Let us see what Abu-l Fazl says of the descent of the Ranas from Nushirwan: “The chief of the State was formerly called Rāwal, but for a long time past has been known as Rāna. He is of the Ghelot clan, and pretends to descent from Noshirwān the Just. An ancestor of this family through the vicissitudes of fortune came to Berār and was distinguished as the chief of Narnālah. About eight hundred years previous to the present time[[11]] Narnālah was taken by the enemy and many were slain. One Bāpa, a child, was carried by his mother from this scene of desolation to Mewār, and found refuge with Rājah Mandalīkh, a Bhīl.”[[12]]
The work which has furnished all the knowledge which exists on the Persian ancestry of the Mewar princes is the Maasiru-l-Umara, or that (in the author’s possession) founded on it, entitled Bisatu-l-Ghanim, or ‘Display of the Foe,’ written in A.H. 1204[[13]] [A.D. 1789]. The writer of this work styles himself Lachhmi Narayan Shafik Aurangabadi, or ‘the rhymer of Aurangabad.’[Aurangabad.’] He professes to give an account of Sivaji, the founder of the Mahratta empire; for which purpose he goes deep into the lineage of the Ranas of Mewar, from whom Sivaji was descended,[[14]] quoting at length the Maasiru-l-Umara, from which the following is a literal translation: "It is well known that the Rajas of Udaipur are exalted over all the princes of Hind. Other Hindu princes, before they can succeed to the throne of their fathers, must receive the khushka, or tilak of regality and investiture, from them. This type of sovereignty is received with humility and veneration. The khushka of these princes is made with human blood: their title is Rana, and they deduce [236] their origin from Noshirwan-i-Adil (i.e. the Just), who conquered the countries of ——,[[15]] and many parts of Hindustan. During his lifetime his son Noshizad, whose mother was the daughter of Kaiser of Rum,[[16]] quitted the ancient worship and embraced the ‘faith[[17]] of the Christians,’ and with numerous followers entered Hindustan. Thence he marched a great army towards Iran, against his father Noshirwan; who despatched his general, Rambarzin,[[18]] with numerous forces to oppose him. An action ensued, in which Noshizad was slain; but his issue remained in Hindustan, from whom are descended the Ranas of Udaipur. Nushirwan had a wife from the Khakhan[[19]] of China, by whom he had a son called Hormuz, declared heir to the throne shortly before his death. As according to the faith of the fire-worshippers[[20]] it is not customary either to bury or to burn the dead, but to leave the corpse exposed to the rays of the sun, so it is said the body of Nushirwan has to this day suffered no decay, but is still fresh."
I now come to the account of Yazd, "the son of Shahriyar, the son of Khusru Parves, the son of Hormuz, the son of Nushirwan.
"Yazd was the last king of Ajam. It is well known he fought many battles with the Muhammadans. In the fifteenth year of the caliphat, Rustam, son of Ferokh, a great chief, was slain in battle by Saad-bin-wakas, who commanded for Omar, which was the death-blow to the fortunes of the house of Sassan: so that a remnant of it did not remain in A.H. 31, when Iran was seized by the Muhammadans. This battle had lasted four days when Rustam Ferokzad was slain by the hand of Hilkal, the son of Al Kumna, at Saad’s command [237]; though Firdausi asserts by Saad himself. Thirty thousand Muslims were slain, and the same number of the men of Ajam. To count the spoils was a torment. During this year (the thirty-first), the sixteenth of the prophet,[[21]] the era of the Hegira was introduced. In A.H. 17 Abu Musa of Ashur seized Hormuz, the son of the uncle of Yazdegird, whom he sent with Yazdegird’s daughter to Imam Husain, and another daughter to Abubakr.
"Thus far have I[[22]] extracted from the history of the fire-worshippers. He who has a mind to examine these, let him do so. The people of the religion of Zardusht have a full knowledge of all these events, with their dates; for the pleasure of their lives is the obtaining accounts of antiquity and astronomical knowledge, and their books contain information of two and three thousand years. It is also told, that when the fortunes of Yazdegird were on the wane, his family dispersed to different regions. The second daughter, Shahr Banu, was married to Imam Husain,[[23]] who, when he fell a martyr (shahid), an angel carried her to heaven. The third daughter, Banu, was seized by a plundering Arab and carried into the wilds of Chichik, thirty coss from Yazd. Praying to God for deliverance, she instantly disappeared; and the spot is still held sacred by the Parsis, and named ‘the secret abode of perfect purity.’ Hither, on the twenty-sixth of the month Bahman, the Parsis yet repair to pass a month in pilgrimage, living in huts under indigenous vines skirting the rock, out of whose fissures water falls into a fountain below: but if the unclean approach the spring, it ceases to flow.
“Of the eldest daughter of Yazdegird, Maha Banu, the Parsis have no accounts; but the books of Hind give evidence to her arrival in that country, and that from her issue is the tribe Sesodia. But, at all events, this race is either of the seed of Nushishad, the son of Nushirwan, or of that of the daughter of Yazdegird.”[[24]]
Thus have we adduced, perhaps, all the points of evidence for the supposed Persian origin of the Rana’s family. The period of the invasion of Saurashtra by Nushishad, who mounted the throne A.D. 531, corresponds well with the sack of Valabhi, A.D. 524 [238]. The army he collected in Laristan to depose his father might have been from the Parthians, Getae, Huns, and other Scythic races then on the Indus, though it is unlikely, with such an object in view as the throne of Persia, that he would waste his strength in Saurashtra. Khusru Parvez, grandson of Nushirwan the great, and who assumed this title according to Firdausi, married Marian, the daughter of Maurice, the Greek emperor of Byzantium. She bore him Shirauah (the Siroes of the early Christian writers), who slew his father. It is difficult to separate the actions of the two Nushirwans, and still more to say which of them merited the epithet of adil, or ‘just.’
According to the ‘Tables’ in Moreri,[[25]] Nushishad, son of Khusru the Great, reigned from A.D. 531 to 591. This is opposed to the Maasiru-l-Umara, which asserts that he was slain during his rebellion. Siroes, son of Khusru (the second Nushirwan) by his wife Marian, alternately called the friend and foe of the Christians, did raise the standard of revolt, and met the fate attributed to Nushishad; on which Yazdegird, his nephew, was proclaimed. The crown was intended for Shirauah’s younger brother, which caused the revolt, during which the elder sought refuge in India.
These revolutions in the Sassanian house were certainly simultaneous with those which occurred in the Rana’s, and no barrier existed to the political intercourse at least between the princely worshippers of Surya and Mithras. It is, therefore, curious to speculate even on the possibility of such a pedigree to a family whose ancestry is lost in the mists of time; and it becomes interesting when, from so many authentic sources, we can raise testimonies which would furnish, to one even untinctured with the love of hypothesis, grounds for giving ancestors to the Ranas in Maurice of Byzantium and Cyrus (Khusru) of Persia [239]. We have a singular support to these historic relics in a geographical fact, that places on the site of the ancient Valabhi a city called Byzantium, which almost affords conclusive proof that it must have been the son of Nushirwan who captured Valabhi and Gajni, and destroyed the family of Siladitya; for it would be a legitimate occasion to name such conquest after the city where his Christian mother had had birth.[[26]] Whichever of the propositions we adopt at the command of the author of The Annals of Princes, namely, “that the Sesodia race is of the seed of Nushishad, son of Nushirwan, or of that of Mahabanu, daughter of Yazdegird,” we arrive at a singular and startling conclusion, viz. that the ‘Hindua Suraj, descendant of a hundred kings,’ the undisputed possessor of the honours of Rama, the patriarch of the Solar race, is the issue of a Christian princess: that the chief prince amongst the nations of Hind can claim affinity with the emperors of ‘the mistress of the world,’ though at a time when her glory had waned, and her crown had been transferred from the Tiber to the Bosphorus.
But though I deem it morally impossible that the Ranas should have their lineage from any male branch of the Persian house, I would not equally assert that Mahabanu, the fugitive daughter of Yazdegird, may not have found a husband, as well as sanctuary, with the prince of Saurashtra; and she may be the Subhagna (mother of Siladitya), whose mysterious amour with the ‘sun’[[27]] compelled her to abandon her native city of Kaira. The son of Marian had been in Saurashtra, and it is therefore not unlikely that her grandchild should there seek protection in the reverses of her family.