Abduction of the Asāni Girls.
“The year 1742 commenced with the slaughter of the king’s garrison at Sambhar by the Lakhawats and Asawats;[[48]] while from Godwar the chiefs made incursions to the gates of Ajmer. A battle took place at Merta, where the Rathors were defeated and dispersed; but in revenge Sangram burned the suburbs of Jodhpur, and then came to Dunara, where once more the clans assembled. They marched, invested Jalor, when Bihari, left without succour, was compelled to capitulate, and the gate of honour (dharmadwara) was left open to him. And thus ended 1742.”
[1]. [Erskine (iii. A, 62) gives the story from local sources; also see Elliot-Dowson vii. 297 f.]
[2]. A delicate mode of naming the female part of Jaswant’s family; the ‘royal abode’ included his young daughters, sent to inhabit heaven (swarga).
[3]. Pluto.
[4]. ‘The lord of the shell,’ an epithet of Siva, as the god of war; his war-trump being a shell (sankh); his chaplet (mala), which the Rathor bard says was incomplete until this fight, being of human skulls. [Sankara, a title of Siva, means ‘causing happiness,’ and has no connexion with sankh, ‘a shell.’]
[5]. Queen of the Apsaras, or celestial nymphs.
[6]. Pope makes Sarpedon say:
“The life that others pay, let us bestow,