests of his nation or the honour of Amber, and his important office was made subservient to obtaining the repeal of that disgraceful edict, the jizya, and authority to repress the infant power of the Jats, long a thorn in the side of Amber. But when, in A.D. 1732, the Raja, once more lieutenant for Malwa, saw that it was in vain to attempt to check the Mahratta invasion, or to prevent the partition of the empire, he deemed himself justified in consulting the welfare of his own house. We know not what terms Jai Singh entered into with the Mahratta leader, Bajirao, who by his influence was appointed Subahdar of Malwa; we may, however, imagine it was from some more powerful stimulant than the native historian of this period assigns, namely, “a similarity of religion.” By this conduct, Jai Singh is said emphatically, by his own countrymen, to have given the key of Hindustan to the Southron. The influence his character obtained, however, with the Mahrattas was even useful to his sovereign, for by it he retarded their excesses, which at length reached the capital. In a few years more (A.D. 1739), Nadir Shah’s invasion took place, and the Rajputs, wisely alive to their own interests, remained aloof from a cause which neither valour nor wisdom could longer serve. They respected the emperor, but the system of government had long alienated these gallant supporters of the throne. We may exemplify the trials to which Rajput fidelity was exposed, by one of “the hundred and nine deeds of Jai Singh” which will at the same time serve further to illustrate the position, that half the political and moral evils which have vexed the royal houses of Rajputana, take their rise from polygamy.
=Rebellion of Bijai Singh.=—Maharaja Bishan Singh had two sons, Jai Singh and Bijai Singh. The mother of Bijai Singh, doubtful of his safety, sent him to her own family in Khichiwara.[9.2.13] When [361] he had attained man’s estate, he was sent to court, and by bribes, chiefly of jewels presented by his mother, he obtained the patronage of Kamaru-d-din Khan, the wazir.[9.2.14] At first his ambition was limited to the demand of Baswa,[9.2.15] one of the most fertile districts of Amber, as an appanage; which being acceded to by his brother and sovereign, Jai Singh, he was stimulated by his mother to make still higher demands, and to offer the sum of five crores of rupees and a contingent of five thousand horse, if he might supplant his brother on the throne of Amber. The wazir mentioned it to the emperor, who asked what security he had for the fulfilment of the contract; the wazir offered his own guarantee, and the sanads of Amber were actually preparing, which were thus to unseat Jai Singh, when his pagri badal bhai, Khandauran Khan,[9.2.16] informed Kirparam, the Jaipur envoy at court, of what was going on. The intelligence produced consternation at Amber, since Kamaru-d-din was all-powerful. Jai Singh’s dejection became manifest on reading the letter, and he handed it to the confidential Nazir, who remarked “it was an affair in which force could not be used, in which wealth was useless, and which must be decided by stratagem[9.2.17] alone; and that the conspiracy could be defeated only through the conspirator.” At the Nazir’s recommendation he convened his principal chiefs, Mohan Singh, chief of the Nathawats;[9.2.18] Dip Singh, Khumbani, of Bansko; Zorawar Singh, Sheobaranpota; Himmat Singh, Naruka; Kusal Singh of Jhalai; Bhojraj of Mozabad, and Fateh Singh of Maoli; and thus addressed them on the difficulties of his position: “You placed me on the gaddi of Amber; and my brother, who would be satisfied with Baswa, has Amber forced upon him by the Nawab Kamaru-d-din.” They advised him to be of good cheer, and they would manage the affair, provided he was sincere in assigning Baswa to his brother. He made out the grant at the moment, ratified it with an oath, and presented it with full powers to the chiefs to act for him. The Panch (council) of Amber sent their ministers to Bijai Singh provided with all the necessary arguments; but the prince replied, he had no confidence in the promises or protestations of his brother. For themselves, and in the name of the Barah kothri Amber ki (the twelve great families), they gave their sitaram,[9.2.19] or security; adding that if Jai Singh swerved [362] from his engagements, they were his, and would themselves place him on the gaddi of Amber.
He accepted their interposition and the grant, which being explained to his patron, he was by no means satisfied; nevertheless he ordered Khandauran and Kirparam to accompany him, to see him inducted in his new appanage of Baswa. The chiefs, anxious to reconcile the brothers, obtained Bijai Singh’s assent to a meeting, and as he declined going to Amber, Chaumun was proposed and agreed to, but was afterwards changed to the town of Sanganer, six miles south-west of Jaipur, where Bijai Singh pitched his tents. As Jai Singh was quitting the darbar to give his brother the meeting, the Nazir entered with a message from the queen-mother, to know “why her eyes should not be blessed with witnessing the meeting and reconciliation of the two Laljis.”[9.2.20] The Raja referred the request to the chiefs, who said there could be no objection.
The Nazir prepared the mahadol,[9.2.21] with three hundred chariots for the females; but instead of the royal litter containing the queen-mother, it was occupied by Ugar Sen, the Bhatti chief, and each covered chariot contained two chosen Silahposhians, or men at arms. Not a soul but the Nazir and his master were aware of the treachery. The procession left the capital; money was scattered with profusion by the attendants of the supposed queen-mother, to the people who thronged the highways, rejoicing at the approaching conclusion of these fraternal feuds.
=Bijai Singh entrapped.=—A messenger having brought the intelligence that the queen-mother had arrived at the palace of Sanganer, the Raja and his chiefs mounted to join her. The brothers first met and embraced, when Jai Singh presented the grant of Baswa, saying, with some warmth, that if his brother preferred ruling at Amber, he would abandon his birthright and take Baswa. Bijai Singh, overcome with this kindness, replied, that “all his wants were satisfied.” When the time to separate had arrived, the Nazir came into the court with a message from the queen-mother, to say, that if the chiefs would withdraw she would come and see her children, or that they might come to her apartment. Jai Singh referred his mother’s wish to the chiefs, saying he had no will but theirs. Having advised the brothers to wait on the queen-mother, they proceeded hand in hand to the interior of the mahall. When arrived at the door, Jai Singh, taking his dagger from his girdle, delivered it to an eunuch, saying, “What occasion for this here?” [363] and Bijai Singh, not to be outdone in confidence, followed his example. As the Nazir closed the door, Bijai Singh found himself, not in the embrace of the queen-mother, but in the iron grip of the gigantic Bhatti, who instantly bound him hand and foot, and placing him in the mahadol, the mock female procession with their prisoner returned to Amber. In an hour, tidings were conveyed to Jai Singh of the prisoner being safely lodged in the castle, when he rejoined the conclave of his chiefs; who on seeing him enter alone, attended by some of the ‘men at arms,’ stared at each other, and asked “What had become of Bijai Singh?”—“Hamare pet men,” 'in my belly'! was the reply. “We are both the sons of Bishan Singh, and I the eldest. If it is your wish that he should rule, then slay me and bring him forth. For you I have forfeited my faith, for should Bijai Singh have introduced, as he assuredly would, your enemies and mine, you must have perished.” Hearing this, the chiefs were amazed; but there was no remedy, and they left the palace in silence. Outside were encamped six thousand imperial horse, furnished by the wazir as the escort of Bijai Singh, whose commander demanded what had become of their trust. Jai Singh replied, “It was no affair of theirs,” and desired them to be gone, “or he would request their horses of them.” They had no alternative but to retrace their steps, and thus was Bijai Singh made prisoner.[9.2.22]
Whatever opinion the moralist may attach to this specimen of 'the hundred and nine gun' of the royal astronomer of Amber, which might rather be styled guna[9.2.23] (vice) than gun (virtue), no one will deny that it was done in a most masterly manner, and where chal or stratagem is a necessary expedient, did honour to the talents of Jai Singh and the Nazir, who alone, says the narrative, were accessory to the plot. In this instance, moreover, it was perfectly justifiable; for with the means and influence of the wazir to support him, Bijai Singh must, sooner or later, have supplanted his brother. The fate of Bijai Singh is not stated.
=Services of Jai Singh to Jaipur State.=—The Kachhwaha State, as well as its capital, owes everything to Jai Singh: before his time, it had little political weight beyond that which it acquired from the personal character of its princes, and their estimation at the Mogul court. Yet, notwithstanding the intimate connexion which existed between the Amber Rajas and the imperial family, from Babur to Aurangzeb, their patrimonial estates had been very little enlarged since Pajun, the contemporary of the last Rajput emperor of Delhi. Nor was it till [364] the troubles which ensued on the demise of Aurangzeb, when the empire was eventually partitioned, that Amber was entitled to the name of a raj. During those troubles, Jai Singh’s power as the king’s lieutenant in Agra, which embraced his hereditary domains, gave him ample opportunity to enlarge and consolidate his territory. The manner in which he possessed himself of the independent districts of Deoti and Rajor,[9.2.24] affords an additional insight into the national character, and that of this prince.
=Limits of Jaipur State.=—At the accession of Jai Singh, the raj of Amber consisted only of three parganas or districts of Amber, Daosa, and Baswa; the western tracts had been sequestrated, and added to the royal domains attached to Ajmer. The Shaikhavati confederation was superior to, and independent of, the parent State, whose boundaries were as follows. The royal thana (garrison) of Chatsu,[9.2.25] to the south; those of Sambhar to the west, and Hastina to the north-west; while to the east, Daosa and Baswa formed its frontier. The Kothribands, as they denominate the twelve great feudalities, possessed but very slender domains, and were held cheap by the great vassals of Mewar, of whom the Salumbar chief was esteemed, even by the first Peshwa, as the equal of the prince of the Kachhwahas.
=Rajor.=—Rajor was a city of great antiquity, the capital of a petty State called Deoti,[9.2.26] ruled by a chief of the Bargujar tribe, descended, like the Kachhwahas, from Rama, but through Lava, the elder son. The Bargujars of Rajor had obtained celebrity amongst the more modern Rajputs, by their invincible repugnance to matrimonial alliance with the Muhammadans; and while the Kachhwahas set the degrading example, and by so doing eventually raised themselves to affluence, the Bargujar ‘conquered renown in the song of the bard,’ by performing the sakha in defence of his honour. While, therefore, Sawai Jai Singh ruled as a viceroy over kingdoms, the Bargujar was serving with his contingent with the Baisi,[9.2.27] and at the period in question, in Anupshahr, on the Ganges. When absent on duty, the safety of Rajor depended on his younger brother. One day, while preparing for the chase of the wild boar, he became so impatient for his dinner, that his sister-in-law remarked, “One would suppose you were going to throw a lance at Jai Singh, you are in such a hurry.” This was touching a tender subject, for it will be recollected that the first territory in the plains obtained by the Kachhwahas, on their migration from Narwar, was Daosa, a Bargujar possession. “By Thakurji (the Lord), I shall do so, ere I eat from your hands again,” was the fierce reply. With ten horsemen he left Rajor, and took post [365] under the Dhulkot, or ‘mud walls,’ of Amber.
=Attempted Assassination of Jai Singh.=—But weeks and months fled ere he found an opportunity to execute his threat; he gradually sold all his horses, and was obliged to dismiss his attendants. Still he lingered, and sold his clothes, and all his arms, except his spear; he had been three days without food, when he sold half his turban for a meal. That day Jai Singh left the castle by the road called mora, a circuitous path to avoid a hill. He was in his sukhasan;[9.2.28] as he passed, a spear was delivered, which lodged in the corner of the litter. A hundred swords flew out to slay the assassin; but the Raja called aloud to take him alive, and carry him to Amber. When brought before him and asked who he was, and the cause of such an act, he boldly replied, “I am the Deoti Bargujar, and threw the spear at you merely from some words with my Bhabhi;[9.2.29] either kill or release me.” He related how long he had lain in wait for him, and added that “had he not been four days without food, the spear would have done its duty.” Jai Singh, with politic magnanimity, freed him from restraint, gave him a horse and dress of honour (khilat), and sent him, escorted by fifty horse, in safety to Rajor. Having told his adventure to his sister-in law, she replied, “You have wounded the envenomed snake, and have given water to the State of Rajor.” She knew that a pretext alone was wanting to Jai Singh and this was now unhappily given. With the advice of the elders, the females and children were sent to the Raja at Anupshahr,[9.2.30] and the castles of Deoti and Rajor were prepared for the storm.
On the third day after the occurrence, Jai Singh, in a full meeting of his chiefs, related the circumstance, and held out the bira[9.2.31] against Deoti; but Mohan Singh of Chaumun[9.2.32] warned his prince of the risk of such an attempt, as the Bargujar chief was not only estimated at court, but then served with his contingent. This opinion of the chief noble of Amber alarmed the assembly, and none were eager to seek the dangerous distinction. A month passed, and war against Deoti was again proposed; but none of the Kothribands seeming inclined to oppose the opinion of their ostensible head, Fateh Singh Banbirpota, the chieftain of one hundred and fifty vassals, accepted the bira, when five thousand horse were ordered to assemble under his command. Hearing that the Bargujar had left Rajor to celebrate the festival of Ganggor,[9.2.33] he moved towards him, sending on some messengers with “the compliments of Fateh Singh Banbirpota, and that he was at hand.” The young Bargujar who, little expecting [366] any hostile visitation, was indulging during this festive season, put the heralds to death, and with his companions, completely taken by surprise, was in turn cut to pieces by the Jaipur troops. The Rani of Rajor was the sister of the Kachhwaha chief of Chaumun: she was about giving a pledge of affection to her absent lord, when Rajor was surprised and taken. Addressing the victor, Fateh Singh, she said, “Brother, give me the gift (dan) of my womb”; but suddenly recollecting that her own unwise speech had occasioned this loss of her child’s inheritance, exclaiming, “Why should I preserve life to engender feuds?” she sheathed a dagger in her bosom and expired. The heads of the vanquished Bargujars were tied up in handkerchiefs, and suspending them from their saddle-horses, the victors returned to their prince, who sent for that of his intended assassin, the young Bargujar chieftain. As soon as Mohan Singh recognized the features of his kinsman, the tears poured down his face. Jai Singh, recollecting the advice of this, the first noble of his court, which delayed his revenge a whole month, called his grief treason, and upbraided him, saying, “When the spear was levelled for my destruction, no tear fell.” He sequestrated Chaumun, and banished him from Dhundhar: the chief found refuge with the Rana at Udaipur. “Thus (says the manuscript), did Jai Singh dispossess the Bargujar of Deoti and Rajor, which were added to his dominions: they embraced all the tract now called Macheri.”[9.2.34]
Amongst the foibles of Jai Singh’s character was his partiality to ‘strong drink.’ What this beverage was, whether the juice of the madhu (mead), or the essence (arak) of rice, the traditional chronicles of Amber do not declare, though they mention frequent appeals from Jai Singh drunk, to Jai Singh sober; one anecdote has already been related.[9.2.35]
In spite of his many defects, Jai Singh’s name is destined to descend to posterity as one of the most remarkable men of his age and nation.
=Erection of Buildings.=—Until Jai Singh’s time, the palace of Amber, built by the great Raja Man, inferior to many private houses in the new city, was the chief royal residence. The Mirza Raja made several additions to it, but these were trifles compared with the edifice added[9.2.36] by Sawai Jai Singh, which has made the residence of the Kachhwaha princes [367] as celebrated as those of Bundi or Udaipur, or, to borrow a more appropriate comparison, the Kremlin at Moscow. It was in S. 1784 (A.D. 1728) that he laid the foundation of Jaipur. Raja Mall was the Musahib,[9.2.37] Kirparam the stationary wakil at Delhi, and Budh Singh Khumbani, with the urdu, or royal camp, in the Deccan: all eminent men. The position he chose for the new capital enabled him to connect it with the ancient castle of Amber, situated upon a peak at the apex of the re-entering angle of the range called Kalikoh; a strong circumvallation enclosed the gorge of the mountain, and was carried over the crest of the hills, on either side, to unite with the castle, whilst all the adjoining passes were strongly fortified.
=Sumptuary Laws: Tolerance.=—The sumptuary laws which he endeavoured to establish throughout Rajputana for the regulation of marriages, in order to check those lavish expenses that led to infanticide and satis, will be again called forth when the time is ripe for the abolition of all such unhallowed acts. For this end, search should be made for the historical legends called the ‘hundred and nine acts,’ in the archives of Jaipur, to which ready access could be obtained, and which should be ransacked for all the traces of this great man’s mind.[9.2.38] Like all Hindus, he was tolerant; and a Brahman, a Muhammadan, or a Jain, were alike certain of patronage. The Jains enjoyed his peculiar estimation, from the superiority of their knowledge, and he is said to have been thoroughly conversant both in their doctrines and their histories. Vidyadhar, one of his chief coadjutors in his astronomical pursuits, and whose genius planned the city of Jaipur, was a Jain, and claimed spiritual descent from the celebrated Hemacharya, of Nahrvala, minister and spiritual guide of his namesake, the great Siddhraj Jai Singh.[9.2.39]
=The Asvamedha.=—Amongst the vanities of the founder of Amber, it is said that he intended to get up the ceremony of the Asvamedha yajna, or ‘sacrifice of the horse,’ a rite which his research into the traditions of his nation must have informed him had entailed destruction on all who had attempted it, from the days of Janamejaya the Pandu, to Jaichand, the last Rajput monarch of Kanauj. It was a virtual assumption of universal supremacy; and although, perhaps, in virtue of his office, as the satrap of Delhi, the horse dedicated to the sun might have wandered unmolested on the banks of the Ganges, he would most assuredly have found his way into a Rathor stable had he roamed in the direction of the desert: or at the risk both of jiva and gaddi (life and throne), the Hara [368] would have seized him, had he fancied the pastures of the Chambal.[9.2.40] He erected a sacrificial hall of much beauty and splendour, whose columns and ceilings were covered with plates of silver; nor is it improbable that the steed, emblematic of Surya, may have been led round the hall, and afterwards sacrificed to the solar divinity. The Yajnasala of Jai Singh, one of the great ornaments of the city, was, however, stripped of its rich decoration by his profligate descendant, the late Jagat Singh, who had not the grace even of Rehoboam, to replace them with inferior ornaments; and the noble treasures of learning which Jai Singh had collected from every quarter, the accumulated results of his own research and that of his predecessors, were divided into two portions, and one-half was given to a common prostitute, the favourite of the day. The most remarkable MSS. were, till lately, hawking about Jaipur.
Sawai Jai Singh died in S. 1799 (A.D. 1743), having ruled forty-four years. Three of his wives and several concubines ascended his funeral pyre, on which science expired with him.
-----
Footnote 9.2.1:
[The dates of the Rājas of Jaipur are uncertain. Those in the margin are given on the authority of Beale, Oriental Biographical Dict. 193.]
Footnote 9.2.2:
For such a sketch, the materials of the Amber court are abundant; to instance only the Kalpadruma, a miscellaneous diary, in which everything of note was written, and a collection entitled Ek sad nau gun Jai Singh ke, or ‘the one hundred and nine actions of Jai Singh’ of which I have heard several narrated and noted. His voluminous correspondence with all the princes and chiefs of his time would alone repay the trouble of translation, and would throw a more perfect light on the manners and feelings of his countrymen than the most laborious lucubrations of any European. I possess an autograph letter of this prince, on one of the most important events of Indian history at this period, the deposal of Farrukhsiyar. It was addressed to the Rana.
Footnote 9.2.3:
[For a graphic account of Jaipur city see Rudyard Kipling, From Sea to Sea, chap. ii.]
Footnote 9.2.4:
[For these observatories see A. ff. Garrett and Pandit Chandradha Guleri, The Jaipur Observatory and its Builder, Allahabad, 1902; Fanshawe, Delhi Past and Present, 247 f.; Sherring, The Sacred City of the Hindus, 131 ff. The observatory at Mathura was in the Fort, but it has disappeared; at Ujjain only scanty remains exist (Growse, Mathura, 3rd ed. 140; IGI, xviii. 73, xxiv. 113).]
Footnote 9.2.5:
[Ulugh Beg, son of Shāh Rukh and grandson of Amīr Timūr, succeeded his father A.D. 1447, and was put to death by his son, Mīrza Abdul Latīf, in 1449. His astronomical tables were published in Latin by John Gregory, Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, and were edited by Thomas Hyde in 1665 (Sykes, Hist. of Persia, ii. 218; EB, 11th ed. xxvii. 573 f.).]
Footnote 9.2.6:
It would be worth ascertaining whether the archives of Lisbon refer to this circumstance.
Footnote 9.2.7:
Second edition, published in A.D. 1702. Jai Singh finished his in A.D. 1728.
Footnote 9.2.8:
Jai Singh always speaks of himself in the third person.
Footnote 9.2.9:
[Young, Night Thoughts, ix. 771.]
Footnote 9.2.10:
See “Account of the Astronomical Labours of Jya Sing, Raja of Amber,” by Dr. W. Hunter (Asiatic Researches, vol. v. p. 177), to whom I refer the reader for the description of the instruments used by the Raja. The Author has seen those at Delhi and Mathura. There is also an equinoctial dial constructed on the terrace of the palace of Udaipur, and various instruments at Kotah and Bundi, especially an armillary sphere, at the former, of about five feet diameter, all in brass, got up under the scholars of Jai Singh. Dr. Hunter gives a most interesting account of a young pandit, whom he found at Ujjain, the grandson of one of the coadjutors of Jai Singh, who held the office of Jyotishrae, or Astronomer-Royal, and an estate of five thousand rupees annual rent, both of which (title and estate) descended to this young man; but science fled with Jai Singh, and the barbarian Mahrattas had rendered his estate desolate and unproductive. He possessed, says Dr. H., a thorough acquaintance with the Hindu astronomical science contained in the various Siddhantas, and that not confined to the mechanical practice of rules, but founded on a geometrical knowledge of their demonstration. This inheritor of the mantle of Jai Singh died at Jaipur, soon after Dr. Hunter left Ujjain, in A.D. 1793.
Footnote 9.2.11:
J. Scott, in his excellent history of the successors of Aurangzeb [ed. 1794, ii. 156 ff.], gives a full account of this tragical event, on which I have already touched in Vol. I. p. 474 of this work; where I have given a literal translation of the autograph letter of Raja Jai Singh on the occasion.
Footnote 9.2.12:
The Raja says he finished his tables in A.D. 1728, and that he had occupied himself seven years previously in the necessary observations; in fact, the first quiet years of Muhammad Shah’s reign, or indeed that India had known for centuries.
Footnote 9.2.13:
[In Mālwa (IGI, xxi. 34).]
Footnote 9.2.14:
[Kamaru-d-dīn, Mīr Muhammad Fāzil, son of Itmādu-d-daula, Muhammad Amīn Khān Wazīr, was appointed to that office A.D. 1724: killed at Sarhind, March 11, 1728.]
Footnote 9.2.15:
[Forty-five miles N.N.W. of Jaipur city.]
Footnote 9.2.16:
[‘Brother by exchange of turbans.’ Khāndaurān Khān, Abdu-l-Samad Khān, governor of Lahore and Multān, died A.D. 1739.]
Footnote 9.2.17:
The Nazir is here harping on three of the four predicaments which (borrowed originally from Manu [Laws, viii. 159, 165, 168], and repeated by the great Rajput oracle, the bard Chand) govern all human events, sham, dan, bhed, dand, ‘arguments, gifts, stratagem, force.’
Footnote 9.2.18:
He is the hereditary premier noble of this house (as is Salumbar of Mewar, and the Awa chief of Marwar), and is familiarly called the ‘Patel of Amber.’ His residence is Chaumun, which is the place of rendezvous of the feudality of Amber, whenever they league against the sovereign.
Footnote 9.2.19:
[An appeal to the deities Rāma and his wife Sīta.]
Footnote 9.2.20:
Lalji is an epithet of endearment used by all classes of Hindus towards their children, from the Sanskrit lal, lad, ‘to sport.’
Footnote 9.2.21:
[A state litter, generally used by ladies of the Court.]
Footnote 9.2.22:
I have made a verbatim translation of this gun.
Footnote 9.2.23:
This is a singular instance of making the privative an affix instead of prefix; a-gun, ‘without virtue,’ would be the common form. [(?) guna may mean ‘virtue,’ or the reverse (Monier-Williams, Sanskrit Dict. s.v.; Brāhmanism and Hinduism, 4th ed. 30).]
Footnote 9.2.24:
[Both now in Mācheri of the Alwar State.]
Footnote 9.2.25:
[Thirty miles E. of Jaipur city.]
Footnote 9.2.26:
[Now in Mācheri, Alwar State.]
Footnote 9.2.27:
[‘The twenty-two,’ a term originally applied to the Mughal army, because it was supposed to contain twenty-two lakhs of men. The twenty-two nobles of Jaipur were a later creation.]
Footnote 9.2.28:
A litter, literally 'seat (asan) of ease (sukh).'
Footnote 9.2.29:
[Bhābhi, ‘sister-in-law.’]
Footnote 9.2.30:
The descendants of this chieftain still occupy lands at Anupshahr.
Footnote 9.2.31:
[The betel leaf eaten before battle.]
Footnote 9.2.32:
[About 20 miles N. of Jaipur city.]
Footnote 9.2.33:
[See Vol. II. p. 665.]
Footnote 9.2.34:
Rajor is esteemed a place of great antiquity, and the chief seat of the Bargujar tribe for ages, a tribe mentioned with high respect in the works of the bard Chand, and celebrated in the wars of Prithiraj. I sent a party to Rajor in 1813.
Footnote 9.2.35:
Annals of Mārwār, Vol. II. p. 1048.
Footnote 9.2.36:
The manuscript says, “On the spot where the first Jai Singh erected the three mahalls, and excavated the tank called the Talkatora, he erected other edifices.” As Hindu princes never throw down the works of their predecessors, this means that he added greatly to the old palace.
Footnote 9.2.37:
[Aide-de-camp.]
Footnote 9.2.38:
By such researches we should in all probability recover those sketches of ancient history of the various dynasties of Rajputana, which he is said to have collected with great pains and labour, and the genealogies of the old races, under the titles of Rajavali and Rajatarangini; besides, the astronomical works, either original or translations, such as were collected by Jai Singh, would be a real gift to science.
Footnote 9.2.39:
He ruled from S. 1150 to S. 1201, A.D. 1094-1143. [Hemāchārya, or Hemachandra, was a famous scholar who flourished in the reigns of Siddharāja Jayasingha and Kumārapāla. He is said to have been converted to Islām (BG, i. Part i. 180 f., 182 f., ix. Part ii. 26, note.)]
Footnote 9.2.40:
See Vol. I. p. 91, for a description of the rite of Asvamedha.
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