[33]. One of the Shaikhavat subdivisions.
[34]. The abode of the Chondawat leader. It is common to call them by the name of their estates.
[35]. [He must have been older, as he left two sons, and had already served in defence of Merta (Smith, op. cit. 88).]
[36]. The bira, or pan, the aromatic leaf so called, enveloping spices, terra japonica, calcined shell-lime[shell-lime], and pieces of the areca nut, is always presented on taking leave.
[37]. [His name appears to have been Sālivāhan, and as he had married a Sesodia princess, he was bound to fight for the Rāna (ASR, ii. 394).]
[38]. “Chait sudi igārahwān, S. 1624,” 11th Chait, or May, A.D. 1568. [The Musalmān writers give February 23, 1568 (Akbarnāma, ii. 471; Elliot-Dowson v. 327; cf. Badaoni ii. 111).]
[39]. Grand kettle-drums, about eight or ten feet in diameter.
[40]. The tija sakha Chitor ra, or ‘third sack of Chitor,’ was marked by the most illiterate atrocity, for every monument spared by Ala or Bayazid was defaced, which has left an indelible stain on Akbar’s name as a lover of the arts, as well as of humanity. Ala’s assault was comparatively harmless, as the care of the fortress was assigned to a Hindu prince; and Bayazid had little time to fulfil this part of the Mosaic law, maintained with rigid severity by the followers of Islamism. Besides, at those periods, they possessed both the skill and the means to reconstruct: not so after Akbar, as the subsequent portion of the annals will show but a struggle for existence. The arts do not flourish amidst penury: the principle to construct cannot long survive, when the means to execute are fled; and in the monumental works of Chitor we can trace the gradations of genius, its splendour and decay. [There is no good evidence that Akbar destroyed the buildings (Smith, op. cit. 90).]
[41]. "He (Akber) named the matchlock with which he shot Jeimul Singram, being one of great superiority and choice, and with which he had slain three or four thousand birds and beasts" (Jahangir-namah). [Ed. Rogers-Beveridge 45; Āīn, i. 116, 617; Badaoni ii. 107.]
[42]. “I find nothing remarkable at the entry but two great elephants of stone, which are in the two sides of one of the gates. Upon one of them is the statue of Jamel (Jeimul), that famous raja of Cheetore, and upon the other Potter (Putta) his brother. These are two gallant men that, together with their mother, who was yet braver than they, cut out so much work for Ekbar; and who, in the sieges of towns which they maintained against him, gave such extraordinary proofs of their generosity, that at length they would rather be killed in the outfalls (sallies) with their mother, than submit; and for this gallantry it is, that even their enemies thought them worthy to have these statues erected to them. These two great elephants, together with the two resolute men sitting on them, do at the first entry into this fortress make an impression of I know not what greatness and awful terror” (Letter written at Delhi, 1st July 1663, from edition printed in London in 1684, in the author’s possession). [Ed. V. A. Smith, 256.] Such the impression made on a Parisian a century after the event: but far more powerful the charm to the author of these annals, as he pondered on the spot where Jaimall received the fatal shot from Sangram, or placed flowers on the cenotaph that marks the fall of the son of Chonda and the mansion of Patta, whence issued the Sesodia matron and her daughter. Every foot of ground is hallowed by ancient recollections. [For the question of these statues see V. A. Smith, HFA, 426; ASR, i. 225 ff.; Manucci, ii. 11.]