CHAPTER 9
Ajīt Singh attacks Nāhan.
“In 1769 Shah Alam[[2]] went to heaven. The torch of discord was lighted by his sons, with which they fired their own dwelling. Azim-ush-shan was slain,[[3]] and the umbrella of royalty waved over the head of Muizzu-d-din.[[4]] Ajit sent the Bhandari Kaimsi to the presence, who returned with the sanad of the vice-royalty of Gujarat. In the month of Margsir 1769, he prepared an army to take possession of the Sattra-sahas,[[5]] when fresh dissensions broke out in the house of the Chagatai. The Sayyids slew Muizzu-d-din, and Farrukhsiyar became king.[[6]] Zulfikar Khan was [85] put to death,[[7]] and with him departed the strength of the Moguls. Then the Sayyids became headstrong. Ajit was commanded to send his son, Abhai Singh, now seventeen years of age, with his contingent, to court; but Ajit having learned that the traitor Mukund was there and in great favour, sent a trusty band, who slew him even in the middle of Delhi. This daring act brought the Sayyid with an army to Jodhpur.[[8]] Ajit sent off the men of wealth to Siwanah, and his son and family to the desert of Rardarra.[[9]] The capital was invested, and Abhai Singh demanded as a hostage for the conduct of Ajit, who was also commanded to court. To neither was the Raja inclined, but the advice of the Diwan and still more of Kesar the bard, who gave as a precedent the instance of Rao Ganga when invaded by the Lodi, Daulat Khan, who entrusted his affairs to his son Maldeo, was unanimously approved.[[10]] Abhai Singh was recalled from Rardarra, and marched with Husain Ali to Delhi, the end of Asarh 1770. The heir of Maru received the mansab of five thousand from the king.
“Ajit followed his son to the court, then held at Delhi. There the sight of the altars raised over the ashes of chiefs who had perished to preserve him in his infancy, kindled all his wrath, and he meditated revenge on the whole house of Timur. Four distinct causes for displeasure had Ajmall:—
“1. The Nauroza.[[11]]
“2. The compulsory marriage of their daughters with the king.
“3. The killing of kine.
“4. The Jizya, or capitation tax.”[[12]]
Ajit Singh marries his Daughter to Farrukhsīyar, A.D. 1716.
“In Jeth 1771, having secured all his wishes, Ajit left the court, and with the renewed patent as viceroy of Gujarat, returned to Jodhpur. Through Kaimsi, his minister, the jizya was repealed. The Hindu race owed eternal obligation to the Mor (crown) of Murdhar, the sanctuary of princes in distress.
Ajīt Singh, Viceroy of Gujarāt, A.D. 1715-16.
“In 1773, Ajit reduced the Jhala of Halwad, and Jam of Nawanagar, who paid as tribute three lacs of rupees, with twenty-five choice steeds;[[15]] and having settled the province, he worshipped at Dwarka, and bathed in the Gomati.[[16]] Thence he returned to Jodhpur, where he learned that Indar Singh had regained Nagor; but he stood not before Ajit.
Ajīt Singh visits Delhi.
“When the king heard that Ajit had reached Delhi, he sent the Hara Rao Bhim of Kotah, and Khandauran Khan to introduce him to the presence. Ajit obeyed. Besides his own Rathors, he was accompanied by Rao Bishan Singh of Jaisalmer, and Padam Singh of Derawar, with Fateh Singh, a noble of Mewar, Man Singh, Rathor, chief of Sita Mhau, and the Chandarawat, Gopal of Rampura, besides Udai Singh of Kandela, Sakat Singh of Manoharpur, Kishan of Kalchipur, and many others.[[17]] The meeting took place at the Moti Bagh. The king bestowed the mansab of Haft Hazari (seven thousand horse) on Ajit, and added a crore of dams to his rent-roll. He presented him with the insignia of the Mahi Muratib,[[18]] with elephants and horses, a sword and dagger, a diamond aigrette (sarpech) and plume, and a double string of pearls. Having left the presence, Ajit went to visit Abdulla Khan. The Sayyid advanced to meet him, and his reception, with his attendants, was distinguished. They renewed their determination to stand or fall together. Their conference caused dismay to the Moguls, who lay in ambush to put Ajit to death.
“On the second day of the bright moon of Pus, 1775 [A.D. 1718], the king honoured Ajit with a visit. Ajit seated the king on a throne formed of bags of rupees to the amount of one lakh,[[19]] and presented elephants, horses, and all that was precious. In the month of Phalgun, Ajit and the Sayyid went to visit the king; and after the conference wrote to Husain Ali revealing their plans, and desiring his rapid march to unite with them from the Deccan. Now the heavens assumed portentous appearances; the Disasul[[20]] was red and fiery; jackasses brayed unusually; dogs barked; thunder rolled without a cloud; the court, late so gay, was now sad and gloomy; all were forebodings of change at Delhi. In twenty days, Husain reached Delhi; his countenance was terrific; his drum, which now beat close to the palace, was the knell of falling greatness. He was accompanied by myriads of horse. Delhi was enveloped in the dust raised by his hostile steeds. They encamped in the north of the city, and Husain joined Ajit and his brother. The trembling king sent congratulations and gifts; the Mogul chiefs kept aloof in their abodes; even as the quail cowers in the grass when the falcon hovers over it, so did the Moguls when Husain reached Delhi.[[21]] The lord of Amber was like a lamp left without oil [88].
The Revolution at Delhi.
Muhammad Shah, Emperor, A.D. 1719-48.
Ajīt Singh marries his Daughter to Jai Singh.
The Assassination of the Sayyids. Ajīt Singh asserts his Independence.
Imperialist Attack on Ajmer.
Muhammad Shah attacks Ajīt Singh.
Ajīt Singh’s Heir received at the Imperial Court.
The Murder of Ajīt Singh, A.D. 1724.
“Abhai, a second Ajit, was introduced to the Aspati; his father heard the news and rejoiced. But this world is a fable—a lie. Time will sooner or later prey on all things. What king, what raja can avoid the path leading to extinction? The time allotted for our sojourn here is predetermined; prolong it we cannot. The decree penned by the hand of the Creator is engraven upon each forehead at the hour of birth. Neither addition nor subtraction can be made. Fate (honhar) must be fulfilled. It was the command of Govinda[[40]] that Ajit (the Avatar of Indra) should obtain immortality, and leave his renown in the world beneath. Ajit, so long a thorn in the side of his foe, was removed to Parloka.[[41]] He kept afloat the faith of the Hindu, and sunk the Muslim in shame. In the face of day, the lord of Maru took the road which leads to Paradise (Vaikuntha). Then dismay seized the city; each looked with dread in his neighbour’s face as he said, ‘Our sun has set!’ But when the day of Yamaraj[[42]] arrives, who can retard it? Were not the five Pandus enclosed in the mansion of Himala?[[43]] Harchand escaped not the universal decree; nor will gods, men, or reptiles avoid it, not even Vikrama or Kama; all fall before Yama. How then could Ajit hope to escape?
“On Asarh, the 13th, the dark half of the moon of 1780, seventeen hundred warriors of the eight ranks of Maru, for the last time marched before their lord.[[44]] They placed his body in a boat,[[45]] and carried him to the pyre,[[46]] made of sandal-wood and perfumes, with heaps of cotton, oil, and camphor. But this is a subject of grief: how can the bard enlarge on such a theme? The Nazir went to the Rawala[[47]] and as he pronounced the words ‘Rao siddhi āyē,’ the Chauhani queen, with sixteen damsels in her suite, came forth: ‘This day,’ said she, ‘is one of joy; my race shall be illustrated; our lives have passed together, how then can I leave him?’[[48]]
The Sati.
“The drum sounded; the funeral train moved on; all invoked the name of [94] Hari.[[58]] Charity was dispensed like falling rain, while the countenances of the queens were radiant as the sun. From heaven Uma[[59]] looked down; in recompense of such devotion she promised they should enjoy the society of Ajit in each successive transmigration. As the smoke, emitted from the house of flame, ascended to the sky, the assembled multitudes shouted Kaman! Kaman! ‘Well done! Well done!’ The pile flamed like a volcano; the faithful queens laved their bodies in the flames, as do the celestials in the lake of Manasarovar.[[60]] They sacrificed their bodies to their lord, and illustrated the races whence they sprung. The gods above exclaimed, ‘Dhan Dhan[[61]] Ajit! who maintained the faith, and overwhelmed the Asuras.’ Savitri, Gauri, Sarasvati, Ganga, and Gomati[[62]] united in doing honour to these faithful queens. Forty-five years, three months, and twenty-two days, was the space of Ajit’s existence, when he went to inhabit Amarapura, an immortal abode!”
Character of Ajīt Singh.
The prodigality with which every clan lavished its blood, through a space of six-and-twenty years, may in part be learned from the chronicle; and in yet more forcible language from the cenotaphs scattered over the country, erected to the manes of those who fell in this religious warfare. Were other testimony required, it is to be found in the annals of their neighbours and their conquerors; while the traditional couplets of the bards, familiar to every Rajput, embalm the memory of the exploits of their forefathers.
Ajit was a prince of great vigour of mind as well as of frame. Valour was his inheritance; he displayed this hereditary quality at the early age of eleven, when he visited his enemy in his capital, displaying a courtesy which can only be comprehended by a Rajput. Amongst the numerous desultory actions, of which many occurred every year, there were several in which the whole strength of the Rathors was led by their prince. The battle of Sambhar, in S. 1765, fought against the Sayyids, which ended in a union of interests, was one of these; and, for the rest of Ajit’s life, kept him in close contact with the court, where he might have taken the lead had his talent for intrigue been commensurate with his boldness. From this period until his death, Ajit’s agency was recognized in all the intrigues and changes amongst the occupants of Timur’s throne, from Farrukhsiyar to Muhammad. He inherited an invincible hatred to the very name of Muslim, and was not scrupulous regarding the means by which he was likely to secure the extirpation of a race so inimical to his own. Viewing the manifold reasons for this hatred, we must not scrutinize with severity his actions when leagued with the Sayyids, even in the dreadful catastrophe which overwhelmed Farrukhsiyar, to whom he owed the twofold duty of fealty and consanguinity.
His Conduct to Durgadās.
Durgo desām kādhiyo
Golām Gāmgāni!
Durga was exiled, and Gamgani given to a slave.[[64]]
Gamgani, on the north bank of the Luni, was the chief town of the Karanot fief, of which clan Durga was the head. It is now attached to the Khalisa, or fisc, but whether recently, or ever since Durga, we know not. The Karanots still pay the last rites to their dead at Gamgani, where they have their cenotaphs (chhatris). Whether that of the noble Durga stands there to serve as a memorial of princely ingratitude, the writer cannot say; a portrait of the hero, in the autumn of his days, was given to him by the last lineal descendant of Ajit, as the reader is already aware.[[65]] Well may we repeat, that the system of feudality is the parent of the most brilliant virtues and the darkest crimes. Here, a long life of uninterrupted fidelity could not preserve Durga from the envenomed breath of slander, or the serpent-tooth [97] of ingratitude: and whilst the mind revolts at the crime which left a blank leaf in the chronicle, it is involuntarily carried back to an act less atrocious, indeed, than one which violates the laws of nature, but which in diminishing none of our horror for Abhai Singh, yet lessens our sympathy for the persecutor of Durgadas.[Durgadas.]
[1]. [Now known as Sirmūr, a Hill State in the Panjāb, on the W. bank of the Jumna, and E. of Simla (IGI, xxiii. 3).]
[2]. [Kutbu-d-dīn Shāh ‘Alam, Bahādur Shah I., died at Lahore, February 17, 1712.]
[3]. [Azīmu-sh-shān was drowned in the river Rāvi, after the battle between Jahāndār Shāh and his other brothers, in February 1712.]
[4]. [Muizzu-d-dīn Jahāndār Shāh, crowned Emperor at Lahore, April 10, 1712, was murdered in 1713, and was buried at Humāyūn’s tomb, Delhi.]
[5]. The “seventeen thousand” towns of Gujarat.
[6]. [On January 9, 1713.]
[7]. [Zulfikār Khān, Nasrat Jang, was strangled in January 1713.]
[8]. [The chronicler is reticent about this campaign which was carried out by Husain Ali Khān and the emperor’s maternal uncle Shāista Khān. It was caused by the expulsion of Mughals from Mārwār by Ajīt Singh (Khāfi Khān in Elliot-Dowson vii. 446 f.).]
[9]. The tract west of the Luni.
[10]. They slur over the most important demand—a daughter to wife to the king—it is at this Ajit hesitates, and for which the precedent is given.
[12]. Described Vol. I. p. [441].
[14]. Mewasa is a term given to the fastnesses in the mountains, which the aboriginal tribes, Kolis, Minas, and Mers, and not unfrequently the Rajputs, make their retreats; and in the present instance the bard alludes to the Mewasa of the Deoras of Sirohi and Abu, which has annoyed the descendants of Ajit to this hour, and has served to maintain the independence of this Chauhan tribe.
[15]. [Tharād in Pālanpur Agency, Bombay (IGI, xix. 346); Halwad in Kāthiāwār (ibid. viii. 13); Nawanagar in Kāthiāwar, the ruler, known as the Jām (Yule, Hobson-Jobson, 447), being a Jādeja Rājput (IGI, xviii. 419 ff.).]
[16]. This is all in the district of Okha (Okhamandala), where the Vadhels fixed themselves on the migration of Siahji from Kanauj. It would have been instructive had the bard deigned to have given us any account of the recognition which this visit occasioned, and which beyond a doubt caused the “books of Chronicles and Kings” to be opened and referred to.
[17]. This list well exemplifies the tone now assumed by the Rathors; but this grand feudal assemblage was in virtue of his office of viceroy of Gujarat. Each and all of these chieftainships the author is as familiar with as with the pen he now holds.
[18]. [The fish symbol, for which see Sleeman, Rambles, 137 f. James Skinner, who recovered Mahādāji Sindhia’s order in a fight with the Rājputs, speaks of it as “a brass fish with two chources (chaunri, horse-hair or yak tails) hanging to it like mustachios” (Irvine, Army of the Indian Moghuls, 33).]
[19]. £10,000 to £12,000.
[20]. Omen of the quarter.
[21]. [For an account of these transactions see Keene, Sketch of the History of Hindustan, 287 ff.]
[22]. The final doom.
[23]. [Farrukhsīyar was murdered in prison, and two sickly youths were placed in succession on the throne by the Sayyids—Rafiu-d-darajāt and Rafiu-d-daula—the first of whom died on May 31, the second on September 6, 1719.]
[24]. [Nekosīyar, son of Muhammad Akbar, youngest son of Aurangzeb, who was defeated and taken prisoner by the Sayyids (Keene, op. cit. 299).]
[25]. This is both minutely and faithfully related, and fully as much so as the Muhammadan record of this black deed. We have already (Vol. I. p. [475]) described it, and given a translation of an autograph letter of the prince of Amber, written on this memorable day. The importance of the transaction, as well as the desire to show the Bardic version, will justify its repetition.
[26]. In allusion to his vacillation, for which the Mirza Rāja was notorious.
[27]. [That is to say, the Kachhwāha Rāja.]
[28]. [For this revolution see Elliot-Dowson vii. 474 ff.]
[29]. The Star Fort, the castle of Ajmer.
[30]. The call to prayer of the Muslim.
[31]. This exact imitation of the manners of the imperial court is still strictly maintained at Jodhpur. The account of the measures which followed the possession of Ajmer is taken from the chronicle Surya Prakas; the only part not entirely translated from the Raj Rupak Akhyat. Ajmall is a licence of the poet, where it suits his rhyme, for Ajit. Aspati, ‘lord of steeds,’ is the common epithet applied to the emperors of Delhi. It is, however, but the second degree of paramount power—Gajpati, ‘lord of elephants,’ is the first.
[32]. The two latter tribes are amongst the most ancient of the allodial chieftains of the desert: the Dhondals being descendants of Rao Gango; the Gogawats, of the famous Goga [or Gūga] the Chauhan, who defended the Sutlej in the earliest Muslim invasion recorded. Both Goga and his steed Jawadia are immortal in Rajasthan. The Author had a chestnut Kathiawar, called Jawadia; he was perfection, and a piece of living fire when mounted, scorning every pace but the antelope’s bounds and curvets.
[33]. [Pātan in Jaipur State; Narnol in Patiāla; Rewāri in Gurgaon District, Panjāb.]
[34]. One of the great clans of Amber; of whom more hereafter.
[35]. [The tortoise (Kachhwāha) and the sun (the sun-born tribes).]
[36]. Founder of the Bharatpur State.
[37]. The Bāīsa, or ‘twenty-two’ viceroys of India.
[38]. [This was in 1723. The chronicler disguises the defeat of Ajīt Singh.]
[40]. The sovereign judge of mankind [Krishna].
[41]. ‘The other world’; lit. ‘another place.’
[42]. ‘Lord of hell.’
[43]. Hima, ‘ice,’ and ālaya, ‘an abode.’
[44]. Both head and feet are uncovered in funeral processions.
[45]. Id est, a vehicle formed like a boat, perhaps figurative of the sail crossing the Vaitarani, or Styx of the Hindu.
[46]. For the mode of conveying princes to their final abode, I refer the reader to a description at vol. i. p. [152], Trans. Royal Asiatic Society.
[47]. The queen’s palace.
[48]. This is the lady whom Ajit married in his non-age, the mother of the parricide.
[49]. Krishna [Chakrāyudha, Krishna, or Vishnu].
[50]. Ancient capital of the Bhattis.
[51]. Descended from the ancient dynasty of the Hindu kings of Delhi.
[52]. Tribe of the first dynasty of Anhilwara Patan.
[53]. The fire.
[54]. [The sacred basil, Ocymum sanctum.]
[55]. The Nazir (a Muslim epithet) has the charge of the harem.
[56]. The queen of heaven.
[57]. [Kunti escaped the fire and protected the children of Mādri, the other wife of Pāndu, who was burnt with him.]
[58]. Hari Krishna is the mediator and preserver of the Hindu Triad; his name alone is invoked in funeral rites (see p. [621]). The following extract from Dr. Wilkins’ translation of the Gīta will best disclose his attributes:—Krishna speaks: “I am the journey of the good; the comforter; the creator; the witness; the resting-place; the asylum; and the friend. I am generation and dissolution; the place where all things are deposited, and the inexhaustible soul of all nature. I am death and immortality; I am never-failing time; the preserver, whose face is turned on all sides. I am all grasping death; and I am the resurrection of those who are about to die.”
[59]. A name of Durga, the Hindu Juno.
[60]. The sacred lake in Tibet. [See C. A. Sherring, Western Tibet and the British Borderlands, 259 ff.]
[61]. Dhan is ‘riches,’ but is here used in the sense of glory; so that riches and glory are synonymous in term with the Hindu, as in practice in the west; the one may always command the other, at least that species of it for which nine-tenths of mankind contend, and are satisfied with obtaining.
[62]. Celestial queens.
[63]. Discovered by the author amongst the Rana’s archives.
[64]. [Dr. Tessitori writes that the correct version is:
“Mahārāja Ajmāl ri
Jad parkha jāni.
Durgo Saphara dāgajē,
Golām Gāmgāni.”
“The mind of Mahārāja Ajīt Singh then became known (when he saw) Durgadās burned on the banks of the Sipra River and Gāmgāni bestowed on slaves.” According to tradition, the exiled Durgadās died at Ujjain, near which the Sipra flows.]