Merta was founded by Rao Duda of Mandor, whose son, the celebrated Maldeo, erected the castle, which he called Malkot.[[9]] Merta, with its three hundred and sixty townships, became the appanage of his son Jaimall, and gave its name of Mertia to the bravest of the brave clans of the Rathors. Jaimall [742] was destined to immortalize his name beyond the limits of Maru. Distrusted by his father, and likely to be deserving of suspicion, from the very ruse to which Sher Shah acknowledged he owed his safety, he was banished from Marwar. He was hospitably received by the Rana, who assigned to the heir of Mandor the rich district of Badnor, equalling his own in extent, and far richer in soil than the plains he had abandoned. How he testified his gratitude for this reception, nobler pens than mine have related. The great Akbar claimed the honour of having with his own hand sealed his fate: he immortalized the matchlock with which he effected it, and which was also the theme of Jahangir’s praise, who raised a statue in honour of this defender of Chitor and the rights of its infant prince.[[10]] Abu-l-fazl, Herbert, the chaplain to Sir T. Roe, Bernier, all honoured the name of Jaimall; and the chivalrous Lord Hastings, than whom none was better able to appreciate Rajput valour, manifested his respect by his desire to conciliate his descendant, the present brave baron of Badnor.[[11]]
The town of Merta covers a large space of ground, and is enclosed with a strong wall and bastions, composed of earth to the westward, but of freestone to the east. All, however, are in a state of decay, as well as the town itself, which is said to contain twenty thousand houses. Like most Hindu towns, there is a mixture of magnificence and poverty; a straw or mud hut adjoins a superb house of freestone, which “shames the meanness” of its neighbour. The castle is about a gun-shot to the south-west of the town, and encloses an area of a mile and a half. Some small sheets of water are on the eastern and western faces. There are plenty of wells about the town, but the water has an unpleasant taste, from filtering through a stiff clay. There are but two strata before water is found, which is about twenty-five feet from the surface: the first a black mould, succeeded by the clay, incumbent on a loose sand, filled with quartzose pebbles of all hues, and those stalactitic concretions which mark, throughout the entire line from Jodhpur to Ajmer, the stratum in which the springs find a current. There are many small lakes around the town, as the Dudasar, or ‘lake (sar) of Duda’; the Bejpa, the Durani, the Dangolia, etc.
The Battlefield.
Bakhta, Bakhta, bāhira,
Kyūn māryo Ajmāl[[13]]
Hindwāni ro sevro
Turkāni ka sāl?
“Oh Bakhta, in evil hour
Why slew you Ajmāl,
The pillar of the Hindu,