[22]. Relations anciennes des Voyageurs, par Renaudot.
[23]. It is generally admitted that armorial bearings were little known till the period of the Crusades, and that they belong to the east. The twelve tribes of Israel were distinguished by the animals on their banners, and the sacred writings frequently allude to the ‘Lion of Judah.’ The peacock was a favourite armorial emblem of the Rajput warrior; it is the bird sacred to their Mars (Kumara), as it was to Juno, his mother, in the west. The feather of the peacock decorates the turban of the Rajput and the warrior of the Crusade, adopted from the Hindu through the Saracens. “Le paon a toujours été l’emblême de la noblesse. Plusieurs chevaliers ornaient leurs casques des plumes de cet oiseau; un grand nombre de familles nobles le portaient dans leur blazon ou sur leur cimier; quelques-uns n’en portaient que la queue” (Art. “Armoirie,” Dict. de l’ancien Régime).
[24]. I was the first European who traversed this wild country, in 1807, not without some hazard. It was then independent: about three years after it fell a prey to Sindhia. [Several ancient dynasties used a crest (lānchhana), and a banner (dhvaja): see the list in BG, i. Part ii. 299.]
[25]. The monkey-deity. [Known as Bajrang, Skt. vajranga, ‘of powerful frame.’]
[26]. The Khichis are a branch of the Chauhans, and Khichiwara lies east of Haravati.
[27]. [Quintus Curtius, viii. 14, 46; Arrian, Indika, viii.]
[28]. See Annals of Mewar, and note from D’Anville.
[29]. The Pamir range is a grand branch of the Indian Caucasus. Chand, the bard, designates them as the “Parbat Pat Pamir,” or Pamir Lord of Mountains. From Pahār and Pamir the Greeks may have compounded Paropanisos, in which was situated the most remote of the Alexandrias. [?]
[30]. The space between the grand rivers Ganges and Jumna, well known as the Duab.
[31]. Domestic habits and national manners are painted to the life, and no man can well understand the Rajput of yore who does not read these. Those were the days of chivalry and romance, when the assembled princes contended for the hand of the fair, who chose her own lord, and threw to the object of her choice, in full court, the barmala, or garland of marriage. Those were the days which the Rajput yet loves to talk of, when the glance of an eye weighed with a sceptre: when three things alone occupied him: his horse, his lance, and his mistress; for she is but the third in his estimation, after all: to the two first he owed her.