CHAPTER 10
Rāna Banbīr Singh, A.D. 1535-37.
The Escape of Udai Singh, the Heir.
The faithful barber was awaiting the nurse in the bed of the Berach River, some miles west of Chitor, and fortunately the infant had not awoke until he descended the city. They departed for Deolia, and sought refuge with Singh Rao, the successor to Baghji, who fell for Chitor; who dreading the consequence of detection, they proceeded to Dungarpur. Rawal Askaran then ruled this principality, which, as well as Deolia, was not only a branch, but the elder branch, of Chitor. With every wish to afford a shelter, he pleaded the danger which threatened himself and the child in such a feeble sanctuary. Pursuing a circuitous route through Idar, and the intricate valleys of the Aravalli, by the help and with the protection of its wild inmates, the Bhils, she gained Kumbhalmer. The resolution she had formed was bold as it was judicious. She demanded an interview with the governor, Asa Sah his name, of the mercantile tribe of Depra,[[3]] and a follower of the theistical tenets of the Jains. The interview being granted, she placed the infant in his lap, and bid him “guard the life of his sovereign.” He felt perplexed and alarmed: but his mother, who was present, upbraided him for his scruples. “Fidelity,” said she, “never looks at dangers or difficulties. He is your master, the son of Sanga, and by God’s blessing the result will be glorious.” Having thus fulfilled her trust, the faithful Panna withdrew from Kumbhalmer to avoid the suspicion which a Rajputni about a Srawak’s[[4]] child would have occasioned, as the heir of Chitor was declared to be the nephew of the Depra.
The Boyhood of Udai Singh.
Installation of Rāna Udai Singh, A.D. 1537-72.
The tidings soon reached the usurper, who had not borne his faculties meekly since his advancement; but having seized on the dignity, he wished to ape all the customs of the legitimate monarchs of Chitor, and even had the effrontery to punish as an insult the refusal of one of the proud sons of Chonda to take the dauna from his bastard hand.
The Dauna, a Recognition of Legitimacy.
It may therefore be conceived with what contempt the haughty nobility of Chitor received the mockery of honour from the hand of this ‘fifth son of Mewar’; and the Chondawat chief had the boldness to add to his refusal, “that an honour from the hand of a true son of Bappa Rawal became a disgrace when proffered by the offspring of the handmaid Sitalseni.” The defection soon became general, and all repaired to the valley of Kumbhalmer to hail the legitimate son of Mewar. A caravan of five hundred horses and ten thousand oxen, laden with merchandise from Cutch, the dower of Banbir’s daughter, guarded by one thousand Gaharwar Rajputs, was plundered in the passes: a signal intimation of the decay of his authority, and a timely supply to the celebration of the nuptials of Udai Rana with the daughter of the Rao of Jalor. Though the interdict of Hamir was not forgotten, it was deemed that the insult given by Banbir Sonigira was amply effaced by his successor’s redemption of the usurpation of Banbir Sesodia. The marriage was solemnized at Bali, within the limits of Jalor, and the [319] customary offerings were sent or given by all the princes of Rajasthan. Two chiefs only, of any consequence, abstained from attending on their lawful prince on this occasion, the Solanki of Maholi and Maloji of Tana. In attacking them, the bastard was brought into conflict; but Maloji was slain and the Solanki surrendered.
Deposition of Rāna Banbīr Singh.
Rāna Udai Singh, A.D. 1537-72.
His Character.
Birth of Akbar.
Defeat and Flight of Humāyūn, A.D. 1540.
And coming events cast their shadows before;
for, could he, by any prophetic power, have foreseen that the cloud which then shaded his fortunes, was but the precursor of glory to his race, he would have continued his retreat from the sheltering sand-hills of Umarkot with very different sentiments from those which accompanied his flight into Persia [322].
Early Years of Akbar.
Akbar’s Struggle for the Empire.
Comparison of Akbar with Rāna Udai Singh.
The Rana was old enough to philosophize on ‘the uses of adversity’; and though the best of the ‘great ancients’ had fallen in defence of Chitor, there were not wanting individuals capable of instilling just and noble sentiments into his mind: but it was of that common character which is formed to be controlled by others; and an artful and daring concubine stepped in, to govern Udai Singh and Mewar.
Akbar was not older when he came to the throne[[21]] of Delhi than Udai Singh when he ascended that of Mewar. Nor were his hopes much brighter; but the star which beamed upon his cradle in the desert, conducted to his aid such counsellors as the magnanimous Bairam, and the wise and virtuous Abu-l Fazl. Yet it may be deemed hardly fair to contrast the Rajput with the Mogul: the one disciplined into an accurate knowledge of human nature, by experience of the [324] mutability of fortune; the other cooped up from infancy in a valley of his native hills, his birth concealed, and his education restricted.[[22]]
Akbar was the real founder of the empire of the Moguls, the first successful conqueror of Rajput independence: to this end his virtues were powerful auxiliaries, as by his skill in the analysis of the mind and its readiest stimulant to action, he was enabled to gild the chains with which he bound them. To these they became familiarized by habit, especially when the throne exerted its power in acts gratifying to national vanity, or even in ministering to the more ignoble passions. But generations of the martial races were cut off by his sword, and lustres rolled away ere his conquests were sufficiently confirmed to permit him to exercise the beneficence of his nature, and obtain by the universal acclaim of the conquered, the proud epithet of Jagad Guru, or ‘guardian of mankind.’ He was long ranked with Shihabu-d-din, Ala, and other instruments of destruction, and with every just claim; and, like these, he constructed a Mimbar[[23]] for the Koran from the altars of Eklinga. Yet he finally succeeded in healing the wounds his ambition had inflicted, and received from millions that meed of praise which no other of his race ever obtained.
The absence of the kingly virtues in the sovereign of Mewar filled to the brim the bitter cup of her destiny. The guardian goddess of the Sesodias had promised never to abandon the rock of her pride while a descendant of Bappa Rawal devoted himself to her service. In the first assault by Ala, twelve crowned heads defended the ‘crimson banner’ to the death. In the second, when conquest led by Bajazet[[24]] came from the south, the chieftain of Deolia, a noble scion of Mewar, “though severed from her stem,” claimed the crown of glory and of martyrdom. But on this, the third and grandest struggle, no regal victim appeared to appease the Cybele of Chitor, and win her to retain its ‘kunguras’[[25]] as her coronet. She fell! the charm was broken; the mysterious tie was severed for ever which connected [325] Chitor with perpetuity of sway to the race of Guhilot. With Udai Singh fled the “fair face” which in the dead of night unsealed the eyes of Samarsi, and told him “the glory of the Hindu was departing”:[[26]] with him, that opinion, which for ages esteemed her walls the sanctuary of the race, which encircled her with a halo of glory, as the palladium of the religion and the liberties of the Rajputs.
To traditions such as these, history is indebted for the noblest deeds recorded in her page; and in Mewar they were the covert impulse to national glory and independence. For this the philosopher will value the relation; and the philanthropist as being the germs or nucleus of resistance against tyrannical domination. Enveloped in a wild fable, we see the springs of their prejudices and their action: batter down these adamantine walls of national opinion, and all others are but glass. The once invincible Chitor is now pronounced indefensible. “The abode of regality, which for a thousand years reared her head above all the cities of Hindustan,” is become the refuge of wild beasts, which seek cover in her temples; and this erst sanctified capital is now desecrated as the dwelling of evil fortune, into which the entrance of her princes is solemnly interdicted.
Akbar besieges Chitor, September, A.D. 1567.
Jaimall and Patta.
When Salumbar[[34]] fell at the gate of the sun, the command devolved on Patta of Kelwa. He was only sixteen:[[35]] his father had fallen in the last shock, and his mother had survived but to rear this the sole heir of their house. Like the Spartan mother of old, she commanded him to put on the ‘saffron robe,’ and to die for Chitor: but surpassing the Grecian dame, she illustrated her precept by example; and lest any soft ‘compunctious visitings’ for one dearer than herself might dim the lustre of Kelwa, she armed the young bride with a lance, with her descended the rock, and the defenders of Chitor saw her fall, fighting by the side of her Amazonian mother. When their wives and daughters performed such deeds, the Rajputs became reckless of life. They had maintained a protracted defence, but had no thoughts of surrender, when a ball struck Jaimall, who took the lead on the fall of the kin of Mewar. His soul revolted at the idea of ingloriously perishing by a distant blow. He saw there was no ultimate hope of salvation, the northern defences being entirely destroyed, and he resolved to signalize the end of his career. The fatal Johar was commanded, while eight thousand Rajputs ate the last ‘bira’[[36]] together, and put on their saffron robes; the gates were thrown open, the work of destruction commenced, and few survived ‘to stain the yellow mantle’ by inglorious surrender. Akbar entered Chitor, when thirty thousand of its inhabitants became victims to the ambitious thirst of conquest of this ‘guardian of mankind.’ All the heads of clans, both home and foreign, fell, and seventeen hundred of the immediate kin of the prince sealed their duty to their country with their lives. The Tuar chief of Gwalior appears to have been the only one of note who was reserved for another day of glory.[[37]] Nine queens, five princesses (their daughters), with two infant sons, and the families of all the chieftains not at their estates, perished in the flames or in the assault of this ever memorable day. Their divinity had indeed deserted them; for it was on Adityawar, the day of the sun,[[38]] he shed for the last time a ray of glory on Chitor. The rock of their strength was despoiled; the temples, the palaces dilapidated: and, to complete her humiliation and his triumph, Akbar bereft her of all the symbols of [328] regality: the nakkaras,[[39]] whose reverberations proclaimed, for miles around, the entrance and exit of her princes; the candelabras from the shrine of the ‘great mother,’ who girt Bappa Rawal with the sword with which he conquered Chitor; and, in mockery of her misery, her portals, to adorn his projected capital, Akbarabad.[[40]]
Akbar claimed the honour of the death of Jaimall by his own hand: the fact is recorded by Abu-l Fazl, and by the emperor Jahangir, who conferred on the matchlock which aided him to this distinction the title of Sangram.[[41]] But the conqueror of Chitor evinced a more exalted sense, not only of the value of his conquest, but of the merits of his foes, in erecting statues to the names of Jaimall and Patta at the most conspicuous entrance of his palace at Delhi; and they retained that distinction even when Bernier was in India.[[42]]
CHITOR.
To face page 382.
The Sin of the Capture of Chitor.
Escape of Rāna Udai Singh: Foundation of Udaipur.
Death of Rāna Udai Singh.
Jagmall proclaimed Rāna.
Jagmall deposed in favour of Rāna Partāp Singh.
[1]. The seraglio, or female palace.
[2]. Bari, Nai, are names for the barbers, who are the cuisiniers of the Rajputs. [The special duty of the Bāri is making leaf-platters from which Hindus eat: he is also a domestic servant, but does not, like the Nāi, work as a barber.]
[3]. [Dr. Tessitori states that the true form of the name is Dahīpra or Dahīpura, and they seem to be the same as the Depla of Gujarāt, where they are said to have been originally Lohānas (BG, ix. Part i. 122).]
[4]. The laity of the Jain persuasion are so called [srāvak, meaning ‘a disciple’].
[5]. Bara ‘great,’ būrha ‘aged’; the ‘wise elder’ of Rajasthan, where old age and dignity are synonymous.
[6]. [On the privilege of eating with the Rāna see p. [213] above.]
[7]. [There seems no basis for this tradition. The Bhonslas sprang from a Marātha headman of Deora in Sātāra (IGI, xviii. 306).]
[8]. Suhaila.
[9]. Kumbhalmer bidaona.
[10]. Chand, the heroic bard of the last Hindu emperor. [Cf. Ecclesiastes, x. 16.]
[11]. Battlements.
[12]. Badal Mahall.
[13]. November 23, A.D. 1542.
[14]. The Sodhas, a branch of the Pramaras, see p. 111.
[15]. "Humaioon mounted his horse at midnight and fled towards Amercot, which is about one hundred coss from Tatta. His horse, on the way, falling down dead with fatigue, he desired Tirdi Beg, who was well mounted, to let him have his; but so ungenerous was this man, and so low was royalty fallen, that he refused to comply with his request. The troops of the raja being close to his heels, he was necessitated to mount a camel, till one Nidim Koka, dismounting his own mother, gave the king her horse, and, placing her on the camel, ran himself on foot by her side.
"The country through which they fled being an entire sandy desert, the troop began to be in the utmost distress for water. Some ran mad, others fell down dead; nothing was heard but dreadful screams and lamentations. To add, if possible, to this calamity, news arrived of the enemy’s near approach. Humaioon ordered all those who could fight to halt, and let the women and baggage move forward. The enemy not making their appearance, the king rode on in front to see how it fared with his family.
"Night, in the meantime, coming on, the rear lost their way, and in the morning were attacked by a party of the enemy. Shech Ali, with about twenty brave men, resolved to sell his life dear. Having repeated the creed of martyrdom, he rushed upon the enemy, and the first arrow having reached the heart of the chief of the party, the rest were by the valour of his handful put to flight. The other Moguls joined in the pursuit, and took many of the camels and horses. They then continued their march, found the king sitting by a well which he had fortunately found, and gave him an account of their adventure.
"Marching forward the next day from this well, they were more distressed than before, there being no water for two days’ journey. On the fourth day of their retreat they fell in with another well, which was so deep, that the only bucket they had took a great deal of time in being wound up, and therefore a drum was beat to give notice to the caffilas when the bucket appeared, that they might repair by turns to drink. The people were so impatient for the water, that as soon as the first bucket appeared, ten or twelve of them threw themselves upon it before it quite reached the brim of the well, by which means the rope broke, and the bucket was lost, and several fell headlong after it. When this fatal accident happened, the screams and lamentations of all became loud and dreadful. Some lolling out their tongues, rolled themselves in agony on the hot sand; while others, precipitating themselves into the well, met with an immediate, and consequently an easier death. What did not the unhappy king feel, when he saw this terrible situation of his few faithful friends!
"The next day, though they reached water, was not less fatal than the former. The camels, who had not tasted water for several days, now drank so much that the greatest part of them died. The people, also, after drinking, complained of an oppression of the heart, and in about half an hour a great part of them expired.
"A few, with the king, after this unheard-of distress, reached Amercote. The raja, being a humane man, took compassion on their misfortunes: he spared nothing that could alleviate their miseries, or express his fidelity to the king.
“At Amercote, upon Sunday the fifth of Rigib, in the year nine hundred and forty-nine, the prince Akber was brought forth by Hamida Banu Begum. The king, after returning thanks to God, left his family under the protection of Raja Rana, and, by the aid of that prince, marched against Bicker.” Dow’s Ferishta [2nd ed. ii. 136 ff. Compare that of Briggs ii. 93 ff.].
[16]. [Four are usually reckoned: Islām Shāh, Muhammad Shāh Ādil, Ibrāhīm Shāh, and Sikandar Shāh.]
[17]. A.D. 1554.
[18]. [At the Sher Mandal in Purāna Kila, Delhi, on January 24, 1556.]
[19]. There are excellent grounds for a parallel between Akbar and Henry IV. and between Bairam and Sully, who were, moreover, almost contemporaries. The haughty and upright Bairam was at length goaded from rebellion to exile, and died by assassination only four years after Akbar’s accession. [January 31, 1561.] The story is one of the most useful lessons of history. [The life of Akbar has been fully told, with much new evidence, by V. A. Smith, Akbar the Great Mogul, 1917.]
[20]. A.H. 975, or A.D. 1567.
[21]. A.D. 1556; both were under thirteen years of age.
[22]. If we argue this according to a Rajput’s notions, he will reject the compromise, and say that the son of Sanga should have evinced himself worthy of his descent, under whatever circumstances fortune might have placed him.
[23]. The pulpit or platform of the Islamite preachers.
[24]. Malik Bāyazīd was the name of the Malwa sovereign ere he came to the throne, corrupted by Europeans to Bajazet. He is always styled ‘Baz Bahadur’ in the annals of Mewar.
[25]. Battlements.
[26]. The last book of Chand opens with this vision.
[27]. [Ferishta ii. 299 ff. “It does not appear when that attempt was made, and it is difficult to find a place for it in Abu-l Fazl’s chronology, but there is also difficulty in believing the alleged fact to be an invention” (Smith, Akbar, the Great Mogul, 81).]
[28]. Of which horde is a corruption.
[29]. There are two villages of this name. This is on the lake called Mansarowar on whose bank I obtained that invaluable inscription (see No. 2) in the nail-headed character, which settled the establishment of the Guhilot in Chitor, at a little more than (as Orme has remarked) one thousand years. To the eternal regret of my Yati Guru and myself, a barbarian Brahman servant, instead of having it copied, broke the venerable column to bring the inscription to Udaipur.
[30]. It is as perfect as when constructed, being of immense blocks of compact white limestone, closely fitted to each other; its height thirty feet, the base a square of twelve, and summit four feet, to which a staircase conducts. A huge concave vessel was then filled with fire, which served as a night-beacon to this ambulatory city, where all nations and tongues were assembled, or to guide the foragers. Akbar, who was ambitious of being the founder of a new faith as well as kingdom, had tried every creed, Jewish, Hindu, and even made some progress in the doctrines of Christianity, and may have in turn affected those of Zardusht, and assuredly this pyramid possesses more of the appearance of a pyreum than a ‘diwa’; though either would have fulfilled the purport of a beacon. [Mr. V. A. Smith, quoting Kavi Rāj Shyāmal Dās, ‘Antiquities at Nagari’ (JASB, Part i. vol. lvi. (1887), p. 75), corrects the statements in this note. There was no interior staircase, and more accurate measurements are: height, 36 ft. 7 in.; 14 ft. 1 in. square at base; 3 ft. 3 in. square at apex. The tower is solid for 4 ft., then hollow for 20 ft., and solid again up to the top. The building may be very ancient, though used by Akbar as alleged by popular tradition; probably a wooden ladder gave access to the chamber and to the summit. The original purpose of the building, which stands near Nagari, some six miles N.E. of Chitor, is uncertain (Akbar the Great Mogul, 86, note).]
[31]. The Sangawats, not the sons of Rana Sanga, but of a chieftain of Chonda’s kin, whose name is the patronymic of one of its principal subdivisions, of whom the chief of Deogarh is now head (see p. [188]).
[32]. Of the Panchaenot branch.
[33]. One of the Shaikhavat subdivisions.
[34]. The abode of the Chondawat leader. It is common to call them by the name of their estates.
[35]. [He must have been older, as he left two sons, and had already served in defence of Merta (Smith, op. cit. 88).]
[36]. The bira, or pan, the aromatic leaf so called, enveloping spices, terra japonica, calcined shell-lime[shell-lime], and pieces of the areca nut, is always presented on taking leave.
[37]. [His name appears to have been Sālivāhan, and as he had married a Sesodia princess, he was bound to fight for the Rāna (ASR, ii. 394).]
[38]. “Chait sudi igārahwān, S. 1624,” 11th Chait, or May, A.D. 1568. [The Musalmān writers give February 23, 1568 (Akbarnāma, ii. 471; Elliot-Dowson v. 327; cf. Badaoni ii. 111).]
[39]. Grand kettle-drums, about eight or ten feet in diameter.
[40]. The tija sakha Chitor ra, or ‘third sack of Chitor,’ was marked by the most illiterate atrocity, for every monument spared by Ala or Bayazid was defaced, which has left an indelible stain on Akbar’s name as a lover of the arts, as well as of humanity. Ala’s assault was comparatively harmless, as the care of the fortress was assigned to a Hindu prince; and Bayazid had little time to fulfil this part of the Mosaic law, maintained with rigid severity by the followers of Islamism. Besides, at those periods, they possessed both the skill and the means to reconstruct: not so after Akbar, as the subsequent portion of the annals will show but a struggle for existence. The arts do not flourish amidst penury: the principle to construct cannot long survive, when the means to execute are fled; and in the monumental works of Chitor we can trace the gradations of genius, its splendour and decay. [There is no good evidence that Akbar destroyed the buildings (Smith, op. cit. 90).]
[41]. "He (Akber) named the matchlock with which he shot Jeimul Singram, being one of great superiority and choice, and with which he had slain three or four thousand birds and beasts" (Jahangir-namah). [Ed. Rogers-Beveridge 45; Āīn, i. 116, 617; Badaoni ii. 107.]
[42]. “I find nothing remarkable at the entry but two great elephants of stone, which are in the two sides of one of the gates. Upon one of them is the statue of Jamel (Jeimul), that famous raja of Cheetore, and upon the other Potter (Putta) his brother. These are two gallant men that, together with their mother, who was yet braver than they, cut out so much work for Ekbar; and who, in the sieges of towns which they maintained against him, gave such extraordinary proofs of their generosity, that at length they would rather be killed in the outfalls (sallies) with their mother, than submit; and for this gallantry it is, that even their enemies thought them worthy to have these statues erected to them. These two great elephants, together with the two resolute men sitting on them, do at the first entry into this fortress make an impression of I know not what greatness and awful terror” (Letter written at Delhi, 1st July 1663, from edition printed in London in 1684, in the author’s possession). [Ed. V. A. Smith, 256.] Such the impression made on a Parisian a century after the event: but far more powerful the charm to the author of these annals, as he pondered on the spot where Jaimall received the fatal shot from Sangram, or placed flowers on the cenotaph that marks the fall of the son of Chonda and the mansion of Patta, whence issued the Sesodia matron and her daughter. Every foot of ground is hallowed by ancient recollections. [For the question of these statues see V. A. Smith, HFA, 426; ASR, i. 225 ff.; Manucci, ii. 11.]
In these the reader may in some degree participate, as the plate gives in the distance the ruins of the dwellings both of Jaimall and Patta on the projection of the rock, as well as ‘the ringlet on the forehead of Chitor,’ the column of victory raised by Lakha Rana.
[43]. The man is of four seers: the maund is forty, or seventy-five pounds. Dow, calculating all the captured wealth of India by the latter, has rendered many facts improbable. [The man in the Āīn was 55½ lbs.]
[44]. [Sir H. M. Elliot proved that the use of 74½ is merely a modification of the figures 74¹⁰⁄₁₆, meaning apparently 84, a sacred number (Supplemental Glossary, 197). In the Central Provinces it is said that it originated in Jahāngīr’s slaughter of the Nāgar Brāhmans, when 7450 of them threw away their sacred cords and became Sūdras to save their lives (Russell, Tribes and Castes, ii. 395).]
[45]. ‘Chitor marya ra pap’: ra is the sign of the genitive, in the Doric tongue of Mewar, the ka of the refined.
[46]. Classically Udayapura, the city of the East; from udaya (oriens), the point of sunrise, as asta (west) is of sunset.
[47]. Ceres—The Aheria, or Mahurat ka Shikar, will be explained in the Personal Narrative, as it would here break the connexion of events.