On the morn he convened a council of his chiefs, to whom he revealed the vision of the night, which they treated as the dream of a disordered fancy. He commanded their attendance at midnight; when again the form appeared, and repeated the terms on which alone she would remain amongst them. “Though thousands of barbarians strew the earth, what are they to me? On each day enthrone a prince. Let the kirania,[[7]] the chhatra and the chamara,[[7]] proclaim his sovereignty, and for three days let his decrees be supreme: on the fourth let him meet the foe and his fate. Then only may I remain.”
Whether we have merely the fiction of the poet, or whether the scene was got up to animate the spirit of resistance, matters but little, it is consistent with the belief of the tribe; and that the goddess should openly manifest her wish to retain as her tiara the battlements of Chitor on conditions so congenial to the warlike and superstitious Rajput was a gage readily taken up and fully answering the end. A generous contention arose amongst the brave brothers who should be the first victim to avert the denunciation. Arsi urged his priority of birth: he was proclaimed, the umbrella waved over his head, and on the fourth day he surrendered his short-lived honours and his life. Ajaisi, the next in birth, demanded to follow; but he was the favourite son of his father, and at his request he consented to let his brothers precede him. Eleven had fallen in turn, and but one victim remained to the salvation of the city, when the Rana, calling his chiefs around him, said, “Now I devote myself for Chitor.”
The Johar.
A contest now arose between the Rana and his surviving son; but the father prevailed, and Ajaisi, in obedience to his commands, with a small band passed through the enemy’s lines, and reached Kelwara in safety. The Rana, satisfied that his line was not extinct, now prepared to follow his brave sons; and calling around him his devoted clans, for whom life had no longer any charms, they threw open the portals and descended to the plains, and with a reckless despair carried death, or met it, in the crowded ranks of Ala. The Tatar conqueror took possession of an inanimate capital, strewed with brave defenders, the smoke yet issuing from the recesses where lay consumed the once fair object of his desire; and since this devoted day the cavern has been sacred: no eye has penetrated its gloom, and superstition has placed as its guardian a huge serpent, whose ‘venomous breath’ extinguishes the light which might guide intruders to ‘the place of sacrifice.’
The Conquests of Alāu-d-dīn.
PALACE OF RĀNA BHĪM AND PADMINI.
To face page 312.