[18]. The lake he excavated here, the Hamir-talao, and the temple of the protecting goddess on its bank, still bear witness of his acts while confined to this retreat.
[19]. See [Plate], view of Kumbhalmer.
[20]. I have an inscription, and in Sanskrit, set up by an apostate chief or bard in his train, which I found in this tract.
[21]. This is the symbol of an offer of marriage.
[22]. The toran is the symbol of marriage. It consists of three wooden bars, forming an equilateral triangle; mystic in shape and number, and having the apex crowned with the effigies of a peacock, it is placed over the portal of the bride’s abode. At Udaipur, when the princes of Jaisalmer, Bikaner, and Kishangarh simultaneously married the two daughters and granddaughter of the Rana, the torans were suspended from the battlements of the tripolia, or three-arched portal, leading to the palace. The bridegroom on horseback, lance in hand, proceeds to break the toran (toran torna), which is defended by the damsels of the bride, who from the parapet assail him with missiles of various kinds, especially with a crimson powder made from the flowers of the palasa, at the same time singing songs fitted to the occasion, replete with double-entendres. At length the toran is broken amidst the shouts of the retainers; when the fair defenders retire. The similitude of these ceremonies in the north of Europe and in Asia increases the list of common affinities, and indicates the violence of rude times to obtain the object of affection; and the lance, with which the Rajput chieftain breaks the toran, has the same emblematic import as the spear, which, at the marriage of the nobles in Sweden, was a necessary implement in the furniture of the marriage chamber (vide Mallett, Northern Antiquities). [The custom perhaps represents a symbol of marriage by capture, but it has also been suggested that it symbolizes the luck of the bride’s family which the bridegroom acquires by touching the arch with his sword (see Luard, Ethnographic Survey Central India, 22; Enthoven, Folk-lore Notes Gujarāt, 69; Russell, Tribes and Castes Central Provinces, ii. 410).]
[23]. [Khetrpāl, Kshetrapāla, is guardian of the field (Kshetra).]
[24]. A kind of arquebuss [properly the gun-carriage. Irvine, Army of the Indian Moghuls, 140 ff.]
[25]. Ferishta does not mention this conquest over the Khilji emperor; but as Mewar recovered her wonted splendour in this reign, we cannot doubt the truth of the native annals. [There is a mistake here. The successor of Alāu-d-dīn was Kutbu-d-dīn Mubārak, who came to the throne in 1316. Ferishta says that Rāī Ratan Singh of Chitor, who had been taken prisoner in the siege, was released by the cleverness of his daughter, and that Alāu-d-dīn ordered his son, Khizr Khān, to evacuate the place, on which the Rāī became tributary to Alāu-d-dīn. Also in 1312 the Rājputs threw the Muhammadan officers over the ramparts and asserted their independence (Ferishta, trans. Briggs, i. 363, 381). Erskine says that the attack was made by Muhammad Tughlak (1324-51).]
[26]. [The Jain tower, known as Kirtti Stamb, ‘pillar of fame,’ erected in the twelfth or thirteenth century by Jīja, a Bagherwāl Mahājan, and dedicated to Ādināth, the first Jain Tīrthankara or saint.]
[27]. [The contemporary of Khet Singh at Delhi was Fīroz Shāh Tughlak.]