Chapter 4…

Chapter 4

=Mahārāo Ummed Singh, A.D. 1743-1804.=—Ummeda was but thirteen years of age on the death of his house’s foe, the Raja of Amber, in S. 1800 (A.D. 1744). As soon as the event was known to him, putting himself at the head of his clansmen, he attacked and carried Patan and Gainoli.[10.4.1] “When it was heard that the son of Budh Singh was awake, the ancient Haras flocked to his standard,” and Durjansal of Kotah, rejoicing to see the real Hara blood thus displayed, nobly sent his aid.

=Jaipur attacks Kotah.=—Isari Singh, who was now lord of Amber, pursuing his father’s policy, determined that Kotah should bend to his supremacy as well as the elder branch of Bundi. The defiance of his power avowed in the support of young Ummeda brought his views into [488] action, and Kotah was invested. But the result does not belong to this part of our history. On the retreat from Kotah, Isari sent a body of Nanakpanthis[10.4.2] to attack Ummeda in his retreat at Burh (old) Lohari, amongst the Minas, the aboriginal lords of these mountain-wilds, who had often served the cause of the Haras, notwithstanding they had deprived them of their birthright. The youthful valour and distress of young Ummeda so gained their hearts, that five thousand bowmen assembled and desired to be led against his enemies. With these auxiliaries, he anticipated his foes at Bichori, and while the nimble mountaineers plundered the camp, Ummeda charged the Jaipur army sword in hand, and slaughtered them without mercy, taking their kettledrums and standards. On the news of this defeat, another army of eighteen thousand men, under Narayandas Khatri, was sent against Ummeda. But the affair of Bichori confirmed the dispositions of the Haras: from all quarters they flocked to the standard of the young prince, who determined to risk everything in a general engagement. The foe had reached Dablana.[10.4.3] On the eve of attack, young Ummeda went to propitiate ‘the lady of Situn,’[10.4.4] the tutelary divinity of his race; and as he knelt before the altar of Asapurna (the fulfiller of hope), his eyes falling upon the turrets of Bundi, then held by a traitor, he swore to conquer or die.

=Battle of Dablāna.=—Inspired with like sentiments, his brave clansmen formed around the orange flag, the gift of Jahangir to Rao Ratan; and as they cleared the pass leading to Dablana, the foe was discovered marshalled to receive them. In one of those compact masses, termed gol, with serried lances advanced, Ummeda led his Haras to the charge. Its physical and moral impression was irresistible; and a vista was cut through the dense host opposed to them. Again they formed; and again, in spite of the showers of cannon-shot, the sword renewed its blows; but every charge was fatal to the bravest of Ummeda’s men. In the first onset fell his maternal uncle, Prithi Singh, Solanki, with the Maharaja Marjad Singh of Motra, a valiant Hara, who fell just as he launched his chakra (discus) at the head of the Khatri commander of Amber. Prayag Singh, chief of Soran, a branch of the Thana fief, was also slain, with many of inferior note. The steed of Ummeda was struck by a cannon-ball, and the intestines protruded from the wound. The intrepidity of the youthful hero, nobly seconded by his kin and clan, was unavailing; and the chieftains, fearing he would throw away a life the preservation of which they all desired, entreated he would abandon the contest; observing, “that if he survived, Bundi must be theirs; but if he was slain, there was an end of all their hopes [489].”

With grief he submitted; and as they gained the Sawali Pass, which leads to Indargarh, he dismounted to breathe his faithful steed; and as he loosened the girths, it expired. Ummeda sat down and wept. Hanja was worthy of such a mark of his esteem: he was a steed of Irak, the gift of the king to his father, whom he had borne in many an encounter. Nor was this natural ebullition of the young Hara a transient feeling: Hanja’s memory was held in veneration, and the first act of Ummeda, when he recovered his throne, was to erect a statue to the steed who bore him so nobly on the day of Dablana. It stands in the square (chauk) of the city, and receives the reverence of each Hara, who links his history with one of the brightest of their achievements, though obscured by momentary defeat.[10.4.5]

Ummeda gained Indargarh, which was close at hand, on foot; but this traitor to the name of Hara, who had acknowledged the supremacy of Amber, not only refused his prince a horse in his adversity, but warned him off the domain, asking “if he meant to be the ruin of Indargarh as well as Bundi?” Disdaining to drink water within its bounds, the young prince, stung by this perfidious mark of inhospitality, took the direction of Karwain. Its chief made amends for the other’s churlishness: he advanced to meet him, offered such aid as he had to give, and presented him with a horse. Dismissing his faithful kinsmen to their homes, and begging their swords when fortune might be kinder, he regained his old retreat, the ruined palace of Rampura, amongst the ravines of the Chambal.

=Būndi recovered by Ummed Singh.=—Durjansal of Kotah, who had so bravely defended his capital against the pretensions to supremacy of Isari Singh and his auxiliary, Apa Sindhia, felt more interest than ever in the cause of Ummeda. The Kotah prince’s councils were governed and his armies led by a Bhat (bard), who, it may be inferred, was professionally inspired by the heroism of the young Hara to lend his sword as well as his muse towards reinstating him in the halls of his fathers. Accordingly, all the strength of Kotah, led by the Bhat, was added to the kinsmen and friends of Ummeda; and an attempt on Bundi was resolved. The city, whose walls were in a state of dilapidation from this continual warfare, was taken without difficulty; and the assault of the citadel of Taragarh had commenced, when the heroic Bhat received a fatal shot from a treacherous hand in his own party. His death was concealed, and a cloth thrown [490] over his body. The assailants pressed on; the usurper, alarmed, took to flight; the ‘lion’s hope’[10.4.6] was fulfilled, and Ummeda was seated on the throne of his fathers.

=Būndi occupied by Jaipur.=—Dalil fled to his suzerain at Amber, whose disposable forces, under the famous Khatri Keshodas, were immediately put in motion to re-expel the Hara. Bundi was invested, and having had no time given to prepare for defence, Ummeda was compelled to abandon the walls so nobly won, and “the flag of Dhundhar waved over the kunguras (battlements) of Dewa-Banga.” And let the redeeming virtue of the usurper be recorded; who, when his suzerain of Amber desired to reinstate him on the gaddi, refused “to bring a second time the stain of treason on his head, by which he had been disgraced in the opinion of mankind.”

=Ummed Singh in Exile.=—Ummeda, once more a wanderer, alternately courting the aid of Mewar and Marwar, never suspended his hostility to the usurper of his rights, but carried his incursions, without intermission, into his paternal domains. One of these led him to the village of Banodia: hither the Kachhwaha Rani, the widowed queen of his father, and the cause of all their miseries, had retired, disgusted with herself and the world, and lamenting, when too late, the ruin she had brought upon her husband, herself, and the family she had entered. Ummeda paid her a visit, and the interview added fresh pangs to her self-reproach. His sufferings, his heroism, brightened by adversity, originating with her nefarious desire to stifle his claims of primogeniture by a spurious adoption, awakened sentiments of remorse, of sympathy, and sorrow. Determined to make some amends, she adopted the resolution of going to the Deccan, to solicit aid for the son of Budh Singh. When she arrived on the banks of the Nerbudda a pillar was pointed out to her on which was inscribed a prohibition to any of her race to cross this stream, which like the Indus was also styled atak, or ‘forbidden.’[10.4.7] Like a true Rajputni, she broke the tablet in pieces, and threw it into the stream, observing with a jesuitical casuistry, that there was no longer any impediment when no ordinance existed. Having passed the Rubicon, she proceeded forthwith to the camp of Malhar Rao Holkar. The sister of Jai Singh, the most potent Hindu prince of India, became a suppliant to this goatherd leader[10.4.8] of a horde of plunderers, nay, adopted him as her brother to effect the redemption of Bundi for the exiled Ummeda.

=Malhār Rāo Holkar assists Ummed Singh.=—Malhar, without the accident of noble birth, possessed the sentiments which belong to it, and he promised all she asked. How far his compliance might be promoted by [491] another call for his lance from the Rana of Mewar, in virtue of the marriage-settlement which promised the succession of Amber to a princess of his house, the Bundi records do not tell: they refer only to the prospects of its own prince. But we may, without any reflection on the gallantry of Holkar, express a doubt how far he would have lent the aid of his horde to this sole object, had he not had in view the splendid bribe of sixty-four lakhs from the Rana, to be paid when Isari Singh should be removed, for his nephew Madho Singh.[10.4.9]

Be this as it may, the Bundi chronicle states that the lady, instead of the temporary expedient of delivering Bundi, conducted the march of the Mahrattas direct on Jaipur. Circumstances favoured her designs. The character of Isari Singh had raised up enemies about his person, who seized the occasion to forward at once the views of Bundi and Mewar, whose princes had secretly gained them over to their views.

The Amber prince no sooner heard of the approach of the Mahrattas to his capital than he quitted it to offer them battle. But their strength had been misrepresented, nor was it till he reached the castle of Bagru[10.4.10] that he was undeceived and surrounded. When too late, he saw that ‘treason had done its worst,’ and that the confidence he had placed in the successor of a minister whom he had murdered, met its natural reward. The bard has transmitted in a sloka the cause of his overthrow:

_Jabhī chhodī Īsra Rāj karan kī ās, Mantrī moto māriyo Khatri Kesodās,_

‘Isari forfeited all hopes of regality, when he slew that great minister Keshodas.’

=Jaipur forced to restore Ummed Singh.=—The sons of this minister, named Harsahai and Gursahai, betrayed their prince to the ‘Southron,’ by a false return of their numbers, and led him to the attack with means totally inadequate. Resistance to a vast numerical superiority would have been madness: he retreated to the castle of this fief of Amber, where, after a siege of ten days, he was forced not only to sign a deed for the surrender of Bundi, and the renunciation of all claims to it for himself and his descendants, but to put, in full acknowledgment of his rights, the tika on the forehead of Ummeda. With this deed, and accompanied by the contingent of Kotah, they proceeded to Bundi; the traitor was expelled; and while rejoicings were making to celebrate the installation of Ummeda, the funereal pyre was lighted at Amber, to consume the mortal remains of his foe. Raja Isari could [492] not survive his disgrace, and terminated his existence and hostility by poison, thereby facilitating the designs both of Bundi and Mewar.

Thus in S. 1805 (A.D. 1749) Ummeda regained his patrimony, after fourteen years of exile, during which a traitor had pressed the royal ‘cushion’ of Bundi. But this contest deprived it of many of its ornaments, and, combined with other causes, at length reduced it almost to its intrinsic worth, ‘a heap of cotton.’ Malhar Rao, the founder of the Holkar State, in virtue of his adoption as the brother of the widow-queen of Budh Singh, had the title of Mamu, or uncle, to young Ummeda. But true to the maxims of his race, he did not take his buckler to protect the oppressed, at the impulse of those chivalrous notions so familiar to the Rajput, but deemed a portion of the Bundi territory a better incentive, and a more unequivocal proof of gratitude, than the titles of brother and uncle. Accordingly, he demanded, and obtained by regular deed of surrender, the town and district of Patan on the left bank of the Chambal.[10.4.11]

The sole equivalent (if such it could be termed) for these fourteen years of usurpation, were the fortifications covering the palace and town, now called Taragarh (the ‘Star-fort’), built by Dalil Singh. Madho Singh, who succeeded to the gaddi of Jaipur, followed up the designs commenced by Jai Singh, and which had cost his successor his life, to render the smaller States of Central India dependent on Amber. For this Kotah had been besieged, and Ummeda expelled, and as such policy could not be effected by their unassisted means, it only tended to the benefit of the auxiliaries, who soon became principals, to the prejudice and detriment of all. Madho Singh, having obtained the castle of Ranthambhor, a pretext was afforded for these pretensions to supremacy. From the time of its surrender by Rao Surjan to Akbar, the importance of this castle was established by its becoming the first Sarkar, or ‘department,’ in the province of Ajmer, consisting of no less than ‘seventy-three mahals,’[10.4.12] or extensive fiefs, in which were comprehended not only Bundi and Kotah, and all their dependencies, but the entire State of Sheopur, and all the petty fiefs south of the Banganga, the aggregate of which now constitutes the State of Amber. In fact, with the exception of Mahmudabad in Bengal,[10.4.13] Ranthambhor was the most extensive Sarkar of the empire. In the decrepitude of the empire, this castle was maintained by a veteran commander [493] as long as funds and provisions lasted; but these failing, in order to secure it from falling into the hands of the Mahrattas, and thus being lost for ever to the throne, he sought out a Rajput prince, to whom he might entrust it. He applied to Bundi; but the Hara, dreading to compromise his fealty if unable to maintain it, refused the boon; and having no alternative, he resigned it to the prince of Amber as a trust which he could no longer defend.

Out of this circumstance alone originated the claims of Jaipur to tribute from the Kothris, or fiefs in Haraoti; claims without a shadow of justice; but the maintenance of which, for the sake of the display of supremacy and paltry annual relief, has nourished half a century of irritation, which it is high time should cease.[10.4.14]

=Zālim Singh of Kotah.=—It was the assertion of this supremacy over Kotah as well as Bundi which first brought into notice the most celebrated Rajput of modern times, Zalim Singh of Kotah. Rao Durjansal, who then ruled that State, had too much of the Hara blood to endure such pretensions as the casual possession of Ranthambhor conferred upon his brother prince of Amber, who considered that, as the late lieutenant of the king, he had a right to transfer his powers to himself. The battle of Bhatwara, in S. 1817 (A.D. 1761), for ever extinguished these pretensions, on which occasion Zalim Singh, then scarcely of age, mainly contributed to secure the independence of the State he was ultimately destined to govern. But this exploit belongs to the annals of Kotah, and would not have been here alluded to, except to remark, that had the Bundi army joined Kotah in this common cause, they would have redeemed its fiefs from the tribute they are still compelled to pay to Jaipur.

Ummeda’s active mind was engrossed with the restoration of the prosperity which the unexampled vicissitudes of the last fifteen years had undermined; but he felt his spirit cramped and his energies contracted by the dominant influence and avarice of the insatiable Mahrattas, through whose means he recovered his capital; still there was as yet no fixed principle of government recognized, and the Rajputs, who [494] witnessed their periodical visitations like flights of locusts over their plains, hoped that this scourge would be equally transitory. Under this great and pernicious error, all the Rajput States continued to mix these interlopers in their national disputes, which none had more cause to repent than the Haras of Bundi. But the hold which the Mahrattas retained upon the lands of ‘Dewa Banga’ would never have acquired such tenacity, had the bold arm and sage mind of Ummeda continued to guide the vessel of the State throughout the lengthened period of his natural existence: his premature political decease adds another example to the truth, that patriarchal, and indeed all governments are imperfect where the laws are not supreme.

=Ummed Singh’s Revenge on Indargarh.=—An act of revenge stained the reputation of Ummeda, naturally virtuous, and but for which deed we should have to paint him as one of the bravest, wisest, and most faultless characters which Rajput history has recorded. Eight years had elapsed since the recovery of his dominions, and we have a right to infer that his wrongs and their authors had been forgotten, or rather forgiven, for human nature can scarcely forget so treacherous an act as that of his vassal of Indargarh, on the defeat of Dablana. As so long a time had passed since the restoration without the penalty of his treason being exacted, it might have been concluded that the natural generosity of this high-minded prince had co-operated with a wise policy, in passing over the wrong without forgoing his right to avenge it. The degenerate Rajput, who could at such a moment witness the necessities of his prince and refuse to relieve them, could never reflect on that hour without self-abhorrence; but his spirit was too base to offer reparation by a future life of duty; he cursed the magnanimity of the man he had injured; hated him for his very forbearance, and aggravated the part he had acted by fresh injuries, and on a point too delicate to admit of being overlooked. Ummeda had ‘sent the coco-nut,’ the symbol of matrimonial alliance, to Madho Singh, in the name of his sister. It was received in a full assembly of all the nobles of the court, and with the respect due to one of the most illustrious races of Rajputana. Deo Singh of Indargarh was at that time on a visit at Jaipur, and the compliment was paid him by the Raja of asking “what fame said of the daughter of Budh Singh?” It is not impossible that he might have sought this opportunity of further betraying his prince; for his reply was an insulting innuendo, leading to doubts as to the purity of her blood. That it was grossly false, was soon proved by the solicitation of her hand by Raja Bijai Singh of Marwar. “The coco-nut was returned to Bundi,”—an insult never to be forgiven by a Rajput [495].

In S. 1813 (A.D. 1757), Ummeda went to pay his devotions at the shrine of Bijaiseni Mata (‘the mother of victory’), near Karwar.[10.4.15] Being in the vicinity of Indargarh, he invited its chief to join the assembled vassals with their families; and though dissuaded, Deo Singh obeyed, accompanied by his son and grandson. All were cut off at one fell swoop, and the line of the traitor was extinct: as if the air of heaven should not be contaminated by the smoke of their ashes, Ummeda commanded that the bodies of the calumnious traitor and his issue should be thrown into the lake. His fief of Indargarh was given to his brother, between whom and the present incumbent four generations have passed away.

Fifteen years elapsed, during which the continual scenes of disorder around him furnished ample occupation for his thoughts. Yet, in the midst of all, would intrude the remembrance of this single act, in which he had usurped the powers of Him to whom alone it belongs to execute vengeance. Though no voice was lifted up against the deed, though he had a moral conviction that a traitor’s death was the due of Deo Singh, his soul, generous as it was brave, revolted at the crime, however sanctified by custom,[10.4.16] which confounds the innocent with the guilty. To appease his conscience, he determined to abdicate the throne, and pass the rest of his days in penitential rites, and traversing, in the pilgrim’s garb, the vast regions of India, to visit the sacred shrines of his faith.

=Abdication of Mahārāo Ummed Singh.=—In S. 1827 (A.D. 1771), the imposing ceremony of ‘Jugraj,’ which terminated the political existence of Ummeda, was performed. An image of the prince was made, and a pyre was erected, on which it was consumed. The hair and whiskers of Ajit, his successor, were taken off, and offered to the Manes; lamentation and wailing were heard in the ranwas,[10.4.17] and the twelve days of matam, or ‘mourning,’ were passed as if Ummeda had really deceased;[10.4.18] on the expiration of which, the installation of his successor took place, when Ajit Singh was proclaimed prince of the Haras of Bundi.

The abdicated Ummeda, with the title of Sriji (by which alone he was henceforth known), retired to that holy spot in the valley sanctified by the miraculous cure of the first ‘lord of the Patar,’[10.4.19] and which was named after one of the fountains of the Ganges, Kedarnath. To this spot, hallowed by a multitude of associations, the warlike pilgrim brought

The fruit and flower of many a province,

and had the gratification to find these exotics, whether the hardy offspring of the [496] snow-clad Himalaya, or the verge of ocean in the tropic, fructify and flourish amidst the rocks of his native abode. It is curious even to him who is ignorant of the moral vicissitudes which produced it, to see the pine of Tibet, the cane of Malacca, and other exotics, planted by the hand of the princely ascetic, flourishing around his hermitage, in spite of the intense heats of this rock-bound abode.

When Ummeda resigned the sceptre of the Haras, it was from the conviction that a life of meditation alone could yield the consolation, and obtain the forgiveness which he found necessary to his repose. But in assuming the pilgrim’s staff, he did not lay aside any feeling becoming his rank or his birth. There was no pusillanimous prostration of intellect; no puling weakness of bigoted sentiment, but the same lofty mind which redeemed his birthright, accompanied him wherever he bent his steps to seek knowledge in the society of devout and holy men. He had read in the annals of his own and of other States, that “the trappings of royalty were snares to perdition, and that happy was the man who in time threw them aside and made his peace with heaven.” But in obeying, at once, the dictates of conscience and of custom, he felt his mind too much alive to the wonders of creation, to bury himself in the fane of Kanhaiya, or the sacred baths on the Ganges; and he determined to see all those holy places commemorated in the ancient epics of his nation, and the never-ending theme of the wandering devotee. In this determination he was, perhaps, somewhat influenced by that love of adventure in which he had been nurtured, and it was a balm to his mind when he found that arms and religion were not only compatible, but that his pious resolution to force a way through the difficulties which beset the pilgrim’s path, enhanced the merit of his devotion. Accordingly, the royal ascetic went forth on his pilgrimage, not habited in the hermit’s garb, but armed at all points. Even in this there was penance, not ostentation, and he carried or buckled on his person one of every species of offensive or defensive weapon then in use: a load which would oppress any two Rajputs in these degenerate times. He wore a quilted tunic, which would resist a sabre-cut; besides a matchlock, a lance, a sword, a dagger, and their appurtenances of knives, pouches, and priming-horn, he had a battle-axe, a javelin, a tomahawk, a discus, bow and quiver of arrows; and it is affirmed that such was his muscular power, even when threescore and ten years had blanched his beard in wandering to and fro thus accoutred, that he could place the whole of this panoply within his shield, and with one arm not only raise it, but hold it for some seconds extended [497].

=The Wanderings of Ummed Singh.=—With a small escort of his gallant clansmen, during a long series of years he traversed every region, from the glacial fountains of the Ganges to the southern promontory of Rameswaram;[10.4.20] and from the hot-wells of Sita in Arakan,[10.4.21] and the Moloch of Orissa,[10.4.22] to the shrine of the Hindu Apollo at ‘the world’s end.’[10.4.23] Within these limits of Hinduism, Ummeda saw every place of holy resort, of curiosity, or of learning; and whenever he revisited his paternal domains, his return was greeted not only by his own tribe, but by every prince and Rajput of Rajwara, who deemed his abode hallowed if the princely pilgrim halted there on his route. He was regarded as an oracle, while the treasures of knowledge which his observation had accumulated, caused his conversation to be courted and every word to be recorded. The admiration paid to him while living cannot be better ascertained than by the reverence manifested by every Hara to his memory. To them his word was a law, and every relic of him continues to be held in veneration. Almost his last journey was to the extremity of his nation, the temples at the Delta of the Indus, and the shrine of the Hindu Cybele, the terrific Agnidevi of Hinglaj, on the shores of Makran, even beyond the Rubicon of the Hindus.[10.4.24] As he returned by Dwarka he was beset by a band of Kabas,[10.4.25] a plundering race infesting these regions. But the veteran, uniting the arm of flesh to that of faith, valiantly defended himself, and gained a complete victory, making prisoner their leader, who, as the price of his ransom, took an oath never again to molest the pilgrims to Dwarka.

The warlike pilgrimage of Ummeda had been interrupted by a tragical occurrence, which occasioned the death of his son, and compelled him to abide for a time at the seat of government to superintend the education of his grandchild. This eventful catastrophe, interwoven in the border history of Mewar and Haraoti, is well worthy of narration, as illustrative of manners and belief, and fulfilled a prophecy pronounced centuries before by the dying Sati of Bumbaoda, that “the Rao and the Rana should never meet at the Aheria (or spring hunt) without death ensuing.” What we are about to relate was the fourth repetition of this sport with the like fatal result.

The hamlet of Bilaita, which produced but a few good mangoes, and for its population a few Minas, was the ostensible cause of dispute. The chief of Bundi, either deeming it within his territory, or desiring to consider it so, threw up a fortification, in which he placed a garrison to overawe the freebooters, who were instigated by the discontented chiefs of Mewar to represent this as an infringement of their prince’s rights. Accordingly, the Rana marched with all his chieftains, and a mercenary [498] band of Sindis, to the disputed point, whence he invited the Bundi prince, Ajit, to his camp. He came, and the Rana was so pleased with his manners and conduct, that Bilaita and its mango grove were totally forgotten. Spring was at hand; the joyous month of Phalgun, when it was necessary to open the year with a sacrifice of the boar to Gauri (see Vol. II. p. 660). The young Hara, in return for the courtesies of the Rana, invited him to open the Aheria, within the ramnas or preserves of Bundi. The invitation was accepted; the prince of the Sesodias, according to usage, distributed the green turbans and scarfs, and on the appointed day, with a brilliant cavalcade, repaired to the heights of Nanta.

=Murder of Rāna Ari Singh.=—The abdicated Rao, who had lately returned from Badarinath, no sooner heard of the projected hunt, than he dispatched a special messenger to remind his son of the anathema of the Sati. The impetuous Ajit replied that it was impossible to recall his invitation on such pusillanimous grounds. The morning came, and the Rana, filled with sentiments of friendship for the young Rao, rode with him to the field. But the preceding evening, the minister of Mewar had waited on the Rao, and in language the most insulting told him to surrender Bilaita, or he would send a body of Sindis to place him in restraint, and he was vile enough to insinuate that he was merely the organ of his prince’s commands. This rankled in the mind of the Rao throughout the day; and when the sport was over, and he had the Rana’s leave to depart, a sudden idea passed across his mind of the intended degradation, and an incipient resolution to anticipate this disgrace induced him to return. The Rana, unconscious of any offence, received his young friend with a smile, repeated his permission to retire, and observed that they should soon meet again. Irresolute, and overcome by this affable behaviour, his half-formed intent was abandoned, and again he bowed and withdrew. But scarcely had he gone a few paces when, as if ashamed of himself, he summoned up the powers of revenge, and rushed, spear in hand, upon his victim. With such unerring force did he ply it, that the head of the lance, after passing through the Rana, was transfixed in the neck of his steed. The wounded prince had merely time to exclaim, as he regarded the assassin on whom he had lavished his friendship, “Oh, Hara! what have you done?” when the Indargarh chief finished the treachery with his sword. The Hara Rao, as if glorying in the act, carried off the chhattar-changi, ‘the golden sun in the sable disk,’ the regal insignia of Mewar, which he lodged in the palace of Bundi. The abdicated Ummeda, whose gratified revenge had led to a life of repentance, was horror-struck at this fresh atrocity in his house [499]: he cried, “Shame on the deed!” nor would he henceforth look on the face of his son.

A highly dramatic effect is thrown around the last worldly honours paid to the murdered king of Mewar; and although his fate has been elsewhere described, it may be proper to record it from the chronicle of his foeman.

=The Obsequies of Rāna Ari Singh.=—The Rana and the Bundi prince had married two sisters, daughters of the prince of Kishangarh, so that there were ties of connexion to induce the Rana to reject all suspicion of danger, though he had been warned by his wife to beware of his brother-in-law. The ancient feud had been balanced in the mutual death of the last two princes, and no motive for enmity existed. On the day previous to this disastrous event, the Mewar minister had given a feast, of which the princes and their nobles had partaken, when all was harmony and friendship; but the sequel to the deed strongly corroborates the opinion that it was instigated by the nobles of Mewar, in hatred of their tyrannical prince; and other hints were not wanting in addition to the indignant threats of the minister to kindle the feeling of revenge. At the moment the blow was struck, a simple mace-bearer alone had the fidelity to defend his master; not a chief was at hand either to intercept the stroke, or pursue the assassin; on the contrary, no sooner was the deed consummated, than the whole chivalry of Mewar, as if panic-struck and attacked by a host, took to flight, abandoning their camp and the dead body of their master.

A single concubine remained to perform the last rites to her lord. She commanded a costly pyre to be raised, and prepared to become his companion to a world unknown. With the murdered corpse in her arms, she reared her form from the pile, and, as the torch was applied, she pronounced a curse on his murderer, invoking the tree under whose shade it was raised to attest the prophecy, “that, if a selfish treachery alone prompted the deed, within two months the assassin might be an example to mankind; but if it sprung from a noble revenge of any ancient feud, she absolved him from the curse: a branch of the tree fell in token of assent, and the ashes of the Rana and the Sati whitened the plain of Bilaita.”

=Death of Mahārāo Ajīt Singh.=—Within the two months, the prophetic anathema was fulfilled; the Rao of the Haras was a corpse, exhibiting an awful example of divine vengeance: “the flesh dropped from his bones, and he expired, an object of loathing and of misery.” Hitherto these feuds had been balanced by the lex talionis, or its substitutes, but this last remains unappeased, strengthening the belief that it was prompted from Mewar [500].

=Mahārāo Bishan Singh, A.D. 1770-1821.=—Bishan Singh, the sole offspring of Ajit, and who succeeded to the gaddi, was then an infant, and it became a matter of necessity that Sriji should watch his interests. Having arranged the affairs of the infant Rao, and placed an intelligent Dhabhai (foster-brother) at the head of the government, he recommenced his peregrinations, being often absent four years at a time, until within a few years of his death, when the feebleness of age confined him to his hermitage of Kedarnath.

It affords an additional instance of Rajput instability of character, or rather of the imperfection of their government, that, in his old age, when a life of austerity had confirmed a renunciation which reflection had prompted, the venerable warrior became an object of distrust to his grandchild. Miscreants, who dreaded to see wisdom near the throne, had the audacity to add insult to a prohibition of Sriji’s return to Bundi, commanding him “to eat sweetmeats and tell his beads at Benares.” The messenger, who found him advanced as far as Nayashahr,[10.4.27] delivered the mandate, adding that his ashes should not mingle with his fathers'. But such was the estimation in which he was held, and the sanctity he had acquired from these pilgrimages, that the sentence was no sooner known than the neighbouring princes became suitors for his society. The heroism of his youth, the dignified piety of his age, inspired the kindred mind of Partap Singh of Amber with very different feelings from those of his own tribe. He addressed Sriji as a son and a servant, requesting permission to 'darshankar' (worship him), and convey him to his capital. Such was the courtesy of the flower of the Kachhwahas! Sriji declined this mark of homage, but accepted the invitation. He was received with honour, and so strongly did the gallant and virtuous Partap feel the indignity put upon the abdicated prince, that he told him, if “any remnant of worldly association yet lurked within him,” he would in person, at the head of all the troops of Amber, place him on the throne both of Bundi and Kotah. Sriji’s reply was consistent with his magnanimity: “They are both mine already—on the one is my nephew, on the other my grandchild.” On this occasion, Zalim Singh of Kotah appeared on the scene as mediator; he repaired to Bundi, and exposed the futility of Bishan Singh’s apprehensions; and armed with full powers of reconciliation, sent Lalaji Pandit to escort the old Rao to his capital. The meeting was such as might have been expected, between a precipitate youth tutored by artful knaves, and the venerable chief who had renounced every mundane feeling but affection for his offspring. It drew tears from all eyes: “My child,” said the pilgrim-warrior, presenting his sword, “take this; apply it yourself if you think I can have any bad intentions towards you; but let not the base defame me” [501]. The young Rao wept aloud as he entreated forgiveness; and the Pandit and Zalim Singh had the satisfaction of seeing the intentions of the sycophants, who surrounded the minor prince, defeated. Sriji refused, however, to enter the halls of Bundi during the remainder of his life, which ended about eight years after this event, when his grandchild entreated “he would close his eyes within the walls of his fathers.” A remnant of that feeling inseparable from humanity made the dying Ummeda offer no objection, and he was removed in a sukhpal[10.4.28] (litter) to the palace, where he that night breathed his last. Thus, in S. 1860 (A.D. 1804), Ummeda Singh closed a varied and chequered life; the sun of his morning rose amidst clouds of adversity, soon to burst forth in a radiant prosperity; but scarcely had it attained its meridian glory ere crime dimmed its splendour and it descended in solitude and sorrow.

Sixty years had passed over his head since Ummeda, when only thirteen years of age, put himself at the head of his Haras, and carried Patan and Gandoli. His memory is venerated in Haraoti, and but for the stain which the gratification of his revenge has left upon his fame, he would have been the model of a Rajput prince. But let us not apply the European standard of abstract virtue to these princes, who have so few checks and so many incentives to crime, and whose good acts deserve the more applause from an appalling honhar (predestination) counteracting moral responsibility.

=Colonel Monson’s Campaign.=—The period of Sriji’s death was an important era in the history of the Haras. It was at this time that a British army, under the unfortunate Monson, for the first time appeared in these regions, avowedly for the purpose of putting down Holkar, the great foe of the Rajputs, but especially of Bundi.[10.4.29] Whether the aged chief was yet alive and counselled this policy, which has since been gratefully repaid by Britain, we are not aware; but whatever has been done for Bundi has fallen short of the chivalrous deserts of its prince. It was not on the advance of our army, when its ensigns were waving in anticipation of success, but on its humiliating flight, that a safe passage was not only cheerfully granted, but aided to the utmost of the Raja’s means, and with an almost culpable disregard of his own welfare and interests. It was, indeed, visited with retribution, which we little knew, or, in the pusillanimous policy of that day, little heeded. Suffice it to say, that, in 1817, when we called upon the Rajputs to arm and coalesce with us in the putting down of rapine, Bundi was one of the foremost to join the alliance. Well she might be; for the Mahratta flag waved in unison with her own within the walls of the capital, while the revenues collected scarcely [502] afforded the means of personal protection to its prince. Much of this was owing to our abandonment of the Rao in 1804.

=Compensation to Būndi after the Pindāri War.=—Throughout the contest of 1817, Bundi had no will but ours; its prince and dependents were in arms ready to execute our behest; and when victory crowned our efforts in every quarter, on the subsequent pacification, the Rao Raja Bishan Singh was not forgotten. The districts held by Holkar, some of which had been alienated for half a century, and which had become ours by right of conquest, were restored to Bundi without a qualification; while, at the same time, we negotiated the surrender to him of the districts held by Sindhia, on his paying, through us, an annual sum calculated on the average of the last ten years’ depreciated revenue. The intense gratitude felt by the Raja was expressed in a few forcible words: “I am not a man of protestation; but my head is yours whenever you require it.” This was not an unmeaning phrase of compliment; he would have sacrificed his life, and that of every Hara who “ate his salt,” had we made experiment of his fidelity. Still, immense as were the benefits showered upon Bundi, and with which her prince was deeply penetrated, there was a drawback. The old Machiavelli of Kotah had been before him in signing himself ‘fidwi Sarkar Angrez’ (the slave of the English government), and had contrived to get Indargarh, Balwan, Antardah, and Khatoli, the chief feudatories of Bundi, under his protection.

The frank and brave Rao Raja could not help deeply regretting an arrangement, which, as he emphatically said, was “clipping his wings.” The disposition is a bad one, and both justice and political expediency enjoin a revision of it, and the bringing about a compromise which would restore the integrity of the most interesting and deserving little State in India.[10.4.30] Well has it repaid the anxious care we manifested for its interests; for while every other principality has, by some means or other, caused uneasiness or trouble to the protecting power, Bundi has silently advanced to comparative prosperity, happy in her independence, and interfering with no one. The Rao Raja survived the restoration of his independence only four short years, when he was carried off by that scourge, the cholera morbus. In his extremity, writhing under a disease which unmans the strongest frame and mind, he was cool and composed. He interdicted his wives from following him to the pyre, and bequeathing his son and successor [503] to the guardianship of the representative of the British government, breathed his last in the prime of life.

=Death and Character of Mahārāo Bishan Singh.=—The character of Bishan Singh may be summed up in a few words. He was an honest man, and every inch a Rajput. Under an unpolished exterior, he concealed an excellent heart and an energetic soul; he was by no means deficient in understanding, and possessed a thorough knowledge of his own interests. When the Mahrattas gradually curtailed his revenues, and circumscribed his power and comforts, he seemed to delight in showing how easily he could dispense with unessential enjoyments; and found in the pleasures of the chase the only stimulus befitting a Rajput. He would bivouac for days in the lion’s lair, nor quit the scene until he had circumvented the forest king, the only prey he deemed worthy of his skill. He had slain upwards of one hundred lions with his own hand, besides many tigers, and boars innumerable had been victims to his lance. In this noble pastime, not exempt from danger, and pleasurable in proportion to the toil, he had a limb broken, which crippled him for life, and shortened his stature, previously below the common standard. But when he mounted his steed and waved his lance over his head, there was a masculine vigour and dignity which at once evinced that Bishan Singh, had we called upon him, would have wielded his weapon as worthily in our cause as did his glorious ancestors for Jahangir or Shah Alam. He was somewhat despotic in his own little empire, knowing that fear is a necessary incentive to respect in the governed, more especially amongst the civil servants of his government; and, if the Court Journal of Bundi may be credited, his audiences with his chancellor of the exchequer, who was his premier, must have been amusing to those in the antechamber. The Raja had a reserved fund, to which the minister was required to add a hundred rupees daily; and whatever plea he might advance for the neglect of other duties, on this point none would be listened to, or the appeal to Indrajit was threatened. “The conqueror of Indra” was no superior divinity, but a shoe of superhuman size suspended from a peg, where a more classic prince would have exhibited his rod of empire. But he reserved this for his barons, and the shoe, thus misnamed, was the humiliating corrective for an offending minister.

=The Ministers of Būndi.=—At Bundi, as at all these patriarchal principalities, the chief agents of power are few. They are four in number, namely: 1. The Diwan, or Musahib; 2. The Faujdar, or Kiladar; 3. The Bakhshi; 4. The Risala, or Comptroller of Accounts [504].[10.4.31]

This little State became so connected with the imperial court, that, like Jaipur, the princes adopted several of its customs. The Pardhan, or premier, was entitled Diwan and Musahib; and he had the entire management of the territory and finances. The Faujdar or Kiladar is the governor of the castle, the Maire de Palais, who at Bundi is never a Rajput, but some Dhabhai or foster-brother, identified with the family, who likewise heads the feudal quotas or the mercenaries, and has lands assigned for their support. The Bakhshi controls generally all accounts; the Risala those of the household expenditure. The late prince’s management of his revenue was extraordinary. Instead of the surplus being lodged in the treasury, it centred in a mercantile concern conducted by the prime minister, in the profits of which the Raja shared. But while he exhibited but fifteen per cent gain in the balance-sheet, it was stated at thirty. From this profit the troops and dependents of the court were paid, chiefly in goods and grain, and at such a rate as he chose to fix.[10.4.32] Their necessities, and their prince being joint partner in the firm, made complaint useless; but the system entailed upon the premier universal execration.

Bishan Singh left two legitimate sons: the Rao Raja Ram Singh, then eleven years of age, who was installed in August 1821; and the Maharaja Gopal Singh, a few months younger. Both were most promising youths, especially the Raja. He inherited his father’s passion for the chase, and even at this tender age received from the nobles[10.4.33] their nazars and congratulations on the first wild game he slew. Hitherto his pigmy sword had been proved only on kids or lambs. His mother, the queen-regent, is a princess of Kishangarh, amiable, able, and devoted to her son. It is ardently hoped that this most interesting State and family will rise to their ancient prosperity, under the generous auspices of the government which rescued it from ruin. In return, we may reckon on a devotion to which our power is yet a stranger—strong hands and grateful hearts, which will court death in our behalf with the same indomitable spirit that has been exemplified in days gone by. Our wishes are for the prosperity of the Haras! [505].

KOTAH CHAPTER 5

=Formation of Kotah State.=—The early history of the Haras of Kotah belongs to Bundi, of which they were a junior branch. The separation took place when Shah Jahan was emperor of India, who bestowed Kotah and its dependencies on Madho Singh, the second son of Rao Ratan, for his distinguished gallantry in the battle of Burhanpur.[10.5.1]

=Rāo Mādho Singh, c. A.D. 1625-30.=—Madho Singh was born in S. 1621 (A.D. 1565). At the early age of fourteen, he displayed that daring intrepidity which gave him the title of Raja, and Kotah with its three hundred and sixty townships (then the chief fief of Bundi, and yielding two lakhs of rent), independent of his father.

It has already been related, that the conquest of this tract was made from the Khota Bhils of the Ujla, the ‘unmixed,’ or aboriginal race. From these the Rajput will eat, and all classes will ‘drink water’ at their hands.[10.5.2] Kotah was at that time but a series of hamlets, the abode of the Bhil chief, styled Raja, being the ancient fortress of Ekelgarh, five coss south of Kotah. But when Madho Singh was enfeoffed by the king, Kotah had already attained extensive limits. To the south it was bounded by Gagraun and Ghatoli, then held by the Khichis; on the east, by Mangrol and [506] Nahargarh, the first belonging to the Gaur, the last to a Rathor Rajput, who had apostatized to save his land and was now a Nawab; to the north, it extended as far as Sultanpur, on the Chambal, across which was the small domain of Nanta. In this space were contained three hundred and sixty townships, and a rich soil fertilized by numerous large streams.

The favour and power Madho Singh enjoyed, enabled him to increase the domain he held direct of the crown, and his authority at his death extended to the barrier between Malwa and Haraoti. Madho Singh died in S. 1687, leaving five sons, whose appanages became the chief fiefs of Kotah. To the holders and their descendants, in order to mark the separation between them and the elder Haras of Bundi, the patronymic of the founder was applied, and the epithet Madhani is sufficiently distinctive whenever two Haras, bearing the same name, appear together. These were—

1. Mukund Singh, who had Kotah.

2. Mohan Singh, who had Paleta.

3. Jujarh Singh, who had Kotra, and subsequently Ramgarh, Rilawan.

4. Kaniram, who had Koila.[10.5.3]

5. Kishor Singh who obtained Sangod.

=Rāo Mukund Singh, A.D. 1630-57.=—Raja Mukund Singh succeeded. To this prince the chief pass in the barrier dividing Malwa from Haraoti owes its name of Mukunddarra[10.5.4] which gained an unfortunate celebrity on the defeat and flight of the British troops under Brigadier Monson, A.D. 1804. Mukund erected many places of strength and utility; and the palace and petta[10.5.5] of Anta are both attributable to him.

Raja Mukund gave one of those brilliant instances of Rajput devotion to the principle of legitimate rule, so many of which illustrate his national history. When Aurangzeb formed his parricidal design to dethrone his father Shah Jahan, nearly every Rajput rallied round the throne of the aged monarch; and the Rathors and the Haras were most conspicuous. The sons of Madho Singh, besides the usual ties of fidelity, forgot not that to Shah Jahan they owed their independence, and they determined to defend him to the death. In S. 1714, in the field near Ujjain, afterwards named by the victor Fatehabad, the five brothers led their vassals, clad in the saffron-stained garment, with the bridal maur (coronet) on their head, denoting death or victory.[10.5.6] The imprudent intrepidity of the Rathor commander denied them the latter, but a [507] glorious death no power could prevent, and all the five brothers fell in one field. The youngest, Kishor Singh, was afterwards dragged from amidst the slain, and, though pierced with wounds, recovered. He was afterwards one of the most conspicuous of the intrepid Rajputs serving in the Deccan, and often attracted notice, especially in the capture of Bijapur. But the imperial princes knew not how to appreciate or to manage such men, who, when united under one who could control them, were irresistible.

=Rāo Jagat Singh, A.D. 1657-70.=—Jagat Singh, the son of Mukund, succeeded to the family estates, and to the mansab or dignity of a commander of two thousand, in the imperial army. He continued serving in the Deccan until his death in S. 1726, leaving no issue.

=Rāo Pem Singh, A.D. 1670.=—Pem Singh, son of Kaniram of Koila, succeeded; but was so invincibly stupid that the Panch (council of chiefs) set him aside after six months’ rule, and sent him back to Koila, which is still held by his descendants.[10.5.7]

=Rāo Kishor Singh I. A.D. 1670-86.=—Kishor Singh, who so miraculously recovered from his wounds, was placed upon the gaddi. When the throne was at length obtained by Aurangzeb, Kishor was again serving in the south, and shedding his own blood, with that of his kinsmen, in its subjugation. He greatly distinguished himself at the siege of Bijapur, and was finally slain at the escalade of Arkatgarh (Arcot), in S. 1742. He was a noble specimen of a Hara; and, it is said, counted fifty wounds on his person. He left three sons, Bishan Singh, Ram Singh, and Harnath Singh. The eldest, Bishan Singh, was deprived of his birthright for refusing to accompany his father to the south; but had the appanage and royal palace of Anta conferred upon him. His issue was as follows: Prithi Singh, chief of Anta, whose son, Ajit Singh, had three sons, Chhattarsal, Guman Singh, and Raj Singh.

=Rāo Rām Singh, A.D. 1686-1707.=—Ram Singh, who was with his father when he was killed, succeeded to all his dignities, and was inferior to none in the contests which fill the page of imperial history, and in opposing the rise of the Mahrattas. In the war of succession, he embraced the cause of Prince Azam, the viceroy in the Deccan, against the elder, Muazzam, and was slain in the battle of Jajau, in S. 1764. In this memorable conflict, which decided the succession to the throne, the Kotah prince espoused the opposite cause to [508] the head of his house of Bundi, and Hara met Hara in that desperate encounter, when a cannon-shot terminated the life of Ram Singh in the very zenith of his career.

=Rāo Bhīm Singh, A.D. 1707-20.=—Bhim Singh succeeded; and with him Kotah no longer remained a raj of the third order. On the death of Bahadur Shah, and the accession of Farrukhsiyar, Raja Bhim espoused the cause of the Sayyids, when his mansab was increased to “five thousand,” a rank heretofore confined to princes of the blood and rajas of the first class. The elder branch of the Haras maintained its fealty to the throne against these usurping ministers, and thus the breach made at the battle of Jajau was widened by their taking opposite sides. The disgraceful attempt of Raja Bhim on the life of Rao Raja Budh of Bundi has already been recorded. Having completely identified himself with the designs of the Sayyids and Jai Singh of Amber, he aided all the schemes of the latter to annihilate Bundi, an object the more easy of accomplishment since the unmerited and sudden misfortunes of Rao Budh had deprived him of his reason. Raja Bhim obtained the royal sanad or grant for all the lands on the Patar, from Kotah west, to the descent into Ahirwara east; which comprehended much land of the Khichis as well as of Bundi. He thus obtained the celebrated castle of Gagraun, now the strongest in Haraoti, and rendered memorable by its defence against Alau-d-din; likewise Mau Maidana, Shirgarh, Bara, Mangrol, and Barod, all to the eastward of the Chambal, which was formally constituted the western boundary of the State. The aboriginal Bhils of Ujla, or ‘pure’ descent, had recovered much of their ancient inheritance in the intricate tracts on the southern frontier of Haraoti. Of these, Manohar Thana, now the most southern garrison of Kotah, became their chief place, and here dwelt ‘the king of the Bhils,’ Raja Chakarsen, whose person was attended by five hundred horse and eight hundred bowmen, and to whom all the various tribes of Bhils, from Mewar to the extremity of the plateau, owed obedience. This indigenous race, whose simple life secured their preservation amidst all the vicissitudes of fortune, from Raja Bhoj of Dhar to Raja Bhim of Kotah, were dispossessed and hunted down without mercy, and their possessions added to Kotah. On the occasion of the subjugation of Bhilwara, the latter assigned tracts of land to the Umat chiefs of Narsingarh and Rajgarh Patan, with townships in thali, in Kotah proper, and hence arose the claim of Kotah on these independent States for the tribute termed tankhwah.[10.5.8] At the same time all the [509] chieftains acknowledged the supremacy of Kotah, under articles of precisely the same nature as those which guaranteed the safety and independence of Rajwara by Britain; with this difference, that the Umats could not be installed without the khilat of recognition of the princes of Kotah. Had Raja Bhim lived, he would further have extended the borders of Haraoti, which were already carried beyond the mountains. Onarsi, Dig, Perawa, and the lands of the Chandarawats, were brought under subjection, but were lost with his death, which, like that of his predecessors, was an untimely sacrifice to duty towards the throne.

When the celebrated Kilich Khan,[10.5.9] afterwards better known to history as Nizamu-l-mulk, fled from the court to maintain himself by force of arms in his government of the Deccan, Raja Jai Singh of Amber, as the lieutenant of the king, commanded Bhim Singh of Kotah and Gaj Singh of Narwar to intercept him in his passage. The Nizam was the Pagri badal Bhai, or ‘turban-exchanged brother,’ of the Hara prince, and he sent him a friendly epistle, entreating him “not to credit the reports to his disadvantage, telling him that he had abstracted no treasures of the empire, and that Jai Singh was a meddling knave, who desired the destruction of both; and urging him to heed him not, nor offer any molestation to his passage to the south.” The brave Hara replied, that “He knew the line between friendship and duty; he was commanded to intercept him, and had advanced for that purpose; it was the king’s order; fight him he must, and next morning would attack him.” The courtesy of the Rajput, who mingled no resentment with his hostility, but, like a true cavalier, gave due warning of his intention, was not thrown away upon the wily Muslim. The Nizam took post amidst the broken ground of the Sindh, near the town of Kurwai Borasa.[10.5.10] There was but one approach to his position without a circuitous march, which suited not the impatient Rajput; and there his antagonist planted a battery, masked by some brushwood. At the pila badal (morning-dawn) Raja Bhim, having taken his amal-pani, or opium-water, mounted his elephant, and uniting his vassals to those of the Kachhwaha, the combined clans moved on to the attack, in one of those dense masses, with couched lances, whose shock is irresistible. They were within musket-shot of the Nizam; had they reached him, Haidarabad would never have arisen on the ruins of Gualkund,[10.5.11] the ancient Hara abode; but the battery opened, and in an instant the elephants with their riders, Raja Bhim and Raja Gaj, were destroyed. Horse and foot became commingled, happy to emerge from the toils into which the blind confidence of their leaders had carried them; and Kilich Khan pursued the career that destiny had marked out for him [510].

=Loss of the Hāra Tribal God.=—On this occasion the Haras sustained a double loss: their leader, and their titular divinity, Brajnath, the god of Braj. This palladium of the Haras is a small golden image, which is borne on the saddle-bow of their princely leader in every conflict. When the gol is formed and the lances are couched, the signal of onset is the shout of ‘Jai Brajnathji!’ ‘Victory to Brajnath!’ and many a glorious victory and many a glorious death has he witnessed. After being long missing, the representative of the god was recovered and sent to Kotah, to the great joy of every Hara. It was in S. 1776 (A.D. 1720) that Bhim Singh perished, having ruled fifteen years, during which short period he established the affairs of his little dominion on a basis which has never been shaken.

=Rāo Bhīm Singh attacks Būndi.=—The rivalry that commenced between the houses, when Hara encountered Hara on the plains of Dholpur, and each princely leader sealed his fidelity to the cause he espoused with his blood, was brought to issue by Raja Bhim, whose attack upon Rao Budh of Bundi, while defending the forlorn Farrukhsiyar, has already been related, though without its consequences. These were fatal to the supremacy of the elder branch; for, taking advantage of his position and the expulsion of Rao Budh, in which he aided, Raja Bhim made an attempt upon Bundi, and despoiled that capital of all the insignia of sovereign rule, its nakkaras, or kettle-drums, with the celebrated ran-sankh, or war-shell, an heirloom descended from the heroes of antiquity. Even the military band, whose various discordant instruments are still in use, may be heard in pseudo concert from the guardroom over the chief gate of the citadel, at Kotah; while the “orange flag,” the gift of Jahangir to Rao Ratan, around which many a brave Hara has breathed his last, is now used by the junior house in all processions or battles.

To recover these ensigns of fallen dignity, many a stratagem has been tried. False keys of the city gates of Kotah and its citadel had been procured, and its guards won over by bribery to favour admission; but an unceasing vigilance defeated the plan when on the brink of execution: since which the gates of Kotah are always closed at sunset, and never opened even to the prince. This custom has been attended with great inconvenience; of which the following anecdote affords an instance. When Raja Durjan after his defeat reached Kotah at midnight, with a few attendants, he called aloud to the sentinel for admittance; but the orders of the latter were peremptory and allowed of no discretion. The soldier desired the Raja to be gone; upon which, expostulation being vain, he revealed himself as the prince. At this the soldier laughed [511]; but, tired of importunity, bade his sovereign “go to hell,” levelled his match-lock, and refused to call the officer on guard. The prince retired, and passed the night in a temple close at hand. At daybreak the gates were opened, and the soldiers were laughing at their comrade’s story of the night, when the Raja appeared. All were surprised, but most of all the sentinel, who, taking his sword and shield, placed them at his sovereign’s feet, and in a manly but respectful attitude awaited his decision. The prince raised him, and praising his fidelity, bestowed the dress he then wore upon him, besides a gift of money.

The Hara chronicler states, that Raja Bhim’s person was seamed with scars, and so fastidious was he, through the fear of incurring the imputation of vanity, that he never undressed in presence of his attendants. Nor was it till his death-wound at Kurwai that this singularity was explained, on one of his confidential servants expressing his surprise at the numerous scars; which brought this characteristic reply: “He who is born to govern Haras, and desires to preserve his land, must expect to get these: the proper post for a Rajput prince is ever at the head of his vassals.”

Raja Bhim was the first prince of Kotah who had the dignity of Panj-hazari, or ‘leader of five thousand,’ conferred upon him. He was likewise the first of his dynasty who bore the title of Maharao, or ‘Great Prince’; a title confirmed though not conferred by the paramount sovereign, but by the head of their own princely tribes, the Rana of Mewar. Previous to Gopinath of Bundi, whose issue are the great feudal chiefs of Haraoti, their titular appellation was Apji, which has the same import as herself (or rather himself), applied to highland chiefs of Scotland; but when Indarsal went to Udaipur, he procured the title of Maharaja for himself and his brothers; since which Apji has been applied to the holders of the secondary fiefs, the Madhani of Kotah. Raja Bhim left three sons, Arjun Singh, Shyam Singh, and Durjansal.

=Mahārāo Arjun Singh, A.D. 1720-24.=—Maharao Arjun married the sister of Madho Singh, ancestor of Zalim Singh Jhala; but died without issue, after four years’ rule. On his death, there arose a civil war respecting the succession, in which the vassals were divided. Clan encountered clan in the field of Udaipura, when the fate of Shyam Singh was sealed in his blood. It is said, the survivor would willingly have given up dominion to have restored his brother to life; that he cursed his ambitious rashness, and wept bitterly over the dead body. By these contentions the rich districts of Rampura, Bhanpura, and Kalapet, which [512] the king had taken from the ancient family and bestowed on Raja Bhim, were lost to the Haras, and regained by their ancient possessors.

=Mahārāo Durjansāl, A.D. 1724-56. The Marātha Invasion.=—Durjansal assumed ‘the rod’ in S. 1780 (A.D. 1724). His accession was acknowledged by Muhammad Shah, the last of the Timurian kings who deserved the appellation, and at whose court the prince of Kotah received the khilat and obtained the boon of preventing the slaughter of kine in every part of the Jumna frequented by his nation. Durjansal succeeded on the eve of an eventful period in the annals of his country. It was in his reign that the Mahrattas under Bajirao first invaded Hindustan. On this memorable occasion, they passed by the Taraj Pass, and skirting Haraoti on its eastern frontier, performed a service to Durjansal, by attacking and presenting to him the castle of Nahargarh, then held by a Musalman chief. It was in S. 1795[10.5.12] (A.D. 1739) that the first connexion between the Haras and the ‘Southrons’ took place; and this service of the Peshwa leader was a return for stores and ammunition necessary for his enterprise. But a few years only elapsed before this friendly act and the good understanding it induced were forgotten.

=Jaipur claims to control Kotah.=—We have recorded, in the Annals of Bundi, the attempts of the princes of Amber, who were armed with the power of the monarchy, to reduce the chiefs of Haraoti to the condition of vassals. This policy, originating with Jai Singh, was pursued by his successor, who drove the gallant Budh Singh into exile, to madness and death, though the means by which he effected it ultimately recoiled upon him, to his humiliation and destruction. Having, however, driven Budh Singh from Bundi, and imposed the condition of homage and tribute upon the creature of his installation, he desired to inflict his supremacy on Kotah. In this cause, in S. 1800, he invited the three great Mahratta leaders, with the Jats under Surajmall, when, after a severe conflict at Kotri, the city was invested. During three months, every effort was made, but in vain; and after cutting down the trees and destroying the gardens in the environs, they were compelled to decamp, the leader, Jai Apa Sindhia,[10.5.13] leaving one of his hands, which was carried off by a cannon-shot.

=Birth of Zālim Singh.=—Durjansal was nobly seconded by the courage and counsel of the Faujdar, or ‘commandant of the garrison,’ Himmat Singh, a Rajput of the Jhala tribe. It was through Himmat Singh that the negotiations were carried on, which added Nahargarh to Kotah; and to him were confided those in which Kotah was compelled to follow the [513] general denationalization, and become subservient to the Mahrattas. Between these two events, S. 1795 and S. 1800, Zalim Singh was born, a name of such celebrity that his biography would embrace all that remains to be told of the history of the Haras.

When Isari Singh was foiled, the brave Durjansal lent his assistance to replace the exiled Ummeda on the throne which his father had lost. But without Holkar’s aid, this would have been vain; and, in S. 1805 (A.D. 1749), the year of Ummeda’s restoration, Kotah was compelled to become tributary to the Mahrattas.

=Death and Character of Durjansāl.=—Durjansal added several places to his dominions. He took Phul-Barod from the Khichis, and attempted the fortress of Gugor, which was bravely defended by Balbhaddar in person, who created a league against the Hara composed of the chiefs of Rampura, Sheopur, and Bundi. The standard of Kotah was preserved from falling into the hands of the Khichis by the gallantry of Ummeda Singh of Bundi. The battle between the rival clans, both of Chauhan blood, was in S. 1810; and in three years more, Durjansal departed this life. He was a valiant prince, and possessed all the qualities of which the Rajput is enamoured; affability, generosity, and bravery. He was devoted to field-sports, especially the royal one of tiger-hunting; and had ramnas or preserves in every corner of his dominions (some of immense extent, with ditches and palisadoes, and sometimes circumvallations), in all of which he erected hunting-seats.

In these expeditions, which resembled preparations for war, he invariably carried the queens. These Amazonian ladies were taught the use of the matchlock, and being placed upon the terraced roofs of the hunting-seats, sent their shots at the forest-lord, when driven past their stand by the hunters. On one of these occasions the Jhala Faujdar was at the foot of the scaffolding; the tiger, infuriated with the uproar, approached him open-mouthed; but the prince had not yet given the word, and none dared to fire without his signal. The animal eyed his victim, and was on the point of springing, when the Jhala advanced his shield, sprung upon him, and with one blow of his sword laid him dead at his feet. The act was applauded by the prince and his court, and contributed not a little to the character he had already attained.

Durjansal left no issue. He was married to a daughter of the Rana of Mewar. Being often disappointed, and at length despairing of an heir, about three years before his death, he told the Rani it was time to think of adopting an heir to fill the gaddi, “for it was evident that the Almighty disapproved of the usurpation which changed the order of succession.” It will be remembered that Bishan Singh, son of Ram Singh [514], was set aside for refusing, in compliance with maternal fears, to accompany his father in the wars of the Deccan. When dispossessed of his birthright, he was established in the fief of Antha on the Chambal.[10.5.14] At the death of Durjansal, Ajit Singh, grandson of the disinherited prince, was lord of Antha, but he was in extreme old age. He had three sons, and the eldest, whose name of Chhattarsal revived ancient associations, was formally “placed in the lap of the Rani Mewari; the asis (blessing) was given; he was taught the names of his ancestors (being no longer regarded as the son of Ajit of Antha), Chhattar Singh, son of Durjansal, Bhimsinghgot, Ram Singh, Kishor Singh, etc., etc.,” and so on, to the fountain-head, Dewa Banga, and thence to Manikrae of Ajmer. Though the adoption was proclaimed, and all looked to Chhattarsal as the future lord of the Haras of Kotah, yet on the death of Durjan, the Jhala Faujdar took upon him to make an alteration in this important act, and he had power enough to effect it.

=Mahārāo Ajīt Singh, A.D. 1756-59. Mahārāo Chhattarsāl, A.D. 1759-66.=—The old chief of Antha was yet alive, and the Faujdar said, “It was contrary to nature that the son should rule and the father obey”; but doubtless other motives mingled with his piety, in which, besides self-interest, may have been a consciousness of the dangers inseparable from a minority. The only difficulty was to obtain the consent of the chief himself, then “fourscore years and upwards,” to abandon his peaceful castle on the Kali Sind for the cares of government. But the Faujdar prevailed; old Ajit was crowned, and survived his exaltation two years and a half. Ajit left three sons, Chhattarsal, Guman Singh, and Raj Singh. Chhattarsal was proclaimed the Maharao of the Haras. The celebrated Himmat Singh Jhala died before his accession, and his office of Faujdar was conferred upon his nephew, Zalim Singh.

At this epoch, Madho Singh, who had acceded to the throne of Amber on the suicide of his predecessor, Isari, instead of taking warning by example, prepared to put forth all his strength for the revival of those tributary claims upon the Haras, which had cost his brother his life. The contest was between Rajput and Rajput; the question at issue was supremacy on the one hand, and subserviency on the other, the sole plea for which was that the Kotah contingent had acted under the princes of Amber, when lieutenants of the empire. But the Haras held in utter scorn the attempt to compel this service in their individual capacity, in which they only recognized them as equals.

=Jaipur attacks Kotah.=—It was in S. 1817 (A.D. 1761) that the prince of Amber assembled all his clans to force the Haras to acknowledge themselves tributaries. The invasion of the Abdali[10.5.15] [515], which humbled the Mahrattas and put a stop to their pretensions to universal sovereignty, left the Rajputs to themselves. Madho Singh, in his march to Haraoti, assaulted Uniara, and added it to his territory. Thence he proceeded to Lakheri, which he took, driving out the crestfallen Southrons. Emboldened by this success, he crossed at the Pali Ghat, the point of confluence of the Par and the Chambal. The Hara chieftain of Sultanpur, whose duty was the defence of the ford, was taken by surprise; but, like a true Hara, he gathered his kinsmen outside his castle, and gave battle to the host. He made amends for his supineness, and bartered his life for his honour. It was remarked by the invaders, that, as he fell, his clenched hand grasped the earth, which afforded merriment to some, but serious reflection to those who knew the tribe, and who converted it into an omen “that even in death the Hara would cling to his land.” The victors, flushed with this fresh success, proceeded through the heart of Kotah until they reached Bhatwara,[10.5.16] where they found five thousand Haras, ek bap ka beta, all ‘children of one father,’ drawn up to oppose them. The numerical odds were fearful against Kotah; but the latter were defending their altars and their honour. The battle commenced with a desperate charge of the whole Kachhwaha horse, far more numerous than the brave legion of Kotah; but, too confident of success, they had tired their horses ere they joined. It was met by a dense mass, with perfect coolness, and the Haras remained unbroken by the shock. Fresh numbers came up; the infantry joined the cavalry, and the battle became desperate and bloody. It was at this moment that Zalim Singh made his debut. He was then twenty-one years of age, and had already, as the adopted son of Himmat Singh, “tied his turban on his head,” and succeeded to his post of Faujdar. While the battle was raging, Zalim dismounted, and at the head of his quota, fought on foot, and at the most critical moment obtained the merit of the victory, by the first display of that sagacity for which he has been so remarkable throughout his life [516].

Malhar Rao Holkar was encamped in their vicinity, with the remnant of his horde, but so crestfallen since the fatal day of Panipat,[10.5.17] that he feared to side with either. At this moment young Zalim, mounting his steed, galloped to the Mahratta, and implored him, if he would not fight, to move round and plunder the Jaipur camp: a hint which needed no repetition.

The little impression yet made on the Kotah band only required the report that “the camp was assaulted,” to convert the lukewarm courage of their antagonists into panic and flight: “the host of Jaipur fled, while the sword of the Hara performed tirath (pilgrimage) in rivers of blood.xxxx

The chiefs of Macheri, of Isarda, Watka, Barol, Achrol, with all the ots and awats of Amber, turned their backs on five thousand Haras of Kotah; for the Bundi troops, though assembled, did not join, and lost the golden opportunity to free its Kothris, or fiefs, from the tribute. Many prisoners were taken, and the five-coloured banner of Amber fell into the hands of the Haras, whose bard was not slow to turn the incident to account in the stanza, still repeated whenever he celebrates the victory of Bhatwara, and in which the star (tara) of Zalim prevailed:

_Jang Bhatwārā jīt Tārā Jālim Jhālā. Ring ek rang chīt, Chādyo rang pach-rang kē._[10.5.18]

“In the battle of Bhatwara, the star of Zalim was triumphant. In that field of strife (ringa) but one colour (rang) covered that of the five-coloured (panch-ranga) banner”: meaning that the Amber standard was dyed in blood.

The battle of Bhatwara decided the question of tribute, nor has the Kachhwaha since this day dared to advance the question of supremacy, which, as lieutenant of the empire, he desired to transfer to himself. In derision of this claim, ever since the day of Bhatwara, when the Haras assemble at their Champ de Mars to celebrate the annual military festival, they make a mock castle of Amber, which is demolished amidst shouts of applause.[10.5.19]

Chhattarsal survived his elevation and this success but a few years; and as he died without offspring, he was succeeded by his brother [517].

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Footnote 10.4.1:

[Pātan, about 25 miles E. of Būndi city: ‘Gainoli’ in the text is probably Gondoli, about 10 miles E. of Pātan.]

Footnote 10.4.2:

[A Sikh sect founded by Nānak, the Sikh Guru (A.D. 1469-1539) (Rose, Glossary, iii. 152 ff.).]

Footnote 10.4.3:

[About 10 miles N. of Būndi city.]

Footnote 10.4.4:

[Probably Sātur, with a temple of Rakt Dantika Devi, ‘she with the blood-stained teeth’ (Rājputāna Gazetteer, 1879, i. 240).]

Footnote 10.4.5:

I have made my salaam to the representative of Hanja, and should have graced his neck with a chaplet on every military festival, had I dwelt among the Haras.

Footnote 10.4.6:

Ummeda, ‘hope’; Singh, ‘a lion.’

Footnote 10.4.7:

[On the Nerbudda as a barrier see Vol. II. p. 971.]

Footnote 10.4.8:

[The Holkar family belonged to the Dhangar, or Marātha shepherd caste, taking their name from the village of Hol on the Nīra River in Poona District (Grant Duff 212; BG, xviii. Part ii. 244).]

Footnote 10.4.9:

See Annals of Mewar, Vol. I. p. 495.

Footnote 10.4.10:

[10 miles S. of Jaipur city.]

Footnote 10.4.11:

As in those days when Mahratta spoliation commenced, a joint-stock purse was made for all such acquisitions, so Patan was divided into shares, of which the Peshwa had one, and Sindhia another; but the Peshwa’s share remained nominal, and the revenue was carried to account by Holkar for the services of the Poona State. In the general pacification of A.D. 1817, this long-lost and much-cherished district was once more incorporated with Bundi, to the unspeakable gratitude and joy of its prince and people. In effecting this for the grandson of Ummeda, the Author secured for himself a gratification scarcely less than his.

Footnote 10.4.12:

[Āīn, ii. 102, 274 f. Jarrett writes Sūi Sūpar or Sūi Sopar.]

Footnote 10.4.13:

[Āīn, ii. 132 f.]

Footnote 10.4.14:

The universal arbitrator, Zalim Singh of Kotah, having undertaken to satisfy them, and save them from the annual visitations of the Jaipur troops, withdrew the proper allegiance of Indargarh, Balwan, and Antardah to himself. The British government, in ignorance of these historical facts, and not desirous to disturb the existing state of things, were averse to hear the Bundi claims for the restoration of her proper authority over these her chief vassals. With all his gratitude for the restoration of his political existence, the brave and good Bishan Singh could not suppress a sigh when the author said that Lord Hastings refused to go into the question of the Kothris, who had thus transferred their allegiance to Zalim Singh of Kotah. In their usual metaphorical style, he said, with great emphasis and sorrow, “My wings remain broken.” It would be a matter of no difficulty to negotiate the claims of Jaipur, and cause the regent of Kotah to forgo his interposition, which would be attended with no loss of any kind to him, but would afford unspeakable benefit and pride to Bundi, which has well deserved the boon at our hands.

Footnote 10.4.15:

[About 30 miles N.E. of Būndi city: for Bijaiseni Māta see Vol. II. p. 1193.]

Footnote 10.4.16:

The laws of revenge are dreadfully absolute: had the sons of Deo Singh survived, the feud upon their liege lord would have been entailed with their estate. It is a nice point for a subject to balance between fidelity to his prince, and a father’s feud, bap ka vair.

Footnote 10.4.17:

The queens’ apartments.

Footnote 10.4.18:

[In early Hindu times a similar performance of mock funereal rites took place in the event of contumacious disregard of the rules of caste (Barnett, Antiquities of India, 120).]

Footnote 10.4.19:

See p. 1463.

Footnote 10.4.20:

[In the island of Pāmban, Madura District, Madras (IGI, xxi. 173 ff.).]

Footnote 10.4.21:

[Sītakund, in Chittagong District, Bengal (ibid. xxiii. 50).]

Footnote 10.4.22:

[Jagannāth, not “a Moloch”: religious suicides under his car are infrequent (Hunter, Orissa, i. 133 f.).]

Footnote 10.4.23:

[Krishna, at Dwārka.]

Footnote 10.4.24:

[Kāli, Pārvati, Māta, or Nāni, not Agnidevi, is worshipped at Hinglāj (IGI, xiii. 142).]

Footnote 10.4.25:

[See Vol. II. p. 1170.]

Footnote 10.4.27:

[Perhaps the town of that name in the Sahāranpur District, United Provinces.]

Footnote 10.4.28:

[Sukhpāl, “happiness-protecting,” a luxurious litter, like the sukhāsan or mahādol (p. 1349).]

Footnote 10.4.29:

[For a full account of the disastrous retreat of Hon. Lieut.-Col. William Monson see Mill, Hist. of India, vol. iii. (1817) 672 ff. He was son of John, 2nd Baron Monson: born in 1760: went to India with the 52nd Regiment in 1780. He shared in the attack on Seringapatam in 1792: in the Marātha war of 1803 commanded a brigade under Lord Lake: led the storming party, and was seriously wounded at the capture of Aligarh, 4th September 1803. After his famous retreat to Agra in 1804 he was again employed under Lord Lake in his campaign against Holkar: was present at the battle of Dīg, 14th November 1804,and led the last of the four assaults on Bharatpur in 1805. He returned to England in 1806, and was elected member for Lincoln. He died in December 1807. (C. E. Buckland, Dict. Indian Biography, s.v.).]

Footnote 10.4.30:

The Author had the distinguished happiness of concluding the treaty with Bundi in February 1818. His previous knowledge of her deserts was not disadvantageous to her interests, and he assumed the responsibility of concluding it upon the general principles which were to regulate our future policy as determined in the commencement of the war; and setting aside the views which trenched upon these in our subsequent negotiations. These general principles laid it down as a sine qua non that the Mahrattas should not have a foot of land in Rajputana west of the Chambal; and he closed the door to recantation by sealing the reunion in perpetuity to Bundi, of Patan and all land so situated. [In 1847, with the consent of Sindhia, his share of the Pātan district was made over in perpetuity to Būndi on payment of a further sum of Rs. 80,000, to be credited to Gwalior. Under the treaty of 1860 with Sindhia the sovereignty of this tract was transferred to the British Government, from whom Būndi now holds it as a perpetual fief, subject to the payment of Rs. 80,000 per annum, in addition to the tribute of Rs. 40,000 payable under the treaty of 1818 (IGI. ix. 81 f.).]

Footnote 10.4.31:

[Risāla properly means ‘a letter, account.’ Risāladār has, in the British service, the special sense of a native officer commanding a troop of cavalry (Yule, Hobson-Jobson, 2nd ed. 761 f.).]

Footnote 10.4.32:

The truck system, called parna, is well known in Rajputana.

Footnote 10.4.33:

And from the Author with the rest, whose nephew he was by courtesy and adoption. [Rām Singh succeeded his father in 1821. He behaved with apathy and lukewarmness in the Mutiny of 1857, but he was given the right of adoption in 1862, and died in 1889. He was “the most conservative prince in conservative Rājputāna, and a grand specimen of a true Rājput gentleman.” He was succeeded by his son Mahārāo Rāja Raghbīr Singh (IGI. ix. 82).]

Footnote 10.5.1:

[See Elliot-Dowson vi. 395, 418.]

Footnote 10.5.2:

[Rājputs in early days used to intermarry and eat with Bhīls, who were regarded, not as a menial tribe, but as lords of the soil (Russell, Tribes and Castes Central Provinces, ii. 281).]

Footnote 10.5.3:

He held also the districts of Dah and Gura in grant direct of the empire.

Footnote 10.5.4:

[‘The defile of Mukund,’ also written Mukunddwāra, ‘door or gate of Mukund,’ about 25 miles S. of Kotah city.]

Footnote 10.5.5:

[The extra-mural suburb of a fortress (Yule, Hobson-Jobson, 2nd ed. 702).]

Footnote 10.5.6:

[15th April 1658 (Jadunath Sarkar, Hist. of Aurangzib, ii. 1 ff.).]

Footnote 10.5.7:

A descendant of his covered Monson’s retreat even before this general reached the Mukunddarra Pass, and fell defending the ford of the Amjar, disdaining to retreat. His simple cenotaph marks the spot where in the gallant old style this chief “spread his carpet” to meet the Deccani host, while a British commander, at the head of a force capable of sweeping one end of India to the other, fled! The Author will say more of this in his Personal Narrative, having visited the spot.

Footnote 10.5.8:

This is one more of the numerous inexplicable claims which the British Government has had to decide upon, since it became the universal arbitrator. Neither party understanding their origin, the difficulty of a just decision must be obvious. This sets it at rest. [Tankhwāh, ‘wages, an assignment of revenue.’ For its technical sense tankhwāh jāgīr see Rogers-Beveridge, Memoirs of Jahāngīr, 74.]

Footnote 10.5.9:

[Kamaru-d-dīn, Āsaf Jāh, son of Ghāziu-d-dīn Khān Jang, born 1671, received the title of Chīn Qilīch Khān in 1690-91; governor of Morādābād and Mālwa under Farrukhsīyar; gained supreme power in the Deccan in 1720; died May 22, 1748, the present Nizāms of Haidarābād being his successors (Manucci iv. 140; Grant Duff, History of the Mahrattas, 190; Elliot-Dowson vii. passim).]

Footnote 10.5.10:

[On the river Betwa, about 45 miles S.S.W. of Lalitpur.]

Footnote 10.5.11:

[See p. 1449.]

Footnote 10.5.12:

In this year, when Bajirao invaded Hindustan, passing through Haraoti, Himmat Singh Jhala was Faujdar of Kotah. In that year Sheo Singh, and in the succeeding the celebrated Zalim Singh, was born.

Footnote 10.5.13:

[Jai Āpa Sindhia succeeded his father, Rānoji Sindhia. His dates are uncertain, but he was probably killed at Nāgor in 1759 (Beale, Dict. Oriental Biography, s.v.; IGI, xii. 421; Grant Duff, Hist. of the Mahrattas, 270).]

Footnote 10.5.14:

[Antha is not on the Chambal: it is about 25 miles E. of Kotah city.]

Footnote 10.5.15:

[Ahmad Shāh Durrāni defeated the Marāthas at Pānipat, 7th January 1761.]

Footnote 10.5.16:

[Near Māngrol, about 40 miles N.E. of Kotah city.]

Footnote 10.5.17:

It is singular enough, that Zalim Singh was born in the year of Nadir Shah’s invasion, and made his political entrée in that of the Abdali.

Footnote 10.5.18:

[Dr. Tessitori, whose version has been followed, writes: “The second line is quite wrong, and I should not be surprised if it was made up by Col. Tod’s Pandit. I believe there was some other word in place of tārā.”]

Footnote 10.5.19:

[See Vols. II. p. 1199, III. p. 1471.]

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Chapter 6

=Mahārāo Gumān Singh, A.D. 1766-71.=—Guman Singh, in S. 1822 (A.D. 1766), ascended the gaddi of his ancestors. He was in the prime of manhood, full of vigour and intellect, and well calculated to contend with the tempests collecting from the south, ready to pour on the devoted lands of Rajputana. But one short lustrum of rule was all that fate had ordained for him, when he was compelled to resign his rod of power into the hands of an infant. But ere we reach this period, we must retrace our steps, and introduce more prominently the individual whose biography is the future history of this State; for Zalim Singh is Kotah, his name being not only indissolubly linked with hers in every page of her existence, but incorporated with that of every State of Rajputana for more than half a century. He was the primum mobile of the region he inhabited, a sphere far too confined for his genius, which required a wider field for its display, and might have controlled the destinies of nations.

=Zālim Singh Jhāla.=—Zalim Singh is a Rajput of the Jhala tribe. He was born in S. 1796 (A.D. 1740), an ever memorable epoch (as already observed) in the history of India, when the victorious Nadir Shah led his hordes into her fertile soil, and gave the finishing blow to the dynasty of Timur. But for this event, its existence might have been protracted, though its recovery was hopeless: the principle of decay had been generated by the policy of Aurangzeb. Muhammad Shah was at this time emperor of India,[10.6.1] and the valiant Durjansal sat on the throne of Kotah. From this period (A.D. 1740) five princes have passed away and a sixth has been enthroned; and, albeit one of these reigns endured for half a century, Zalim Singh has outlived them all,[10.6.2] and though blind, his [518] moral perceptions are as acute as on the day of Bhatwara. What a chain of events does not this protracted life embrace! An empire then dazzling in glory, and now mouldering in the dust. At its opening, the highest noble of Britain would have stood at a reverential distance from the throne of Timur, in the attitude of a suppliant, and now—

None so poor To do him reverence.

To do anything like justice to the biography of one who for so long a period was a prominent actor in the scene, is utterly impossible; this consideration, however, need not prevent our attempting a sketch of this consummate politician, who can scarcely find a parallel in the varied page of history.

The ancestors of Zalim Singh were petty chieftains of Halwad,[10.6.3] in the district of Jhalawar, a subdivision of the Saurashtra peninsula. Bhao Singh was a younger son of this family, who, with a few adherents, left the paternal roof to seek fortune amongst the numerous conflicting armies that ranged India during the contests for supremacy amongst the sons of Aurangzeb. His son, Madho Singh, came to Kotah when Raja Bhim was in the zenith of his power. Although he had only twenty-five horse in his train, it is a proof of the respectability of the Jhala, that the prince disdained not his alliance, and even married his son, Arjun, to the young adventurer’s sister. Not long after, the estate of Nanta was entailed upon him, with the confidential post of Faujdar, which includes not only the command of the troops, but that of the castle, the residence of the sovereign. This family connexion gave an interest to his authority, and procured him the respectful title of Mama,[10.6.4] from the younger branches of the prince’s family, an epithet which habit has continued to his successors, who are always addressed Mama Sahib, ‘Sir, Uncle!’ Madan Singh succeeded his father in the office of Faujdar. He had two sons, Himmat Singh and Prithi Singh.

Bhao Singh, left Halwad with twenty-five horse. │ Madho Singh. │ Madan Singh. │ ┌─────────────┴──────────┐ │ │ Himmat Singh. Prithi Singh. │ ┌───────────┴──────────┐ │ │ Sheo Singh, Zalim Singh, born in S. 1795. born S. 1796. │ Madho Singh, present regent. │ Bapa Lall, twenty-one years of age [519].

The office of Faujdar, which, like all those of the east, had become hereditary, was advantageously filled by Himmat Singh, whose bravery and skill were conspicuous on many trying emergencies. He directed, or at least seconded, the defence of Kotah, when first assailed by the combined Mahratta and Jaipur troops, and conducted the treaty which made her tributary to the former, till at length so identified was his influence with that of the Haras, that with their concurrence he restored the ancient line of succession. Though neither the prince, Durjansal, nor his Major Domo, had much merit in this act, it was made available by Zalim Singh in support of his pretensions to power, and in proof of the ingratitude of his sovereign, “whose ancestors recovered their rights at the instigation of his own.” But Zalim Singh had no occasion to go back to the virtues of his ancestors for an argument on which to base his own claims to authority. He could point to the field of Bhatwara, where his bravery and skill mainly aided to vanquish the enemies of Kotah, and to crush for ever those arrogant pretensions to supremacy which the Jaipur State strained every nerve to establish.

=Zālim Singh retires to Mewār.=—It was not long after the accession of Guman Singh to the sceptre of the Haras, that the brave and handsome Major Domo, having dared to cross his master’s path in love, lost his favour, and the office of Faujdar, which he had attained in his twenty-first year. It is probable he evinced little contrition for his offence, for the confiscation of Nanta soon followed. This estate, on the west bank of the Chambal, still enjoyed as a fief in perpetuity by the Jhala family, was the original appanage of the Kotah State when a younger branch of Bundi. From hence may be inferred the consideration in which the Jhala ancestor of our subject was held, which conferred upon him the heirloom of the house. Both the office and the estate thereto attached, thus resumed, were bestowed upon the maternal uncle of the prince, Bhopat Singh, of the Bhangrot tribe. By this step, the door of reconciliation being closed against the young Jhala, he determined to abandon the scene of his disgrace, and court fortune elsewhere. He was not long in determining the path he should pursue: Amber was shut against him, and Marwar held out no field for his ambition. Mewar was at hand, and a chief of his own tribe and nation then ruled the councils of Rana Arsi, who had lately succeeded to power, but a power paralysed by faction and by a pretender to the throne. The Jhala chieftain of Delwara, one of the sixteen great barons of Mewar, had headed the party which placed his sovereign on the throne; and he felt no desire to part with the influence which this service gave him. He entertained [520] foreign guards about the person of his prince, and distributed estates at pleasure among those who supported his measures; while from the crown domain, or from the estates of those who were hostile to his influence, he seized upon lands, which doubled his possessions. Such was the court of Rana Arsi, when the ex-Major Domo of Kotah came to seek a new master. His reputation at once secured him a reception, and his talents for finesse, already developed, made the Rana confide to him the subjection in which he was held by his own vassal-subject. It was then that Zalim, a youth and a stranger, showed that rare union of intrepidity and caution which has made him the wonder of the age. By a most daring plan, which cost the Delwara chief his life, in open day and surrounded by attendants, the Rana was released from this odious tutelage. For this service, the title of Raj Rana[10.6.5] and the estate of Chitarkhera on the southern frontier were conferred upon Zalim, who was now a noble of the second rank in Mewar. The rebellion still continued, however, and the pretender and his faction sought the aid of the Mahrattas; but under the vigorous councils of Zalim, seconded by the spirit of the Rana, an army was collected which gave battle to the combined rebels and Mahrattas. The result of this day has already been related.[10.6.6] The Rana was discomfited and lost the flower of his nobles when victory was almost assured to them, and Zalim was left wounded and a prisoner in the field. He fell into the hands of Trimbakrao, the father of the celebrated Ambaji Inglia, and the friendship then formed materially governed the future actions of his life.

=Zālim Singh returns to Kotah.=—The loss of this battle left the Rana and Mewar at the mercy of the conqueror. Udaipur was invested, and capitulated, after a noble defence, upon terms which perpetuated her thraldom. Zalim, too wise to cling to the fortunes of a falling house, instead of returning to Udaipur, bent his steps to Kotah, in company with the Pandit, Lalaji Balal, the faithful partaker of his future fortunes. Zalim foresaw the storm about to spread over Rajwara, and deemed himself equal to guide and avert it from Kotah, while the political levity of Mewar gave him little hopes of success at that court.

Raja Guman, however, had neither forgotten nor forgiven his competitor, and refused to receive him: but in no wise daunted, he trusted to his address, and thrust himself unbidden on the prince. The moment he chose proved favourable; and he was not only pardoned, but employed [521].

=Gallant Death of Mādho Singh.=—The Mahrattas had now reached the southern frontier, and invested the castle of Bakhani,[10.6.7] which was defended by four hundred Haras of the Sawant clan,[10.6.8] under its chief, Madho Singh. The enemy had been foiled in repeated attempts to escalade, and it furnishes a good idea of the inadequate means of the ‘Southrons’ for the operations of a siege, when their besieging apparatus was confined to an elephant, whose head was the substitute for a petard, to burst open the gate. Repeated instances, however, prove that this noble animal is fully equal to the task, and would have succeeded on this occasion, had not the intrepidity of the Hara chieftain prompted one of those desperate exploits which fill the pages of their annals. Armed with his dagger, Madho Singh leaped from the walls upon the back of the elephant, stabbed the rider, and with repeated blows felled the animal to the earth. That he should escape could not be expected; but his death and the noble deed kindled such enthusiasm, that his clan threw wide the gate, and rushing sword in hand amidst the multitude, perished to a man. But they died not unavenged: thirteen hundred of the bravest of the Mahrattas accompanied them to Suryaloka, the warrior’s heaven. The invaders continued their inroad, and invested Sohet: but the prince sent his commands to the garrison to preserve their lives for Kotah, and not again sacrifice them, as the point of honour had been nobly maintained. Accordingly, at midnight, they evacuated the place; but whether from accident or treachery, the grass jungle which covered their retreat was set fire to, and cast so resplendent a light, that the brave garrison had to fight their way against desperate odds, and many were slain. Malharrao Holkar, who had been greatly disheartened at the loss sustained at Bakhani, was revived at this success, and prepared to follow it up. Raja Guman deemed it advisable to try negotiation, and the Bhangrot Faujdar was sent with full powers to treat with the Mahratta commander; but he failed and returned.

=Zālim Singh appointed Guardian of the Heir.=—Such was the moment chosen by young Zalim to force himself into the presence of his offended prince. In all probability he mentioned the day at Bhatwara, where by his courage, and still more by his tact, he released Kotah from the degradation of being subordinate to Amber; and that it was by his influence with the same Malharrao Holkar, who now threatened Kotah, he was enabled to succeed. He was invested with full powers; the negotiation was renewed, and terminated successfully: for the sum of six lakhs of rupees the Mahratta leader withdrew his horde from the territory of Kotah. His [522] prince’s favour was regained, his estate restored, and the unsuccessful negotiator lost the office of Faujdar, into which young Zalim was reinducted. But scarcely had he recovered his rights, before Guman Singh was taken grievously ill, and all hopes of his life were relinquished. To whom could the dying prince look at such a moment, as guardian of his infant son, but the person whose skill had twice saved the State from peril? He accordingly proclaimed his will to his chiefs, and with all due solemnity placed Ummed Singh, then ten years of age, ‘in the lap’ of Zalim Singh.

=Mahārāo Ummed Singh, A.D. 1771-1819.=—Ummed Singh was proclaimed in S. 1827 (A.D. 1771). On the day of inauguration, the ancient Rajput custom of the tika-daur was revived, and the conquest of Kelwara[10.6.9] from the house of Narwar marked with éclat the accession of the Maharao of the Haras of Kotah, and gave early indication that the genius of the regent would not sleep in his office of protector. More than half a century of rule, amidst the most appalling vicissitudes, has amply confirmed the prognostication.

The retention of a power thus acquired, it may be concluded, could never be effected without severity, nor the vigorous authority, wielded throughout a period beyond the ordinary limits of mortality, be sustained without something more potent than persuasion. Still, when we consider Zalim’s perilous predicament, and the motives to perpetual reaction, his acts of severity are fewer than might have been expected, or than occur in the course of usurpation under similar circumstances. Mature reflection initiated all his measures, and the sagacity of their conception was only equalled by the rapidity of their execution. Whether the end in view was good or evil, nothing was ever half-done; no spark was left to excite future conflagration. Even this excess of severity was an advantage; it restrained the repetition of what, whether morally right or wrong, he was determined not to tolerate. To pass a correct judgment on these acts is most difficult. What in one case was a measure of barbarous severity, appears in another to have been one indispensable to the welfare of the State. But this is not the place to discuss the character or principles of the regent; let us endeavour to unfold both in the exhibition of those acts which have carried him through the most tempestuous sea of political convulsion in the whole history of India. When nought but revolution and rapine stalked through the land, when State after State was crumbling into dust, or sinking into the abyss of ruin, he guided the vessel entrusted to his care safely through all dangers, adding yearly to her riches, until he placed her in security under the protection of Britain [523].

=Zālim Singh Regent of Kotah.=—Scarcely had Zalim assumed the protectorate, when he was compelled to make trial of those Machiavellian powers which have never deserted him, in order to baffle the schemes devised to oppose him. The duties of Faujdar, to which he had hitherto been restricted, were entirely of a military nature; though, as it involved the charge of the castle, in which the sovereign resided, it brought him in contact with his councils. This, however, afforded no plea for interference in the Diwani, or civil duties of the government, in which, ever since his own accession to power, he had a coadjutor in Rae Akhairam, a man of splendid talents, and who had been Diwan or prime minister throughout the reign of Chhattarsal and the greater part of that of his successor. To his counsel is mainly ascribed the advantages gained by Kotah throughout these reigns; yet did he fall a sacrifice to jealousies a short time before the death of his prince, Guman Singh. It is not affirmed that they were the suggestions of young Zalim; but Akhairam’s death left him fewer competitors to dispute the junction in his own person of the civil as well as military authority of the State. Still he had no slight opposition to overcome, in the very opening of his career. The party which opposed the pretensions of Zalim Singh to act as regent of the State, asserting that no such power had been bequeathed by the dying prince, consisted of his cousin, the Maharaja Sarup Singh, and the Bhangrot chief, whose disgrace brought Zalim into power. There was, besides, the Dhabhai Jaskaran, foster-brother to the prince, a man of talent and credit, whose post, being immediately about his person, afforded opportunities for carrying their schemes into effect.

=Murder of Sarūp Singh.=—Such was the powerful opposition arrayed against the protector in the very commencement of his career. The conspiracy was hardly formed, however, before it was extinguished by the murder of the Maharaja by the hands of the Dhabhai, the banishment of the assassin, and the flight of the Bhangrot. The rapidity with which this drama was enacted struck terror into all. The gaining over the foster-brother, the making him the instrument of punishment, and banishing him for the crime, acted like a spell, and appeared such a masterpiece of daring and subtilty combined, that no one thought himself secure. There had been no cause of discontent between the Maharaja and the Dhabhai, to prompt revenge; yet did the latter, in the glare of open day, rush upon him in the garden of Brajvilas,[10.6.10] and with a blow of his scimitar end his days. The regent was the loudest in execrating the author of the crime, whom he instantly seized and confined, and soon after expelled from Haraoti. But however well acted, this dissimulation passed not with the world; and, whether innocent or guilty, they lay to Zalim’s charge the plot for the murder of the Maharaja. The Dhabhai died in exile and contempt at [524] Jaipur; and in abandoning him to his fate without provision, Zalim, if guilty of the deed, showed at once his knowledge and contempt of mankind. Had he added another murder to the first, and in the fury of an affected indignation become the sole depository of his secret, he would only have increased the suspicion of the world; but in turning the culprit loose on society to proclaim his participation in the crime, he neutralized the reproach by destroying the credibility of one who was a self-convicted assassin when he had it in his power to check its circulation. In order to unravel this tortuous policy, it is necessary to state that the Dhabhai was seduced from the league by the persuasion of the regent, who insinuated that the Maharaja formed plans inimical to the safety of the young prince, and that his own elevation was the true object of his hostility to the person entrusted with the charge of the minor sovereign. Whatever truth there might be in this, which might be pleaded in justification of the foul crime, it was attended with the consequences he expected. Immediately after, the remaining member of the adverse junta withdrew, and at the same time many of the nobles abandoned their estates and their country. Zalim evinced his contempt of their means of resistance by granting them free egress from the kingdom, and determined to turn their retreat to account. They went to Jaipur and to Jodhpur; but troubles prevailed everywhere; the princes could with difficulty keep the prowling Mahratta from their own doors, and possessed neither funds nor inclination to enter into foreign quarrels for objects which would only increase their already superabundant difficulties. The event turned out as Zalim anticipated; and the princes, to whom the refugees were suitors, had a legitimate excuse in the representations of the regent, who described them as rebels to their sovereign and parties to designs hostile to his rule. Some died abroad, and some, sick of wandering in a foreign land dependent on its bounty, solicited as a boon that “their ashes might be burned with their fathers'.” In granting this request, Zalim evinced that reliance on himself, which is the leading feature of his character. He permitted their return, but received them as traitors who had abandoned their prince and their country, and it was announced to them, as an act of clemency, that they were permitted to live upon a part of their estates; which, as they had been voluntarily abandoned, were sequestrated and belonged to the crown.

=Zālim Singh’s Triumph over his Opponents.=—Such was Zalim Singh’s triumph over the first faction formed against his assumption of the full powers of regent of Kotah. Not only did the aristocracy feel humiliated, but were subjugated by the rod of iron held over them; and no opportunity [525] was ever thrown away of crushing this formidable body, which in these States too often exerts its pernicious influence to the ruin of society. The thoughtlessness of character so peculiar to Rajputs, furnished abundant opportunities for the march of an exterminating policy, and, at the same time, afforded reasons which justified it.

The next combination was more formidable; it was headed by Deo Singh of Aton,[10.6.11] who enjoyed an estate of sixty thousand rupees rent. He strongly fortified his castle, and was joined by all the discontented nobles, determined to get rid of the authority which crushed them. The regent well knew the spirits he had to cope with, and that the power of the State was insufficient. By means of ‘the help of Moses’ (such is the interpretation of Musa Madad, his auxiliary on this occasion), this struggle against his authority also only served to confirm it; and their measures recoiled on the heads of the feudality. The condition of society since the dissolution of the imperial power was most adverse to the institutions of Rajwara, the unsupported valour of whose nobles was no match for the mercenary force which their rulers could now always command from those bands, belonging to no government, but roaming whither they listed over this vast region, in search of pay or plunder. The ‘help of Moses’ was the leader of one of these associations—a name well known in the history of that agitated period; and he not only led a well-appointed infantry brigade, but had an efficient park attached to it, which was brought to play against Aton. It held out several months, the garrison meanwhile making many sallies, which it required the constant vigilance of Moses to repress. At length, reduced to extremity, they demanded and obtained an honourable capitulation, being allowed to retire unmolested whither they pleased. Such was the termination of this ill-organized insurrection, which involved almost all the feudal chiefs of Kotah in exile and ruin, and strengthened the regent, or as he would say, the state, by the escheat of the sequestrated property. Deo Singh of Aton, the head of this league, died in exile. After several years of lamentation in a foreign soil for the janam bhum, the ‘land of their birth,’ the son pleaded for pardon, though his heart denied all crime, and was fortunate enough to obtain his recall, and the estate of Bamolia, of fifteen thousand rupees rent. The inferior members of the opposition were treated with the same contemptuous clemency; they were admitted into Kotah, but deprived of the power of doing mischief. What stronger proof of the political courage of the regent can be adduced, than his shutting up such combustible materials within the social edifice, and even living amongst and with them, as if he deserved their friendship rather than their hatred [526].

In combating such associations, and thus cementing his power, time passed away. His marriage with one of the distant branches of the royal house of Mewar, by whom he had his son and successor Madho Singh, gave Zalim an additional interest in the affairs of that disturbed State, of which he never lost sight amidst the troubles which more immediately concerned him. The motives which, in S. 1847 (A.D. 1791), made him consider for a time the interests of Kotah as secondary to those of Mewar, are related at length in the annals of that State;[10.6.12] and the effect of this policy on the prosperity of Kotah, drained of its wealth in the prosecution of his views, will appear on considering the details of his system. Referring the reader, therefore, to the Annals of Mewar, we shall pass from S. 1847 to S. 1856 (A.D. 1800), when another attempt was made by the chieftains to throw off the iron yoke of the protector.

=Conspiracy against Zālim Singh.=—Many attempts at assassination had been tried, but his vigilance baffled them all; though no bold enterprise was hazarded since the failure of that (in S. 1833) which ended in the death and exile of its contriver, the chieftain of Aton, until the conspiracy of Mohsen, in S. 1856, just twenty years ago.[10.6.13] Bahadur Singh, of Mohsen, a chieftain of ten thousand rupees’ annual rent, was the head of this plot, which included every chief and family whose fortunes had been annihilated by the exterminating policy of the regent. It was conducted with admirable secrecy; if known at all, it was to Zalim alone, and not till on the eve of accomplishment. The proscription-list was long; the regent, his family, his friend and counsellor the Pandit Lalaji, were amongst the victims marked for sacrifice. The moment for execution was that of his proceeding to hold his court, in open day; and the mode was by a coup de main whose very audacity would guarantee success. It is said that he was actually in progress to darbar, when the danger was revealed. The paegah or ‘select troop of horse’ belonging to his friend, and always at hand, was immediately called in and added to the guards about his person; thus the conspirators were assailed when they deemed the prey rushing into the snare they had laid. The surprise was complete; many were slain; some were taken, others fled. Amongst the latter was the head of the conspiracy, Bahadur Singh, who gained the Chambal, and took refuge in the temple of the tutelary deity of the Haras at Patan. But he mistook the character of the regent when he supposed that either the sanctuary (sarana) of Keshorai,[10.6.14] or the respect due to the prince in whose dominions (Bundi) it lay, could shield him from his fate. He was dragged forth, and expiated his crime or folly with his life [527].

According to the apologists of the regent, this act was one of just retribution, since it was less to defend himself and his immediate interests than those of the prince whose power and existence were threatened by the insurrection, which had for its object his deposal and the elevation of one of his brothers. The members of the Maharao’s family at this period were his uncle Raj Singh, and his two brothers, Gordhan and Gopal Singh. Since the rebellion of Aton, these princes had been under strict surveillance; but after this instance of reaction, in which their names were implicated as having aspired to supplant their brother, a more rigorous seclusion was adopted; and the rest of their days was passed in solitary confinement. Gordhan, the elder, died about ten years after his incarceration; the younger, Gopal, lived many years longer; but neither from that day quitted the walls of their prison, until death released them from this dreadful bondage. Kaka Raj Singh lived to extreme old age; but, as he took no part in these turmoils, he remained unmolested, having the range of the temples in the city, beyond which limits he had no wish to stray.

We may in this place introduce a slip from the genealogical tree of the forfeited branch of Bishan Singh, but which, in the person of his grandson Ajit, regained its rights and the gaddi. The fate of this family will serve as a specimen of the policy pursued by the regent towards the feudal interests of Kotah. It is appalling, when thus marshalled, to view the sacrifices which the maintenance of power will demand in these feudal States, where individual will is law.

The plots against the existence and authority of the Protector were of every description, and no less than eighteen are enumerated, which his never-slumbering vigilance detected and baffled. The means were force, open and concealed, poison, the dagger—until at length he became sick of precaution. “I could not always be on my guard,” he would say. But the most dangerous of all was a female conspiracy, got up in the palace, and which discovers an amusing mixture of tragedy and farce, although his habitual wariness would not have saved him from being its victim, had he not been aided by the boldness of a female champion, from a regard for the personal attractions of the handsome regent. He was suddenly sent for by the queen-mother of one of the young princes, and while waiting in an antechamber, expecting every instant ‘the voice behind the curtain,’ he found himself encircled by a band of Amazonian Rajputnis, armed with sword and dagger, from whom, acquainted as he was with the nerve, physical and moral, of his countrywomen, he saw no hope of salvation [528]. Fortunately, they were determined not to be satisfied merely with his death, they put him upon his trial; and the train of interrogation into all the acts of his life was going on, when his preserving angel, in the shape of the chief attendant of the dowager queen, a woman of masculine strength and courage, rushed in, and, with strong dissembled anger, drove him forth amidst a torrent of abuse for presuming to be found in such a predicament.

While bathing, and during the heat of the chase, his favourite pursuit, similar attempts have been made, but they always recoiled on the heads of his enemies. Yet, notwithstanding the multitude of these plots, which would have unsettled the reason of many, he never allowed a blind suspicion to add to the victims of his policy; and although, for his personal security, he was compelled to sleep in an iron cage, he never harboured unnecessary alarm, that parent of crime and blood in all usurpations. His lynx-like eye saw at once who was likely to invade his authority, and these knew their peril from the vigilance of a system which never relaxed. Entire self-reliance, a police such as perhaps no country in the world could equal, establishments well paid, services liberally rewarded, character and talent in each department of the State, himself keeping a strict watch over all, and trusting implicitly to none, with a daily personal supervision of all this complicated state-machinery—such was the system which surmounted every peril, and not only maintained but increased the power and political reputation of Zalim Singh, amidst the storms of war, rapine, treason, and political convulsions of more than half a century’s duration.

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Footnote 10.6.1:

[The Empire was now breaking up, and his dominions were gradually reduced to the region held by the later Tughlak dynasty.]

Footnote 10.6.2:

This was written in A.D. 1821, when Maharao Kishor Singh [died 1828] succeeded.

Footnote 10.6.3:

[Formerly capital of Dhrāngadhra State in Kāthiāwār (IGI, xiii. 13).]

Footnote 10.6.4:

Māmā is ‘maternal uncle’; Kākā, ‘paternal uncle.’

Footnote 10.6.5:

Not Rāna, which he puts upon his seal.

Footnote 10.6.6:

See Vol. I. p. 500.

Footnote 10.6.7:

[About 60 miles S. of Kotah city.]

Footnote 10.6.8:

The reader is requested to refer to p. 1483, for evidence of the loyalty and heroism of Sawant Hara, the founder of this clan.

Footnote 10.6.9:

[About 70 miles E. of Kotah city.]

Footnote 10.6.10:

[Brajvilās, the ‘garden of enjoyment,’ like that in which Krishna sported with the Gopis in the land of Braj or Mathura.]

Footnote 10.6.11:

[About 40 miles S.E. of Kotah city.]

Footnote 10.6.12:

Vol. I. p. 516.

Footnote 10.6.13:

This was written at Kotah, in S. 1876 (A.D. 1820).

Footnote 10.6.14:

[Kesavarāē, Krishna.]

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Chapter 7

=Legislation of Zālim Singh.=—We are now to examine the Protector in another point of view, as the legislator and manager of the State whose concerns he was thus determined to rule. For a series of years Kotah was but the wet-nurse to the child of his ambition, a design upon Mewar [529], which engulfed as in a vortex all that oppression could extort from the industry of the people confided to his charge. From this first acquaintance with the court of the Rana, in S. 1827 to the year 1856, he never relinquished the hope of extending the same measure of authority over that State which he exerted in his own. To the prosecution of this policy Haraoti was sacrificed, and the cultivator lowered to the condition of a serf. In the year 1840, oppression was at its height; the impoverished ryot, no longer able to pay the extra calls upon his industry, his cattle and the implements of his labour distrained, was reduced to despair. Many died from distress; some fled, but where could they find refuge in the chaos around them? The greater part were compelled to plough for hire, with the cattle and implements once their own, the very fields, their freehold, which had been torn from them. From this system of universal impoverishment, displayed at length in unthatched villages and untilled lands, the regent was compelled to become farmer-general of Kotah.

Fortunately for his subjects, and for his own reputation, his sense of gratitude and friendship for the family of Inglia—whose head, Bala Rao, was then a prisoner in Mewar—involved him, in the attempt to obtain his release, in personal conflict with the Rana, and he was compelled to abandon for ever that long-cherished object of his ambition. It was then he perceived he had sacrificed the welfare of all classes to a phantom, and his vigorous understanding suggested a remedy, which was instantly adopted.

=Superstition of Zālim Singh.=—Until the conspiracy of Mohsen in 1856, the regent had resided in the castle, acting the part of the Maire du palais of the old French monarchy; but on his return from the release of Bala Rao, in S. 1860 (A.D. 1803-4), when the successes of the British arms disturbed the combination of the Mahrattas, and obliged them to send forth their disunited bands to seek by rapine what they had lost by our conquests, the regent perceived the impolicy of such permanent residence, and determined to come nearer to the point of danger. He had a double motive, each of itself sufficiently powerful to justify the change: the first was a revision of the revenue system; the other, to seek a more central position for a disposable camp, which he might move to any point threatened by these predatory bodies. Though these were doubtless the real incentives to the project, according to those who ought to have known the secret impulse of his mind, the change from the castle on the Chambal to the tented field proceeded from no more potent cause than an ominous owl [530], telling his tale to the moon from the pinnacle of his mansion. A meeting of the astrologers, and those versed in prodigies, was convened, and it was decided that it would be tempting honhar (fate) to abide longer in that dwelling. If this were the true motive, Zalim Singh’s mind only shared the grovelling superstition of the most illustrious and most courageous of his nation, to whom there was no presage more appalling than a ghugghu on the house-top. But, in all likelihood, this was a political owl conjured up for the occasion; one seen only in the mind’s eye of the regent, and serving to cloak his plans.

=His Permanent Camp.=—The soothsayers having in due form desecrated the dwelling of the Protector, he commenced a perambulation and survey of the long-neglected territory, within which he determined henceforth to limit his ambition. He then saw, and perhaps felt for, the miseries his mistaken policy had occasioned; but the moral evil was consummated; he had ruined the fortunes of one-third of the agriculturists, and the rest were depressed and heart-broken. The deficiency in his revenues spoke a truth no longer to be misinterpreted; for his credit was so low in the mercantile world at this period, that his word and his bond were in equal disesteem. Hitherto he had shut his ears against complaint; but funds were necessary to forward his views, and all pleas of inability were met by confiscation. It was evident that this evil, if not checked, must ultimately denude the State of the means of defence, and the fertility of his genius presented various modes of remedy. He began by fixing upon a spot, near the strong fortress of Gagraun, for a permanent camp, where he continued to reside, with merely a shed over his tent; and although the officers and men of rank had also thrown up sheds, he would admit of nothing more. All the despatches and newspapers were dated “from the Chhaoni,” or camp.

The situation selected was most judicious, being nearly equidistant from the two principal entrances to Haraoti from the south, and touching the most insubordinate part of the Bhil population; while he was close to the strong castles of Shirgarh and Gagraun, which he strengthened with the utmost care, making the latter the depot of his treasures and his arsenal. He formed an army; adopted the European arms and discipline; appointed officers with the title of captain to his battalions, which had a regular nomenclature, and his ‘royals’ (Raj Paltan) have done as gallant service as any that ever bore the name. These were ready at a moment’s warning to move to any point, against any foe. Moreover, by this change, he was extricated from many perplexities and delays which a residence in a capital necessarily engenders [531].

=Land Revenue Collections.=—Up to this period of his life, having been immersed in the troubled sea of political intrigue, the Protector had no better knowledge of the systems of revenue and landed economy than other Rangra[10.7.1] chieftains; and he followed the immemorial usage termed lattha and batai,[10.7.2] or rent in kind by weight or measure, in proportion to the value of the soil or of the product. The regent soon found the disadvantages of this system, which afforded opportunity for oppression on the part of the collectors, and fraud on that of the tenant, both detrimental to the government, and serving only to enrich that vulture, the Patel. When this rapacious yet indispensable medium between the peasant and ruler leagued with the collectors—and there was no control to exaction beyond the conscience of this constituted attorney of each township, either for the assessment or collection—and when, as we have so often stated, the regent cared not for the means so that the supplies were abundant, nothing but ruin could ensue to the ryot.

Having made himself master of the complicated details of the batai, and sifted every act of chicanery by the most inquisitorial process, he convoked all the Patels of the country, and took their depositions as to the extent of each pateli, their modes of collection, their credit, character, and individual means; and being thus enabled to form a rough computation of the size and revenues of each, he recommenced his tour, made a chakbandi, or measurement of the lands of each township, and classified them, according to soil and fertility, as piwal, or irrigated; gorma, or good soil, but dependent on the heavens; and mormi, including pasturage and mountain-tracts. He then, having formed an average from the accounts of many years, instituted a fixed money-rent, and declared that the batai system, or that of payment in kind, was at an end. But even in this he showed severity; for he reduced the jarib,[10.7.3] or standard measure, by a third, and added a fourth to his averages. Doubtless he argued that the profit which the Patels looked forward to would admit of this increase, and determined that his vigilance should be more than a match for their ingenuity.

Having thus adjusted the rents of the fisc, the dues of the Patel were fixed at one and a half annas per bigha, on all the lands constituting a pateli; and as his personal lands were on a favoured footing and paid a much smaller rate than the ryot’s, he was led to understand that any exaction beyond what was authorized would subject him to confiscation. Thus the dues on collection would realize to the Patel from five to fifteen thousand rupees annually. The anxiety of these men to be reinstated in their trusts [532] was evinced by the immense offers they made, of ten, twenty, and even fifty thousand rupees. At one stroke he put ten lakhs, or £100,000 sterling, into his exhausted treasury, by the amount of nazaranas, or fines of relief on their reinduction into office. The ryot hoped for better days; for notwithstanding the assessment was heavy, he saw the limit of exaction, and that the door was closed to all subordinate oppression. Besides the spur of hope, he had that of fear, to quicken his exertions; for with the promulgation of the edict substituting money-rent for batai, the ryot was given to understand that 'no account of the seasons’ would alter or lessen the established dues of the State, and that uncultivated lands would be made over by the Patel to those who would cultivate them; or if none would take them, they would be incorporated with the khas or personal farms of the regent. In all cases the Patels were declared responsible for deficiencies of revenue.

Hitherto this body of men had an incentive, if not a licence, to plunder, being subject to an annual or triennial tax termed patel-barar. This was annulled; and it was added, that if they fulfilled their contract with the State without oppressing the subject, they should be protected and honoured. Thus these Patels, the elected representatives of the village and the shields of the ryot, became the direct officers of the crown. It was the regent’s interest to conciliate a body of men on whose exertions the prosperity of the State mainly depended; and they gladly and unanimously entered into his views. Golden bracelets and turbans, the signs of inauguration, were given, with a “grant of office,” to each Patel, and they departed to their several trusts.

=Possibility of Representative Government.=—A few reflections obtrude themselves on the contemplation of such a picture. It will hardly fail to strike the reader, how perfect are the elements for the formation of a representative government in these regions;[10.7.4] for every State of Rajwara is similarly constituted; ex uno disce omnes. The Patels would only require to be joined by the representatives of the commercial body, and these are already formed, of Rajput blood, deficient neither in nerve nor political sagacity, compared with any class on earth; often composing the ministry, or heading the armies in battle. It is needless to push the parallel farther; but if it is the desire of Britain to promote this system in the east to enthrone liberty on the ruins of bondage, and call forth the energies of a grand national Panchayat, the materials are ample without the risk of innovation beyond the mere extent of members. We should have the aristocratic Thakurs (the Rajput barons), the men of wealth, and the representatives of agriculture, to [533] settle the limits and maintain the principles of their ancient patriarchal system. A code of criminal and civil law, perfectly adequate, could be compiled from their sacred books, their records on stone, or traditional customs, and sufficient might be deducted from the revenues of the State to maintain municipal forces, which could unite if public safety were endangered, while the equestrian order would furnish all State parade, and act as a movable army.

=A Revenue Board.=—But to return to our subject. Out of this numerous body of Patels, Zalim selected four of the most intelligent and experienced, of whom he formed a council attached to the Presence. At first their duties were confined to matters of revenue; soon those of police were superadded, and at length no matter of internal regulation was transacted without their advice. In all cases of doubtful decision they were the court of appeal from provincial panchayats, and even from those of the cities and the capital itself. Thus they performed the threefold duties of a board of revenue, of justice, and of police, and perhaps throughout the world there never was a police like that of Zalim Singh: there was not one Fouché, but four; and a net of espionage was spread over the country, out of whose meshes nothing could escape.

Such was the Patel system of Kotah. A system so rigid had its alloy of evil; the veil of secrecy, so essential to commercial pursuits, was rudely drawn aside; every transaction was exposed to the regent, and no man felt safe from the inquisitorial visits of the spies of this council. A lucky speculation was immediately reported, and the regent hastened to share in the success of the speculator. Alarm and disgust were the consequence; the spirit of trade was damped; none were assured of the just returns of their industry; but there was no security elsewhere, and at Kotah only the Protector dared to injure them.

The council of Venice was not more arbitrary than the Patel board of Kotah; even the ministers saw the sword suspended over their heads, while they were hated as much as feared by all but the individual who recognized their utility.

It would be imagined that with a council so vigilant the regent would feel perfectly secure. Not so: he had spies over them. In short, to use the phrase of one of his ministers—a man of acute perception and powerful understanding, when talking of the vigour of his mental vision—when his physical organs had failed, pani pina, aur mut tolna, which we will not translate.

=The Bohra.=—The Patel, now the virtual master of the peasantry, was aware that fine and confiscation would follow the discovery of direct oppression of the ryots; but there were [534] many indirect modes by which he could attain his object, and he took the most secure, the medium of their necessities. Hitherto, the impoverished husbandman had his wants supplied by the Bohra, the sanctioned usurer of each village; now, the privileged Patel usurped his functions, and bound him by a double chain to his purposes. But we must explain the functions of the Bohra, in order to show the extent of subordination in which the ryot was placed.

The Bohra of Rajputana is the Métayer of the ancient system of France. He furnishes the cultivator with whatever he requires for his pursuits, whether cattle, implements, or seed; and supports him and his family throughout the season until the crop is ready for the sickle, when a settlement of accounts takes place. This is done in two ways: either by a cash payment, with stipulated interest according to the risk previously agreed upon; or, more commonly, by a specified share of the crop, in which the Bohra takes the risk of bad seasons with the husbandman. The utility of such a person under an oppressive government, where the ryot can store up nothing for the future, may readily be conceived; he is, in fact, indispensable. Mutual honesty is required; for extortion on the part of the Bohra would lose him his clients, and dishonesty on that of the peasant would deprive him of his only resource against the sequestration of his patrimony. Accordingly, this monied middleman enjoyed great consideration, being regarded as the patron of the husbandman. Every peasant had his particular Bohra, and not unfrequently from the adjacent village in preference to his own.

Such was the state of things when the old system of lattha batai was commuted for bighoti, a specific money-rent apportioned to the area of the land. The Patel, now tied down to the simple duties of collection, could touch nothing but his dues, unless he leagued with or overturned the Bohra; and in either case there was risk from the lynx-eyed scrutiny of the regent. They, accordingly, adopted the middle course of alarming his cupidity, which the following expedient effected. When the crop was ripe, the peasant would demand permission to cut it. “Pay your rent first,” was the reply. The Bohra was applied to; but his fears had been awakened by a caution not to lend money to one on whom the government had claims. There was no alternative but to mortgage to the harpy Patel a portion of the produce of his fields. This was the precise point at which he aimed; he took the crop at his own valuation, and gave his receipt that the dues of government were satisfied; demanding a certificate to the effect “that having no funds forthcoming [535] when the rent was required, and being unable to raise it, the mortgager voluntarily assigned, at a fair valuation, a share of the produce.” In this manner did the Patels hoard immense quantities of grain, and as Kotah became the granary of Rajputana, they accumulated great wealth, while the peasant, never able to reckon on the fruits of his industry, was depressed and impoverished. The regent could not long be kept in ignorance of these extortions; but the treasury overflowed, and he did not sufficiently heed the miseries occasioned by a system which added fresh lands by sequestration to the home farms, now the object of his especial solicitude.

=Suppression of the Patel System.=—Matters proceeded thus until the year 1867 (A.D. 1811), when, like a clap of thunder, mandates of arrest were issued, and every Patel in Kotah was placed in fetters, and his property under the seal of the State; the ill-gotten wealth, as usual, flowing into the exchequer of the Protector. Few escaped heavy fines; one only was enabled altogether to evade the vigilance of the police, and he had wisely remitted his wealth, to the amount of seven lakhs, or £70,000, to a foreign country; and from this individual case, a judgment may be formed of the prey these cormorants were compelled to disgorge.

It is to be inferred that the regent must have well weighed the present good against the evil he incurred, in destroying in one moment the credit and efficacy of such an engine of power as the Pateli system he had established. The Council of Four maintained their post, notwithstanding the humiliated condition of their compeers; though their influence could not fail to be weakened by the discredit attached to the body. The system Zalim had so artfully introduced being thus entirely disorganized, he was induced to push still further the resources of his energetic mind, by the extension of his personal farms. In describing the formation and management of these, we shall better portray the character of the regent than by the most laboured summary; the acts will paint the man.

Before, however, we enter upon this singular part of his history, it is necessary to develop the ancient agricultural system of Haraoti, to which he returned when the pateli was broken up. In the execution of this design, we must speak both of the soil and the occupants, whose moral estimation in the minds of their rulers must materially influence their legislative conduct.

The ryot of India, like the progenitor of all tillers of the earth, bears the brand of vengeance on his forehead; for as Cain was cursed by the Almighty, so were the cultivators of India by Ramachandra, as a class whom no lenity could render honest or [536] contented. When the hero of Ayodhya left his kingdom for Lanka, he enjoined his minister to foster the ryots, that he might hear no complaints on his return. Aware of the fruitlessness of the attempt, yet determined to guard against all just cause of complaint, the minister reversed the mauna, or grain measure, taking the share of the crown from the smaller end, exactly one-half of what was sanctioned by immemorial usage. When Rama returned, the cultivators assembled in bodies at each stage of his journey, and complained of the innovations of the minister. “What had he done?” “Reversed the mauna.” The monarch dismissed them with his curse, as “a race whom no favour could conciliate, and who belonged to no one”; a phrase which to this hour is proverbial, 'ryot kisi ka nahin hai'; and the sentence is confirmed by the historians of Alexander, who tell us that they lived unmolested amidst all intestine wars; that “they only till the ground and pay tribute to the king,” enjoying an amnesty from danger when the commonwealth suffered, which must tend to engender a love of soil more than patriotism.[10.7.5] It would appear as if the regent of Kotah had availed himself of the anathema of Rama in his estimation of the moral virtues of his subjects, who were Helots in condition if not in name.

=Modes of realizing Land-Rent.=—We proceed to the modes of realizing the dues of the State, in which the character and condition of the peasant will be further developed. There are four modes of levying the land-tax, three of which are common throughout Rajwara; the fourth is more peculiar to Haraoti and Mewar. The first and most ancient is that of batai, or ‘payment in kind,’ practised before metallic currency was invented. The system of batai extends, however, only to corn; for sugar-cane, cotton, hemp, poppy, al, kusumbha,[10.7.6] ginger, turmeric, and other dyes and drugs, and all garden stuffs, pay a rent in money. This rent was arbitrary and variable, according to the necessities or justice of the ruler. In both countries five to ten rupees per bigha are demanded for sugar-cane; three to five for cotton, poppy, hemp, and oil-plant; and two to four for the rest. But when heaven was bounteous, avarice and oppression rose in their demands, and seventy rupees per bigha were exacted for the sugar-cane, thus paralysing the industry of the cultivator, and rendering abortive the beneficence of the Almighty.

Batai, or ‘division in kind,’ varies with the seasons and their products:

1st. The unalu, or ‘summer harvest,’ when wheat, barley, and a variety of pulses, as gram, moth, mung, til,[10.7.7] are raised. The share of the State in these varies with the fertility of the soil, from one-fourth, one-third, and two-fifths, to one-half—the extreme fractions being the maximum and minimum; those of one-third and two-fifths [537] are the most universally admitted as the share of the crown. But besides this, there are dues to the artificers and mechanics, whose labour to the village is compensated by a share of the harvest from each cultivator; which allowances reduce the portion of the latter to one-half of the gross produce of his industry, which if he realize, he is contented and thrives.

The second harvest is the siyalu, or ‘autumnal,’ and consists of makkai or bhutta (Indian corn), of juar, bajra, the two chief kinds of maize,[10.7.8] and til or sesamum, with other small seeds, such as kangni,[10.7.9] with many of the pulses. Of all these, one-half is exacted by the State.

Such is the system of batai; let us describe that of kut.[10.7.10] Kut[10.7.11] is the conjectural estimate of the quantity of the standing crop on a measured surface, by the officers of the government in conjunction with the proprietors, when the share of the State is converted into cash at the average rate of the day, and the peasant is debited the amount. So exactly can those habitually exercised in this method estimate the quantity of grain produced on a given surface, that they seldom err beyond one-twentieth part of the crop. Should, however, the cultivator deem his crop over-estimated, he has the power to cut and weigh it; and this is termed lattha.

The third is a tax in money, according to admeasurement of the field, assessed previously to cultivation.

The fourth is a mixed tax, of both money and produce.

None of these modes is free from objection. That of kut, or conjectural estimate of the standing crop, is, however, liable to much greater abuse than lattha, or measurement of the grain. In the first case, it is well known that by a bribe to the officer, he will kut a field at ten maunds, which may realize twice the quantity; for the chief guarantees to honesty are fear of detection, and instinctive morality; feeble safeguards, even in more civilized States than Rajwara. If he be so closely watched that he must make a fair kut, or estimate, he will still find means to extort money from the ryot, one of which is, by procrastinating the estimate when the ear is ripe, and when every day’s delay is a certain loss. In short, a celebrated superintendent of a district, of great credit both for zeal and honesty [538], confessed, “We are like tailors; we can cheat you to your face, and you cannot perceive it.” The ryot prefers the kut; the process is soon over, and he has done with the government; but in lattha, the means are varied to perplex and cheat it; beginning with the reaping, when, with a liberal hand, they leave something for the gleaner; then, a “tithe for the khurpi, or 'sickle'”; then, the thrashing; and though they muzzle the ox who treads out the corn, they do not their own mouths, or those of their family. Again, if not convertible into coin, they are debited and allowed to store it up, and “the rats are sure to get into the pits.” In both cases the shahnahs, or field-watchmen, are appointed to watch the crops, as soon as the ear begins to fill; yet all is insufficient to check the system of pillage; for the ryot and his family begin to feed upon the heads of Indian corn and millet the moment they afford the least nourishment. The shahnah, receiving his emoluments from the husbandman as well as from the crown, inclines more to his fellow-citizen; and it is asserted that one-fourth of the crop, and even a third, is frequently made away with before the share of the government can be fixed.

Yet the system of lattha was pursued by the regent before he commenced that of pateli, which has no slight analogy to the permanent system of Bengal,[10.7.12] and was attended with similar results,—distress, confiscation, and sale, to the utter exclusion of the hereditary principle, the very corner-stone of Hindu society.

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Footnote 10.7.1:

[See Vol. I. p. 535.]

Footnote 10.7.2:

[Lattha, literally a ‘measuring pole’; batāi, division of crop between landlord and tenant.]

Footnote 10.7.3:

[In the United Provinces the jarīb is 55 yards, and one square jarīb = 1 bīgha. The standard bīgha is five-eighths of an acre (Wilson, Glossary of Indian Terms, s.v.).]

Footnote 10.7.4:

[On the prospects of representative government, in Rājputāna see the statement of the Mahārāja of Bīkaner—The Times, 10th May 1917.]

Footnote 10.7.5:

[McCrindle, Megasthenes, 41.]

Footnote 10.7.6:

[Āl, Morinda citrifolia, from which a dye is made; kusumbha, safflower, Carthamus tinctorius, also a dye (Watt, Econ. Prod. 783 f., 276 ff.).]

Footnote 10.7.7:

[Moth, Phaseolus aconitifolius; mūng, P. mungo; til, Sesamum indicum.]

Footnote 10.7.8:

[Juār and bājra are millets; makkai is maize.]

Footnote 10.7.9:

Panicum Italicum [Setaria italica], produced abundantly in the valley of the Rhine, as well as makkai, there called Velsh corn; doubtless the maizes would alike grow in perfection. [Watt, Comm. Prod. 988.]

Footnote 10.7.10:

It would be more correct to say that batai, or ‘payment in kind,’ is divided into two branches, namely, kut and lattha; the first being a portion of the standing crop by conjectural estimate; the other by actual measure, after reaping and thrashing.

Footnote 10.7.11:

[Kūt means ‘valuation, appraisement.’]

Footnote 10.7.12:

The patel of Haraoti, like the zemindar of Bengal, was answerable for the revenues; the one, however, was hereditary only during pleasure; the other perpetually so. The extent of their authorities was equal.

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Chapter 8

=The Farming Monopoly.=—Let us proceed with the most prominent feature of the regent’s internal administration—his farming monopoly—to which he is mainly indebted for the reputation he [539] enjoys throughout Rajputana. The superficial observer, who can with difficulty find a path through the corn-fields which cover the face of Haraoti, will dwell with rapture upon the effects of a system in which he discovers nothing but energy and efficiency: he cannot trace the remote causes of this deceptive prosperity, which originated in moral and political injustice. It was because his own tyranny had produced unploughed fields and deserted villages, starving husbandmen and a diminishing population; it was with the distrained implements and cattle of his subjects, and in order to prevent the injurious effects of so much waste land upon the revenue, that Zalim commenced a system which has made him farmer-general of Haraoti; and he has carried it to an astonishing extent. There is not a nook or a patch in Haraoti where grain can be produced which his ploughs do not visit. Forests have disappeared; even the barren rocks have been covered with exotic soil, and the mountain’s side, inaccessible to the plough, is turned up with a spud, and compelled to yield a crop.

In S. 1840 (A.D. 1784), Zalim possessed only two or three hundred ploughs, which in a few years increased to eight hundred. At the commencement of what they term the new era (naya samvat) in the history of landed property of Kotah, the introduction of the pateli system, the number was doubled; and at the present time[10.8.1] no less than four thousand ploughs, of double yoke, employing sixteen thousand oxen, are used in the farming system of this extraordinary man; to which may be added one thousand more ploughs and four thousand oxen employed on the estates of the prince and the different members of his family.

This is the secret of the Raj Rana’s power and reputation; and to the wealth extracted from her soil, Kotah owes her preservation from the ruin which befell the States around her during the convulsions of the last half-century, when one after another sank into decay. But although sagacity marks the plan, and unexampled energy superintends its details, we must, on examining the foundations of the system either morally or politically, pronounce its effects a mere paroxysm of prosperity, arising from stimulating causes which present no guarantee of permanence. Despotism has wrought this magic effect: there is not one, from the noble to the peasant, who has not felt, and who does not still feel, its presence. When the arm of the octogenarian Protector shall be withdrawn, and the authority transferred to his son, who possesses none of the father’s energies, then will the impolicy of the system become apparent. It [540] was from the sequestrated estates of the valiant Hara chieftain, and that grinding oppression which thinned Haraoti of its agricultural population, and left the lands waste, that the regent found scope for his genius. The fields, which had descended from father to son through the lapse of ages, the unalienable right of the peasant, were seized, in spite of law, custom, or tradition, on every defalcation; and it is even affirmed that he sought pretexts to obtain such lands as from their contiguity or fertility he coveted, and that hundreds were thus deprived of their inheritance. In vain we look for the peaceful hamlets which once studded Haraoti: we discern instead the ori, or farmhouse of the regent, which would be beautiful were it not erected on the property of the subject; but when we inquire the ratio which the cultivators bear to the cultivation, and the means of enjoyment this artificial system has left them, and find that the once independent proprietor, who claimed a sacred right of inheritance,[10.8.2] now ploughs like a serf the fields formerly his own, all our perceptions of moral justice are shocked.

The love of country and the passion for possessing land are strong throughout Rajputana: while there is a hope of existence the cultivator clings to the bapota, and in Haraoti this amor patriae is so invincible, that, to use their homely phrase, “he would rather fill his pet in slavery there, than live in luxury abroad.” But where could they fly to escape oppression? All around was desolation; armies perambulated the country, with rapid strides, in each other’s train, “one to another still succeeding.” To this evil Kotah was comparatively a stranger; the Protector was the only plunderer within his domains. Indeed, the inhabitants of the surrounding States, from the year 1865, when rapine was at its height, flocked into Kotah, and filled up the chasm which oppression had produced in the population. But with the banishment of predatory war, and the return of industry to its own field of exertion, this panacea for the wounds which the ruler has inflicted will disappear; and although the vast resources of the regent’s mind may check the appearance of decay, while his faculties survive to superintend this vast and complicated system, it must ultimately, from the want of a principle of permanence, fall into rapid disorganization. We proceed to the details [541] of the system, which will afford fresh proofs of the talent, industry, and vigilance of this singular character.

=Agriculture in Kotah.=—The soil of Kotah is a rich tenacious mould, resembling the best parts of lower Malwa. The single plough is unequal to breaking it up, and the regent has introduced the plough of double yoke from the Konkan. His cattle are of the first quality, and equally fit for the park or the plough. He purchases at all the adjacent fairs, chiefly in his own dominions, and at the annual mela (fair) of his favourite city Jhalrapatan.[10.8.3] He has tried those of Marwar and of the desert, famed for a superior race of cattle; but he found that the transition from their sandy regions to the deep loam of Haraoti soon disabled them.

Each plough or team is equal to the culture of one hundred bighas; consequently 4000 ploughs will cultivate 400,000 during each harvest, and for both 800,000, nearly 300,000 English acres. The soil is deemed poor which does not yield seven to ten maunds[10.8.4] of wheat per bigha, and five to seven of millet and Indian corn. But to take a very low estimate, and allowing for bad seasons, we may assume four maunds per bigha as the average produce (though double would not be deemed an exaggerated average): this will give 3,200,000 maunds of both products, wheat and millet, and the proportion of the former to the latter is as three to two. Let us estimate the value of this. In seasons of abundance, twelve rupees per mauni,[10.8.5] in equal quantities of both grains, is the average; at this time (July 1820), notwithstanding the preceding season has been a failure throughout Rajwara (though there was a prospect of an excellent one), and grain a dead weight, eighteen rupees per mauni is the current price, and may be quoted as the average standard of Haraoti: above is approximating to dearness, and below to the reverse. But if we take the average of the year of actual plenty, or twelve rupees[10.8.6] per mauni of equal quantities of wheat and juar, or one rupee per maund, the result is thirty-two lakhs of rupees annual income.

Let us endeavour to calculate how much of this becomes net produce towards the expenses of the government, and it will be seen that the charges are about one-third gross amount [542].

Expenses.

Establishments—namely, feeding cattle 400,000 and servants, tear and wear of gear, and clearing the fields—one-eighth of the gross amount,[10.8.7] or Seed 600,000 Replacing 4000 oxen annually, at 80,000 20s.[10.8.8] Extras 20,000 ————— 1,100,000

We do not presume to give this, or even the gross amount, as more than an approximation to the truth; but the regent himself has mentioned that in one year the casualties in oxen amounted to five thousand! We have allowed one-fourth, for an ox will work well seven years, if taken care of. Thus, on the lowest scale, supposing the necessities of the government required the grain to be sold in the year it was raised, twenty lakhs will be the net profit of the regent’s farms. But he has abundant resources without being forced into the market before the favourable moment; until when, the produce is hoarded up in subterranean granaries. Everything in these regions is simple, yet efficient: we will describe the grain-pits.

=Storage of Grain.=—These pits or trenches are fixed on elevated dry spots; their size being according to the nature of the soil. All the preparation they undergo is the incineration of certain vegetable substances, and lining the sides and bottom with wheat or barley stubble. The grain is then deposited in the pit, covered over with straw, and a terrace of earth, about eighteen inches in height, and projecting in front beyond the orifice of the pit, is raised over it. This is secured with a coating of clay and cow-dung, which resists even the monsoon, and is renewed as the torrents injure it. Thus the grain may remain for years without injury, while the heat which is extricated checks germination, and deters rats and white ants. Thus the regent has seldom less than fifty lakhs of maunds in various parts of the country, and it is on emergencies, or in bad seasons, that these stores see the light; when, instead of twelve rupees, the mauni runs as high as forty, or the famine price of sixty. Then these pits are mines of gold; the regent having frequently sold in one year sixty lakhs of maunds. In S. 1860 (or A.D. 1804), during the Mahratta war, when Holkar was in the Bharatpur State, and predatory armies were moving in every direction, and when famine and war [543] conjoined to desolate the country, Kotah fed the whole population of Rajwara, and supplied all these roving hordes. In that season, grain being fifty-five rupees per mauni, he sold to the enormous amount of one crore of rupees, or a million sterling!

Reputable merchants of the Mahajan tribe refrain from speculating in grain, from the most liberal feelings, esteeming it dharm nahin hai, ‘a want of charity.’ The humane Jain merchant says, “to hoard up grain, for the purpose of taking advantage of human misery, may bring riches, but never profit.”

According to the only accessible documents, the whole crown-revenue of Kotah from the tax in kind, amounted, under bad management, to twenty-five lakhs of rupees. This is all the regent admits he collects from (to use his own phrase) his handful (pachiwara) of soil: of course he does not include his own farming system, but only the amount raised from the cultivator. He confesses that two-thirds of the superficial area of Kotah were waste; but that this is now reversed, there being two-thirds cultivated, and only one-third waste, and this comprises mountain, forest, common, etc.

=Extortionate Taxes.=—In S. 1865 (A.D. 1809), as if industry were not already sufficiently shackled, the regent established a new tax on all corn exported from his dominions. It was termed lattha, and amounted to a rupee and a half per mauni. This tax—not less unjust in origin than vexatious in operation—worse than even the infamous gabelle, or the droit d’aubaine of France—was another fruit of monopoly. It was at first confined to the grower, though of course it fell indirectly on the consumer; but the Jagatya,[10.8.9] or chief collector of the customs, a man after the regent’s own heart, was so pleased with its efficiency on the very first trial, that he advised his master to push it farther, and it was accordingly levied as well on the farmer as the purchaser. An item of ten lakhs was at once added to the budget; and as if this were insufficient to stop all competition between the regent-farmer-general and his subjects, three, four, nay even five latthas, have been levied from the same grain before it was retailed for consumption. Kotah exhibited the picture of a people, if not absolutely starving, yet living in penury in the midst of plenty. Neither the lands of his chiefs nor those of his ministers were exempt from the operation of this tax, and all were at the mercy of the Jagatya, from whose arbitrary will there was no appeal. It had reached the very height of oppression about the period of the alliance with the British Government. This collector had become a part of his system; and if the regent required a few lakhs of ready money, Jo hukm, ‘your commands,’ was the reply. A list was made out of 'arrears of lattha,' and friend and foe, minister, banker, trader, and farmer, had a circular. Remonstrance was not only vain but [544] dangerous: even his ancient friend, the Pandit Balal, had twenty-five thousand rupees to pay in one of these schedules; the homme d’affaires of one of his confidential chiefs, five thousand; his own foreign minister a share, and many bankers of the town, four thousand, five thousand, and ten thousand each. The term lattha was an abuse of language for a forced contribution; in fact the obnoxious and well-known dand of Rajwara. It alienated the minds of all men, and nearly occasioned the regent’s ruin; for scarcely was their individual sympathy expressed, when the Hara princes conspired to emancipate themselves from his interminable and galling protection.

When the English Government came in contact with Rajwara, it was a primary principle of the universal protective alliance to proclaim that it was for the benefit of the governed as well as the governors, since it availed little to destroy the wolves without if they were consigned to the lion within. But there are and must be absurd inconsistencies, even in the policy of western legislators, where one set of principles is applied to all. Zalim soon discovered that the fashion of the day was to parwarish, ‘foster the ryot.’ The odious character of the tax was diminished, and an edict limited its operation to the farmer, the seller, and the purchaser; and so anxious was he to conceal this weapon of oppression, that the very name of lattha was abolished, and sawai hasil, or ‘extraordinaries,’ substituted. This item is said still to amount to five lakhs of rupees.

Thus did the skill and rigid system of the regent exact from his pachiwara of soil, full fifty lakhs of rupees. We must also recollect that nearly five more are to be added on account of the household lands of the members of his own and the prince’s family, which is almost sufficient to cover their expenses.

What will the European practical farmer, of enlarged means and experience, think of the man who arranged this complicated system, and who, during forty years, has superintended its details? What opinion will he form of his vigour of mind, who, at the age of fourscore years, although blind and palsied, still superintends and maintains this system? What will he think of the tenacity of memory, which bears graven thereon, as on a tablet, an account of all these vast depositories of grain, with their varied contents, many of them the store of years past; and the power to check the slightest errors of the intendant of this vast accumulation; while, at the same time, he regulates the succession of crops throughout this extensive range? Such is the minute topographical knowledge which the regent possesses of his country, that every field in every farm is familiar [545] to him; and woe to the superintendent Havaldar[10.8.10] if he discovers a fallow nook that ought to bear a crop.

Yet vast as this system is, overwhelming as it would seem to most minds, it formed but a part of the political engine conducted and kept in action by his single powers. The details of his administration, internal as well as external, demanded unremitted vigilance. The formation, the maintenance, and discipline of an army of twenty thousand men, his fortresses, arsenals, and their complicated minutiae, were amply sufficient for one mind. The daily account from his police, consisting of several hundred emissaries, besides the equally numerous reports from the head of each district, would have distracted an ordinary head, “for the winds could not enter and leave Haraoti without being reported.” But when, in addition to all this, it is known that the regent was a practical merchant, a speculator in exchanges, that he encouraged the mechanical arts, fostered foreign industry, pursued even horticulture, and, to use his own words, “considered no trouble thrown away which made the rupee return sixteen and a half annas, with whom can he be compared?”[10.8.11] Literature, philosophy, and excerptae from the grand historical epics, were the amusements of his hours of relaxation; but here we anticipate, for we have not yet finished the review of his economical character. His monopolies, especially that of grain, not only influenced his own market, but affected all the adjacent countries; and when speculation in opium ran to such a demoralizing excess in consequence of the British Government monopolizing the entire produce of the poppy cultivated throughout Malwa, he took advantage of the mania, and by his sales or purchases raised or depressed the market at pleasure. His gardens, scattered throughout the country, still supply the markets of the towns and capital with vegetables, and his forests furnish them with fuel.

So rigid was his system of taxation that nothing escaped it. There was a heavy tax on widows who remarried. Even the gourd of the mendicant paid a tithe, and the ascetic in his cell had a domiciliary visit to ascertain the gains of mendicity, in order that a portion should go to the exigencies of the State. The tumba barar, or ‘gourd-tax,’ was abolished after forming for a twelvemonth part of the fiscal code of Haraoti, and then not through any scruples of the regent, but to satisfy his friends. Akin to this, and even of a lower grade, was the jharu barar, or ‘broom-tax,’ which continued for ten years; but the many lampoons it provoked from the satirical Bhat operated on the more sensitive feelings of his son, Madho Singh, who obtained its repeal [546].

=Zālim Singh and the Bards.=—Zalim was no favourite with the bards; and that he had little claim to their consideration may be inferred from the following anecdote. A celebrated rhymer was reciting some laudatory stanzas, which the regent received rather coldly, observing with a sneer that “they told nothing but lies, though he should be happy to listen to their effusions when truth was the foundation.” The poet replied that “he found truth a most unmarketable commodity; nevertheless, he had some of that at his service”; and stipulating for forgiveness if they offended, he gave the protector his picture in a string of improvised stanzas, so full of vish (poison), that the lands of the whole fraternity were resumed, and none of the order have ever since been admitted to his presence.

Though rigid in his observance of the ceremonies of religion, and sharing in the prevailing superstitions of his country, he never allows the accidental circumstance of birth or caste to affect his policy. Offences against the State admit of no indemnity, be the offender a Brahman or a bard; and if these classes engage in trade, they experience no exemption from imposts.

Such is an outline of the territorial arrangements of the regent Zalim Singh. When power was assigned to him, he found the State limited to Kelwara on the east; he has extended it to the verge of the Plateau, and the fortress which guards its ascent, at first rented from the Mahrattas, is now by treaty his own. He took possession of the reins of power with an empty treasury and thirty-two lakhs of accumulating debt. He found the means of defence a few dilapidated fortresses, and a brave but unmanageable feudal army. He has, at an immense cost, put the fortresses into the most complete state of defence, and covered their ramparts with many hundred pieces of cannon; and he has raised and maintains, in lieu of about four thousand Hara cavaliers, an army—regular we may term it—of twenty thousand men, distributed into battalions, a park of one hundred pieces of cannon, with about one thousand good horse, besides the feudal contingents.

But is this prosperity? Is this the greatness which the Raja Guman intended should be entailed upon his successors, his chiefs, and his subjects? Was it to entertain twenty thousand mercenary soldiers from the sequestrated fields of the illustrious Hara, the indigenous proprietor? Is this government, is it good government according to the ideas of more civilized nations, to extend taxation to its limit, in order to maintain this cumbrous machinery. We may admit that, for a time, such a system may have been requisite, not only for the maintenance of his delegated [547] power, but to preserve the State from predatory spoliation; and now, could we see the noble restored to his forfeited estates, and the ryot to his hereditary rood of land, we should say that Zalim Singh had been an instrument in the hand of Providence for the preservation of the rights of the Haras. But, as it is, whilst the corn which waves upon the fertile surface of Kotah presents not the symbol of prosperity, neither is his well-paid and well-disciplined army a sure means of defence; moral propriety has been violated; rights are in abeyance, and until they be restored, even the apparent consistency of the social fabric is obtained by means which endanger its security.

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Footnote 10.8.1:

This was drawn up in 1820-21.

Footnote 10.8.2:

Throughout the Bundi territory, where no regent has innovated on the established laws of inheritance, by far the greater part of the land is the absolute property of the cultivating ryot, who can sell or mortgage it. There is a curious tradition that this right was obtained by one of the ancient princes making a general sale of the crown land, reserving only the tax. In Bundi, if a ryot becomes unable, from pecuniary wants or otherwise, to cultivate his lands, he lets them; and custom has established four annas per bīgha of irrigated land, and two annas for gorma, that dependent on the heavens, or a share of the produce in a similar proportion, as his right. If in exile, from whatever cause, he can assign this share to trustees; and, the more strongly to mark his inalienable right in such a case, the trustees reserve on his account two sers on every maund of produce, which is emphatically termed 'hakk bapota ka bhum,' the ‘dues of the patrimonial soil.’

Footnote 10.8.3:

[Now the commercial capital of Jhālawār State, on the Kotah border.]

Footnote 10.8.4:

A maund is seventy-five pounds.

Footnote 10.8.5:

Grain Measure of Rajputana. —75 pounds = 1 ser [? 1·7 lbs. The standard ser is a little over 2 lbs.] 43 sers = 1 maund. 12 maunds = 1 mauni. 100 maunis = 1 manasa.

Footnote 10.8.6:

It does descend as low as eight rupees per mauni for wheat and barley, and four for the millets, in seasons of excessive abundance.

Footnote 10.8.7:

It is not uncommon in Rajwara, when the means of individuals prevent them from cultivating their own lands, to hire out the whole with men and implements; for the use of which one-eighth of the produce is the established consideration. We have applied this in the rough estimate of the expenses of the regent’s farming system.

Footnote 10.8.8:

[To illustrate the rise in prices, the average value of a plough bullock is now Rs. 40, or about £2:13s.]

Footnote 10.8.9:

[Jagātya, a Marāthi word derived from jakāt, Arabic zakāt, the religious alms which a Musalmān is bound to pay.]

Footnote 10.8.10:

[Havāldār, havāladār, the officer in charge of the collection of grain.]

Footnote 10.8.11:

There are sixteen annas to a rupee.

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Chapter 9

=Foreign Policy of Zālim Singh.=—The foregoing reflections bring us back to political considerations, and these we must separate into two branches, the foreign and domestic. We purposely invert the discussion of these topics for the sake of convenience.

Zalim’s policy was to create, as regarded himself, a kind of balance of power; to overawe one leader by his influence with another, yet, by the maintenance of a good understanding with all, to prevent individual umbrage, while his own strength was at all times sufficient to make the scale preponderate in his favour.

Placed in the very heart of India, Kotah was for years the centre around which revolved the desultory armies, or ambulant governments, ever strangers to repose; and though its wealth could not fail to attract the cupidity of these vagabond powers, yet, by the imposing attitude which he assumed, Zalim Singh maintained, during more than half a century, the respect, the fear, and even the esteem of all; and Kotah alone, throughout this lengthened period, so full of catastrophes, never saw an enemy [548] at her gates. Although an epoch of perpetual change and political convulsion—armies destroyed, States overturned, famine and pestilence often aiding moral causes in desolating the land—yet did the regent, from the age of twenty-five to eighty-two,[10.9.1] by his sagacity, his energy, his moderation, his prudence, conduct the bark intrusted to his care through all the shoals and dangers which beset her course. It may not excite surprise that he was unwilling to relinquish the helm when the vessel was moored in calm waters; or, when the unskilful owner, forgetting these tempests, and deeming his own science equal to the task, demanded the surrender, that he should hoist the flag of defiance.

There was not a court in Rajwara, not even the predatory governments, which was not in some way influenced by his opinions, and often guided by his councils. At each he had envoys, and when there was a point to gain, there were irresistible arguments in reserve to secure it. The necessities, the vanities, and weaknesses of man he could enlist on his side, and he was alternately, by adoption, the father, uncle, or brother of every person in power during this eventful period, from the prince upon the throne to the brat of a Pindari. He frequently observed that “none knew the shifts he had been put to”; and when entreated not to use expressions of humility, which were alike unsuited to his age and station, and the reverence he compelled, he would reply, “God grant you long life, but it is become a habit.” For the last ten years he not only made his connexion with Amir Khan subservient to avoiding a collision with Holkar, but converted the Khan into the make-weight of his balance of power; “he thanked God the time was past when he had to congratulate even the slave of a Turk on a safe accouchement, and to pay for this happiness.”

Though by nature irascible, impetuous, and proud, he could bend to the extreme of submission. But while he would, by letter or conversation, say to a marauding Pindari or Pathan, “let me petition to your notice,” or “if my clodpole understanding (bhumia buddh) is worth consulting”; or reply to a demand for a contribution, coupled with a threat of inroad, “that the friendly epistle had been received; that he lamented the writer’s distresses, etc. etc.,” with a few thousand more than was demanded, and a present to the messenger, he would excite a feeling which at least obtained a respite; on the other hand, he was always prepared to repel aggression, and if a single action would have decided his quarrel, he would not have hesitated to engage any power in the circle. But he knew even success, in such a case, to be ruin, and the general [549] feature of his external policy was accordingly of a temporizing and very mixed nature. Situated as he was, amidst conflicting elements, he had frequently a double game to play. Thus, in the coalition of 1806-7, against Jodhpur, he had three parties to please, each requesting his aid, which made neutrality almost impossible. He sent envoys to all; and while appearing as the universal mediator, he gave assistance to none.

It would be vain as well as useless to attempt the details of his foreign policy; we shall merely allude to the circumstances which first brought him in contact with the British Government, in A.D. 1803-4, and then proceed to his domestic administration.

=Monson’s Campaign. Gallantry of the Koila Chief.=—When the ill-fated expedition under Monson traversed Central India to the attack of Holkar, the regent of Kotah, trusting to the invincibility of the British arms, did not hesitate, upon their appearance within his territory, to co-operate both with supplies and men. But when the British army retreated, and its commander demanded admission within the walls of Kotah, he met a decided and very proper refusal. “You shall not bring anarchy and a disorganized army to mix with my peaceable citizens; but draw up your battalions under my walls; I will furnish provisions, and I will march the whole of my force between you and the enemy, and bear the brunt of his attack.” Such were Zalim’s own expressions; whether it would have been wise to accede to his proposal is not the point of discussion. Monson continued his disastrous flight through the Bundi and Jaipur dominions, and carried almost alone the news of his disgrace to the illustrious Lake. It was natural he should seek to palliate his error by an attempt to involve others; and amongst those thus calumniated, first and foremost was the regent of Kotah, “the head and front of whose offending”—non-admission to a panic-struck, beef-eating army within his walls—was translated into treachery, and a connivance with the enemy; a calumny which long subsisted to the prejudice of the veteran politician. But never was there a greater wrong inflicted, or a more unjust return for services and sacrifices, both in men and money, in a cause which little concerned him; and it nearly operated hurtfully, at a period (1817) when the British Government could not have dispensed with his aid. It was never told, it is hardly yet known at this distant period, what devotion he evinced in that memorable retreat, as it is misnamed, when the troops of Kotah and the corps of the devoted Lucan were sacrificed to ensure the safety of the army until it left the Mukunddarra Pass in its rear. If there be any incredulous supporter of the commander in that era of our shame, let him repair to the altar of the Koila chief, who, like a true Hara, ‘spread his carpet’ at the ford of the Amjar, and there awaited the myrmidons [550] of the Mahrattas, and fell protecting the flight of an army which might have passed from one end of India to the other. Well might the veteran allude to our ingratitude in 1804, when in A.D. 1817 he was called upon to co-operate in the destruction of that predatory system, in withstanding which he had passed a life of feverish anxiety. If there was a doubt of the part he acted, if the monuments of the slain will not be admitted as evidence, let us appeal to the opinion of the enemy, whose testimony adds another feature to the portrait of this extraordinary man.

Besides the Koila chief, and many brave Haras, slain on the retreat of Monson, the Bakhshi, or commander of the force, was made prisoner. As the price of his liberation, and as a punishment for the aid thus given to the British, the Mahratta leader exacted a bond of ten lakhs of rupees from the Bakhshi, threatening on refusal to lay waste with fire and sword the whole line of pursuit. But when the discomfited Bakhshi appeared before the regent, he spurned him from his presence, disavowed his act, and sent him back to Holkar to pay the forfeiture as he might.[10.9.2] Holkar satisfied himself then with threatening vengeance, and when opportunity permitted, he marched into Haraoti and encamped near the capital. The walls were manned to receive him; the signal had been prepared which would not have left a single house inhabited in the plains, while the Bhils would simultaneously pour down from the hills on Holkar’s supplies or followers. The bond was again presented, and without hesitation disavowed; hostilities appeared inevitable, when the friends of both parties concerted an interview. But Zalim, aware of the perfidy of his foe, declined this, except on his own conditions. These were singular, and will recall to mind another and yet more celebrated meeting. He demanded that they should discuss the terms of peace or war upon the Chambal, to which Holkar acceded. For this purpose Zalim prepared two boats, each capable of containing about twenty armed men. Having moored his own little bark in the middle of the stream, under the cannon of the city, Holkar, accompanied by his cavalcade, embarked in his boat and rowed to meet him. Carpets were spread, and there these extraordinary men, with only one eye[10.9.3] between them, settled the conditions of peace, and the endearing epithets of ‘uncle’ and ‘nephew’ were bandied, with abundant mirth on the peculiarity of their situation; while—for the fact is beyond a doubt—each boat was plugged, and men were at hand on the first appearance of treachery to have sent them all to the bottom of the river.[10.9.4] But Holkar’s [551] necessities were urgent, and a gift of three lakhs of rupees averted such a catastrophe, though he never relinquished the threat of exacting the ten lakhs; and when at length madness overtook him, “the bond of Kaka Zalim Singh” was one of the most frequently repeated ravings of this soldier of fortune, whose whole life was one scene of insanity.

=Relations with Marāthas and Pindāris.=—It will readily be conceived that the labours of his administration were quite sufficient to occupy his attention without intermeddling with his neighbours; yet, in order to give a direct interest in the welfare of Kotah, he became a competitor for the farming of the extensive districts which joined his southern frontier, belonging to Sindhia and Holkar. From the former he rented the Panj-mahals, and from the latter the four important districts of Dig, Pirawa, etc.,[10.9.5] which, when by right of conquest they became British, were given in sovereignty to the regent. Not satisfied with this hold of self-interest on the two great predatory powers, he had emissaries in the persons of their confidential ministers, who reported every movement; and to ‘make assurance doubly sure,’ he had Mahratta pandits of the first talent in his own administration, through whose connexions no political measure of their nation escaped his knowledge. As for Amir Khan, he and the regent were essential to each other. From Kotah the Khan was provided with military stores and supplies of every kind; and when his legions mutinied (a matter of daily occurrence) and threatened him with the bastinado, or fastening to a piece of ordnance under a scorching sun, Kotah afforded a place of refuge during a temporary retreat, or ways and means to allay the tumult by paying the arrears. Zalim allotted the castle of Shirgarh for the Khan’s family, so that this leader had no anxiety on their account while he was pursuing his career of rapine in more distant scenes.

Even the Pindaris were conciliated with all the respect and courtesy paid to better men. Many of their leaders held grants of land in Kotah: so essential, indeed, was a good understanding with this body, that when Sindhia, in A.D. 1807, entrapped and imprisoned in the dungeons of Gwalior the celebrated Karim,[10.9.6] Zalim not only advanced the large sum required for his ransom, but had the temerity to pledge himself for his future good conduct: an act which somewhat tarnished his reputation for sagacity, but eventually operated as a just punishment on Sindhia for his avarice.

The scale of munificence on which the regent exercised the rites of sanctuary (saran) towards the chiefs of other countries claiming his protection, was disproportioned to the means of the State. The exiled nobles of Marwar and Mewar [552] have held estates in Kotah greater than their sequestrated patrimonies. These dazzling acts of beneficence were not lost on a community amongst whom hospitality ranks at the head of the virtues. In these regions, where the strangest anomalies and the most striking contradictions present themselves in politics, such conduct begets no astonishment, and rarely provokes a remonstrance from the State whence the suppliant fled. The regent not only received the refugees, but often reconciled them to their sovereigns. He gloried in the title of ‘peace-maker,’ and whether his conduct proceeded from motives of benevolence or policy, he was rewarded with the epithet, sufficiently exalted in itself. “They all come to old Zalim with their troubles,” he remarked, “as if he could find food for them all from 'his handful of soil.'”

To conclude: his defensive was, in its results, the reverse of his offensive policy. Invariable and brilliant success accompanied the one; defeat, disappointment, and great pecuniary sacrifices were the constant fruits of the other. Mewar eluded all his arts, and involved Kotah in embarrassments from which she will never recover, while his attempt to take Sheopur, the capital of the Gaurs, by a coup de main, was signally defeated. Had he succeeded in either attempt, and added the resources of these acquisitions to Kotah, doubtless his views would have been still more enlarged. At an early period of his career, an offer was made to him, by the celebrated Partap Singh of Jaipur, to undertake the duties of chief minister of that State: it is vain to speculate on what might have been the result to the State or himself, had he been able to wield her resources, at that time so little impaired.

=Zālim Singh’s Domestic Policy. Character of Mahārāo Ummed Singh.=—Let us now view the domestic policy of the regent; for which purpose we must again bring forward the pageant prince of Kotah, the Raja Ummed Singh, who was destined never to be extricated from the trammels of a guardianship which, like most offices in the East, was designed to be hereditary; and at the age of threescore and ten, Ummed Singh found himself as much a minor as when his dying father ‘placed him in the lap’ of the Protector Zalim Singh. The line of conduct he pursued towards his sovereign, through half a century’s duration, was singularly consistent. The age, the character, the very title of Nana, or ‘grandsire,’ added weight to his authority, and the disposition of the prince seemed little inclined to throw it off. In short, his temperament appeared exactly suited to the views of the regent, who, while he consulted his wishes in every step, acted entirely from himself. The Maharao was a prince of excellent understanding, and possessed many of those qualities inherent in a Rajput. He was fond of the chase, and was the best horseman and marksman in the country; and the [553] regent gained such entire ascendancy over him, that it is doubtful whether he was solicitous of change. Besides, there was no appearance of constraint; and his religious occupations, which increased with his age, went far to wean him from a wish to take a more active share in the duties of government. His penetration, in fact, discovered the inutility of such a desire, and he soon ceased to entertain it; while in proportion as he yielded, the attentions of the minister increased. If an envoy came from a foreign State, he was introduced to the prince, delivered his credentials to him; and from him received a reply, but that reply was his minister’s. If a foreign noble claimed protection, he received it from the prince; he was the dispenser of the favours, though he could neither change their nature or amount. Nay, if the regent’s own sons required an addition to their estates, it could only be at the express desire of the Maharao; and to such a length did the minister carry this deference, that an increase to his personal income required being pressed upon him by the prince. If horses arrived from foreign countries for sale, the best were set aside for the Maharao and his sons. The archives, the seal, and all the emblems of sovereignty remained as in times past in the custody of the personal servants of the prince, at the castle, though none durst use them without consent of the regent. He banished his only son, Madho Singh, during three years, to the family estate at Nanta, for disrespect to the heir-apparent, Kishor Singh, when training their horses together; and it was with difficulty that even the entreaty of the Maharao could procure his recall. There are many anecdotes related to evince that habitual deference to everything attached to his sovereign, which, originating in good feeling, greatly aided his policy. The regent was one day at prayer, in the family temple in the castle, when the younger sons of the Maharao, not knowing he was there, entered to perform their devotions. It was the cold season, and the pavement was damp; he took the quilt which he wore from his shoulders, and spread it for them to stand upon. On their retiring, a servant, deeming the quilt no longer fit to be applied to the regent’s person, was putting it aside; but, guessing his intention, Zalim eagerly snatched it from him, and re-covering himself, observed it was now of some value, since it was marked with the dust of the feet of his sovereign’s children. These are curious anomalies in the mind of a man who had determined on unlimited authority. No usurpation was ever more meek, or yet more absolute; and it might be affirmed that the prince and the regent were made for each other and the times in which they lived.

=Zālim Singh and his Servants.=—It was to be expected that a man whose name was long synonymous with wisdom [554] should show discernment in the choice of his servants. He had the art of attaching them to his interests, of uniting their regard with a submissive respect, and no kindness, no familiarity, ever made them forget the bounds prescribed. But while he generously provided for all their wants, and granted them every indulgence, he knew too well the caprice of human nature to make them independent of himself. He would provide for them, for their relations and their dependents; his hand was ever bestowing gratuities on festivals, births, marriages, or deaths; but he never allowed them to accumulate wealth. It is to be remarked that his most confidential servants were either Pathans or Mahratta pandits: the first he employed in military posts, the other in the more complicated machinery of politics. He rarely employed his own countrymen; and the post of Faujdar, now held by Bishan Singh, a Rajput of the Saktawat clan, is the exception to the rule. Dalil Khan and Mihrab Khan were his most faithful and devoted servants and friends. The stupendous fortifications of the capital, with which there is nothing in India to compete, save the walls of Agra, were all executed by the former. By him also was raised that pride of the regent, the city called after him, Jhalrapatan;[10.9.7] while all the other forts were put into a state which makes Kotah the most defensible territory in India. Such was the affectionate esteem in which Dalil was held by the regent, that he used often to say, “he hoped he should not outlive Dalil Khan.” Mihrab Khan was the commander of the infantry, which he maintained in a state of admirable discipline and efficiency;[10.9.8] they received their bis roza, or twenty days’ pay, each month, with their arrears at the end of every second year [555].

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Footnote 10.9.1:

I may once more repeat, this was written in A.D. 1820-21, when Zalim Singh had reached the age of fourscore and two. [He died, aged 84, in 1824.]

Footnote 10.9.2:

If my memory betrays me not, this unfortunate commander, unable to bear his shame, took poison.

Footnote 10.9.3:

It should be remembered that Zalim was quite blind, and that Holkar had lost the use of one eye. [See Vol. II. p. 1234.]

Footnote 10.9.4:

[Compare the meeting of Alexander I. of Russia and Napoleon at Tilsit on June 25, 1807.]

Footnote 10.9.5:

[Dīg, in Bharatpur State; Pirāwa, one of the Central India districts included in Tonk State (IGI, xx. 151).]

Footnote 10.9.6:

[Karīm Khān surrendered to the British in 1818, and was given an estate in Gorakhpur District.]

Footnote 10.9.7:

Jhālarapātan, ‘the city of the Jhāla,’ the regent’s tribe. [Others explain the name to mean city (pātan) of springs (jhālra): or city of bells, because it contained 108 temples (IGI, xiv. 123).]

Footnote 10.9.8:

Mihrab Khan was the commandant of one division of Zalim’s contingent, placed at my disposal, which in eight days took possession of every district of Holkar’s adjacent to Haraoti, and which afterwards gained so much credit by the brilliant escalade of the Saudi fortress, when co-operating with General Sir John Malcolm. The Royals (Raj-Paltan) were led by Saif Ali, a gallant soldier, but who could not resist joining the cause of the Maharao and legitimacy in the civil war of 1821.

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