[26]. [Byzantium cannot have been a Greek colony, the name apparently representing Vijayanta, now Vijayadurga, the southern entrance of the Vāghotan River in Ratnagiri (McCrindle, Ptolemy, 47; BG, i. Part ii. 174 f.).]
[27]. It will be recollected that the various authorities given state Raja Suraj (sun), of Kakustha race, to be the father of Siladitya. Kakustha is a term used synonymously with Suryavansa, according to the Solar genealogists. Those who may be inclined to the Persian descent may trace it from Kaikaus, a well-known epithet in the Persian dynasties. I am unacquainted with the etymology of Kakustha; but it may possibly be from ka, ‘of or belonging to,’ Kusa (Cush), the second son of Rama [?]. I have already hinted that the Assyrian Medes might be descendants of Hyaspa, a branch of the Indu-Mede of the family of Yayati which bore the name of Kausika. [The reference in the text may be to Kakutstha, grandson of Ikshwāku, who is said to have taken his name because he stood on the hump (Kukuda) of Indra when he was turned into a bull (Wilson, Vishna Purāna, 361).]
[28]. “The moral consequence of a pedigree,” says Hume, “is differently marked by the influence of law and custom. The male sex is deemed more noble than the female. The association of our ideas pursues the regular descent of honour and estates from father to son, and their wives, however essential, are considered only in the light of foreign auxiliaries” (Essays, vol. ii. p. 192). Not unlike the Rajput axiom, though more coarsely expressed; “It is, who planted the tree, not where did it grow,” that marks his idea of the comparative value of the side whence honours originate; though purity of blood in both lines is essential.
[29]. A new era had commenced, not of Yazdegird’s accession, as is supposed, which would have been vain indeed, when the throne was tottering under him, but consequent to the completion of the grand cycle of 1440 years. He was slain at Merv in A.D. 651, the 31st of the Hegira; on the eleventh year of which, or A.D. 632 (according to Moreri), he commenced his reign.
[30]. Gibbon was wrong. India afforded them an asylum, and their issue constitutes the most wealthy, the most respected, and the most enlightened part of the native community of Bombay and the chief towns of that presidency.
[31]. Gibbon, Miscellaneous Works, ‘Sur la Monarchie des Mèdes,’ vol. iii.
CHAPTER 4
Samarsi, Samar Singh.
An intermediate period, from Bappa to Samarsi, that of Sakti Kumar, is fixed by the Aitpur inscription in S. 1024 (A.D. 968); and from the more perishable yet excellent authority of an ancient Jain MS. the era of Allat, the ancestor of Sakti Kumar, was S. 922 (A.D. 866), four generations anterior. From Bappa’s departure for Iran, in A.D. 764, to the subversion of Hindu dominion in the reign of Samarsi, in A.D. 1193, we find recorded an intermediate Islamite invasion. This was during the reign of Khuman, between A.D. 812 and 836, which event forms the chief subject of the Khuman-Raesa, the most ancient of the poetic chronicles of Mewar [241].